Shipping Personal Effects to Thailand from U.S.

[CJ&Jum 0]

A very good friend of ours will soon be moving back to Thailand.

I was wondering if anyone has a suggestion for shipping personal items back to Thailand. This would include things like clothes, gifts, souvenirs, etc. The items would be in several large boxes. I am guessing maybe enough to fill up a large SUV. While she is donating or passing on many items, I am trying to help out and find some shipping companies that might be worth checking into. Speed is not a problem so long as items will arrive safely. She is able to send stuff now, and will be in Thailand in a few months. Thanks for any tips or suggestions!

C.J.

[Ning 619]

A very good friend of ours will soon be moving back to Thailand.

I was wondering if anyone has a suggestion for shipping personal items back to Thailand. This would include things like clothes, gifts, souvenirs, etc. The items would be in several large boxes. I am guessing maybe enough to fill up a large SUV. While she is donating or passing on many items, I am trying to help out and find some shipping companies that might be worth checking into. Speed is not a problem so long as items will arrive safely. She is able to send stuff now, and will be in Thailand in a few months. Thanks for any tips or suggestions!

C.J.

I shipped about the same amount of items to Thailand last year. Finding a freight forwarding company is fairly easy. Prices ranged widely. From 3 K to 1K for 75 kilos. Your boxes will be put into wooden shipping boxes & relabled. All shipments are by air these days. A small shipment like this will be included with others going air freight. They arrive at the new airport & are sent to international customs.

At that point it begins to get expensive if you are not careful. Your U S company will turn it over to a Thai company. They will contact whoever you designate in Thailand. They will atttempt to charge for all sorts of things. I found my own on the web & saved a lot of money. I refused to pay 300 bucks for forklifts for instance. Forklifts for small boxes? They will attempt to steer you to a forwarding company they control. That can be expensive as well. We used TNT company which is like UPS. It wasnt too expensive & we got our stuff quick & right to our front door.

I would advise you NOT to ship the items too soon. You will pay a storage fee for every day they sit there. Maybe you can arrange everything to be done & ship the items to her place in Thailand uopn arrival.

Also prepare to pay import tax on all items even if they are personal use items. They will say they are not & assess a tax. They will say they are for resale & charge a tax. I sent some toys to give to family & they said I wanted to sell them so I had to pay a tax. Same for my computer. I sent some paintings to put in our house with the same result. They said I was going to sell them! The taxes I paid were almost equal to the value of the items so make sure you dont send anything you dont want to basicly buy again.

Its Thailand & they will do anything to make money.

[daboyz 36]

A very good friend of ours will soon be moving back to Thailand.

I was wondering if anyone has a suggestion for shipping personal items back to Thailand. This would include things like clothes, gifts, souvenirs, etc. The items would be in several large boxes. I am guessing maybe enough to fill up a large SUV. While she is donating or passing on many items, I am trying to help out and find some shipping companies that might be worth checking into. Speed is not a problem so long as items will arrive safely. She is able to send stuff now, and will be in Thailand in a few months. Thanks for any tips or suggestions!

C.J.

Here is a link for freight consolidators:

http://www.moverworldwide.com/movers/Thailand/Thailand.htm

Basically when they get enough, they ship it all together. Me friend works for a steamship company, and he says this is the cheapest way to go.

[ishack1956 0]

I can't recommend a company for Thailand. But I've used North American Van Lines several times to and from Malaysia. They have a local company they contract with in Kuala Lumpur and I know they also work with companies in Thailand as well. But I would shop around. Basically I selected a wooden crate of certain size, which the brought to my house. I filled the crate myself and filled out the customs papers and sealed the crate. In every case the same crate was delivered to my home unopened from what I can tell. If it was opened at customs I couldn't tell. But you have to be careful in packing, they ship them by ship and the crate is handled by forklifts, cranes, ... and not to carefully from what I can tell. In most cases there wasn't a problem, but one time a forklift poked a hole in the crate and some minor damage (expected it to be much worse) to one piece of furniture.

Some Malaysian students that used to rent a house from me actually shipped an entire container. I was only about half full, but it was cheaper for them to ship the entire container as a group instead of doing individual shipment. It was even large enough that almost 3 entire homes of furniture along with a motorcycle fit into it. Actually they could fit a small car in it as well if they wanted to. But they paid a flat rate for the container, and weight wasn't considered. I don't remember what they paid exactly, but somewhere around $2500 total. But they had to go to the Port to pick up their stuff. The price didn't include any delivery on that end. But the shipping company brought the container to one of their houses (actually my house where one of the students rented it) left it for 8 hours while they loaded it up. The other two families brought everything there to load the container. The process then was about the same, once they loaded the container it was sealed until they opened at the port.

This type of shipping appears to be the cheapest by far. That is you do all the packing yourself, and by ship. Anything of any size using air is very expensive. One other person said something about 1-3K for only 75 Kg. That much case could ship 3 complete household by ship.