Passes & Canyons Blog

If you’re like most touring motorcyclists you’re limited as to how far you can go by the amount of time you have off from your job. One way to expand your horizons is to ship your bike to some far-off destination, then fly out there and ride the bike home. But I’ve looked into this and it is pretty expensive. Not out of the question but darn pricey.

There’s another option and it could save you a lot of money. Using a website called uShip.com, you can post a notice as to what you want to ship, when, from where to where. Then carriers bid on your load, trying to undercut the competition in order to win your business. Once you select the bid you want to go with you are put in touch with that shipper. Afterward you both provide feedback which builds confidence on both sides for future shippers/carriers.

I had never heard of this site until they contacted me recently to inquire about placing an ad here on the Passes & Canyons website. That’s their text link over in the right-hand column, just below my picture. When Carlos told me what their business was I said hey, I want to do a post about you guys just to let people know you exist, because I think what you’re doing is great!

As I said, I’ve looked into shipping the bike before and it’s not cheap. But looking at the listings on the site right at this moment, here’s what I see. There’s a guy in Cheyenne who wants to ship his 1997 Honda Z50 to Austin, TX, and he has a low bid right now of $225. There’s another guy in Grand Junction who wants to send his 2001 Indian Scout to Lancaster, CA, and has a low bid of $532. Then another guy there in Junction has 1975 Suzuki re5 Rotary that he wants to ship to Sydney, Australia. He doesn’t have any bidders yet.

There are a lot of bikes waiting for bids. As a matter of fact, there might be a business opportunity here for someone with a truck. String a few of these shipments together and you could make some money.

So it’s free to list your load, and presumably (I didn’t dig deeply here) the hauler pays a percentage of the shipping fee to the folks running the site. Clearly there’s no guarantee, so if you absolutely have to get a bike to particular place by a specific date this might not work for you. But it might. And you’ve got nothing to lose by trying. The more flexible you can be, the better, I’m sure.

Then couple inexpensive shipping with a cheap airplane ticket and you could be set for a terrific ride in places you’ve just never had time to get to before. I tell you what, I’m going to be checking this out myself this summer. Judy and I have spoken numerous times of shipping the bike to Seattle or somewhere like that, flying out, and riding back. It just might happen.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Highway bill in current form would prohibit motorcycle checkpoints

Biker Quote for Today

I don’t ride because I have a death wish, I ride because I wish to live.