Recent shipping of HH Goods experience/reference?

If it were me, I'd contact Karen at Paradise Freight and see if they could help.

You can hire Tropical/Crowley to consolidate for you.  You can just ship all of your things to them and they will load it in a container for you and ship it down.   If you can have things put on pallets and wrapped it makes shipping/loading/unloading a lot easier.  I think they give you a window of 30 days to get all of your items to them without being charged storage fees.  You can contact them for details.  Customercare@tropical.com for Tropical, and 1-800-276-9539 for Crowley.  Tropical will be a little more expensive in most cases but they are usually a lot easier to deal with so I use them in almost all cases.  (I do logistics for my company so I am constantly shipping all sorts of things) 

@darkmuse

My understanding from recently shipping a vehicle (which required a 20 ft container) from Atlanta to STX is that most domestic shipping is bid through a central logistics bidding center unless you contract with a specific freight company like ODL for the service.

If you already have the container, you could try an intermodal site like https://www.freightratecentral.com/ to see about either the entire trip or the domestic transfer to Tropical, Paradise, Crowley or Blue Ocean.

2-3 years ago, we packed our 20' container at our home in West FL, hired a company that loaded it onto a flatbed truck, and took it to Crowley in MIA to put on one of their ships to the VI. We provided all necessary paperwork including an inventory of contents for Crowley. The container was shipped to STX within 10 days. It went through customs and we had Bates deliver it to our home.

Somewhere on this VI Moving Center site I listed step by step instructions and what it cost us to do this. I think it was about $8k including the price of the 20 ft container.

My advice is to hire a flatbed to take it to Crowley in MIA and work directly with Crowley on the paperwork. 

If you do a forum search you'll find a lot of detailed posts on this topic.  We sent 2 forty foot containers about 6 months apart (Atlanta to STT) plus separately shipped a car.  We had good luck using Blue Ocean, but Crowley or Paradise are also good choices.  This was about 2 1/2 years ago. 

One other tip, the difference between shipping a 20 foot container and a 40 foot container for us was only $2K, so made way more sense in our case to us the 40 footers. We were furnishing an entire 5 bedroom home plus all new appliances for 2 kitchens hence 2 forty footers.  

You make a good point.  Shipping on a 40’ isn’t that much more.  But weight can be an issue.  20’s can be loaded to just over 38k lbs.  and 40’s to about 43.5k lbs. Weight usually isn’t a big issue with home goods.  More so with building materials. 

@rewired Who did you use to ship your vehicle by container?  Were you also able to ship goods in the container?  Thanks!

@tracyggg which island do you want to ship to?   St Thomas or St Croix? 

@tracyggg 

It's been a couple of years but, since we shipped only the car, a driver came and picked up our car in a 'toy hauler' route trailer for the drive from Atlanta to Miami. We used VI Cargo for our car and had to pick it up from the freight docks at Tropical within 2 days of their call.

If you are loading the container yourself, you probably could load other goods around your car, but don't put anything except a key, owners manual, jack, spare and photocopy of the title and registration IN the vehicle or you may invite the wrath of customs. 

We now use Paradise Freight for most of our shipping and Karen there would be a good person to talk to for more experienced advice. I've also heard good things about Blue Ocean, but have no experience with them.

I don't remember the name of the company we used, but it was through a national switchboard like https://www.freightratecentral.com/ that can bid out the haul - we received several quotes within a few hours.

@stjohnjulie We are headed to St. Thomas.  The first time I moved down, I just had some luggage - that was a lot easier 😀

@rewired Thank you!  I will reach out to both and check out the link!

I would contact Tropical and Crowley directly.  They will answer your questions best.  They can arrange inland transport and consolidating for you as well.  Shipping costs have gone up pretty dramatically in the last year or so.  I highly suggest using Boynes Trucking for clearing you shipment(s).  They will also take care of getting your vehicle road ready and registered.  Very affordable and worth every penny.  

Posted by: @darkmuse

Hi folks, I have been attempting to ship a 20' container to our home on STX for almost a year now and have been met with continual challenges and lack of interest from shipping folks.  Just curious if there are any great success stories out there that we can leverage as we rethink this whole process.   At this point, I am willing to truck our items in a UHaul to a port of call if need be (nothing fancy, just beds, totes with misc items, lite furniture etc..

Any comparison for shipping the 20' or just starting to send each item one tote at a time?  

Life is Grand!

Darkmuse

This may be too old to be of value but we shipped down 2 half containers, both from the Boston area, roughly a year apart using Blue Ocean Transport.  They were excellent and managed everything.  We hired a small team to pack the container as you are only given a 4 hour window before you get a surcharge.  As I recall each 20 foot container cost roughly $7.5K, one in late 2019 and the other in late 2020. I’m sure rates are higher today.  We did have to hire someone to bring the container to our place and unload it, again to avoid surcharges, I think in total that cost about $1.7K.  Both containers were very full.  Thank god our moving days are behind us.