Shipping California->BH: freight forwarding x moving companies

I just landed back in Rio yesterday for good. My wife and I trimmed our life down to 18 boxes of 3 cubic feet each, total weight 740 pounds. Not even close to 1/5 of a container FWIW.

A freight forwarder who knows what to do and has the system and contacts in place in country is worth it IMHO. I could have paid half the price just for the air freight, but, all the legwork here (and there) on my part would have taken many hours and thousands of  reais on top of that. IT IS JUST IS NOT WORTH THE BRAIN DAMAGE. I'd rather pay once and sleep soundly.

Your mileage may vary. I paid roughly $10 CAD per pound door to door.

Thanks @Gasparzinho 777 for your feedback! Good to know about your experience.

09/03/24 @Ivair Gontijo.  How exciting to be moving back!  This thread has some information and opinions that may be of interest to you:

https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1061492

If you use a mover, be sure to use one with Brazil experience, and preferably one with a partner in Brazil to provide guidance to you, a warm handoff when your stuff gets here, and a Customs Broker.  Allied and North American are affiliated with Sirva here, and did a great job for me, door to door from Chicago to Manaus seven years ago.

I'll look for other threads with useful info and post below any that I find.

09/03/24 @Ivair Gontijo.  This is another good thread:

https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1013978

@Ivair Gontijo, first off moving companies will be pissed you pbo(packed by owner).  Most won't  touch it due to their bs about insurance and any other crap they can come up with. Do look for fully accredited companies.  Look up reviews and reclaim aqui. Helps but I still had a very expensive  horrific experience with Move Plus. Some companies say all boxes are to be labeled with details of what in every box written in both English AND Portuguese  for custom clearances. All electronics must have make, model and serial numbers listed separately. I did it from Brazil to Canada as if I did it with cdn n I assume American companies  are the same..they'll  want it all cash paid upfront. Brazil Co's will let you do half n other half upon arrival at Santos.This is just some of the problems you will have. You can direct  message me if you want to know more

@Ivair Gontijo

California is big state. Are you closest to Frisco or LA?

Thank you @abthree for sharing your experience and links! I totally agree that using a company with prior experience is a must. As you said, "You do NOT want to pay for somebody else's education with your stuff. "

Thanks @Cserebogar! I sent you a private message, as you kindly offered to provide more information.

Hello @bepmoht,

Yes, I should have been more specific. I am in Los Angeles, at walking distance from UCLA.

Any information you can provide will be greatly appreciated!

09/03/24 @Ivair Gontijo I imagine that movers would have insurance issues with PBO boxes; the issues may or may not be easy to address, depending on the company and the access they have to the contents.

A bigger issue though, I think for movers with Brazil experience and a Brazilian partner is the inventory.  They have a system of set terminologies at the US end  and corresponding set translations at the Brazilian end that seem designed to be as familiar as possible to (and so to inspire as few questions as possible from) Brazilian Customs. The intent seems to be to communicate the minimum necessary  information to keep the shipment moving.    The inventory is completed, including serial numbers on items when required,  incredibly fast as the packing is done and given to the client for review.  It struck me as extremely abbreviated, almost telegraphic, but they assured me that it was what Customs required.  It's then translated into Portuguese by the Brazilian partner with a very fast turnaround, a day at most, and returned to (Portuguese-speaking) clients for another quick review.  They were very patient with my questions, most of which were variations on the theme, "Is this enough description?".  The response was invariably "yes" -- and they were right.

My shipment was 3,840 lbs, including a rather large art collection. The art was packed the day before the "regular" packing by the mover's Fine Arts Department.  The regular packing the next day took no more than six hours, probably less -- it was a whirlwind.  Once the shipment was on the water, I was able to follow it online from departure (on Marinetraffic.com -- it changed ships in Colombia) to arrival. Total breakage was one ceramic top of a plant stand (about the size of a dinner plate) and one teacup.

   Wow, thank you @abthree for the details above! In a previous message you mentioned "Allied and North American are affiliated with Sirva here,..." I am not familiar with these companies. Do you mean "Allied Van Lines"? Is this the company you used?

   A quick google and yelp search For Allied Van Lines showed a lot of negative reviews, but I do realize that many people do not understand how involved the whole process is and later blame the moving company. I am trying my best to familiarize myself with as much details as possible, so that I can help them help me. :-)

09/04/24       Wow, thank you @abthree for the details above! In a previous message you mentioned "Allied and North American are affiliated with Sirva here,..." I am not familiar with these companies. Do you mean "Allied Van Lines"? Is this the company you used?

    -@Ivair Gontijo

Yes, Allied Van Lines.  Also North American Van Lines; they're both affiliated with each other and  with Sirva.

A lot of moving companies in the US that carry a nationwide flag like "Allied" function as franchisees, so how good or bad they are depends a lot on local management.  As I wrote above, my first question to any mover was "Do you have experience moving people to Brazil?", and a "no" to that question was immediately disqualifying.  That eliminated most of the marginal players right away.  If the answer was "yes", I'd keep talking to them; if the answer was "HELL, yes!" immediately followed by an unsolicited war story, they probably made the short list.

My two finalists both turned out to be Allied affiliates -- I was living in Chicago, so their names probably wouldn't mean anything to you.  It turned out that they had two things in common besides Brazil experience.  First,  while they both did household moves, their real bread and butter was corporate moves.  Second, probably because they had a lot of corporate business (businesses move a lot in Chicago, and probably do in LA, as well) their crews were permanent employees, not casual laborers.

When I told a buddy of mine who works in logistics who my mover was, he whistled and said, "Wow! You have expensive tastes!".  Maybe -- but I was paying for experts, and got them. 

Our mover was also a large Canadian top shelf multi-national corp. Their international department was a subsidiary that also specialized mainly in corp relocation. This type of company will have movers and customs brokers already in place in Brasil with English speakers on staff. Not an issue for us, but handy for those lacking fluency. We did all our customs preclearence forms direct with the Brasilian broker, as well as we registered on SISCOMEX. Lots of paperwork required, but, it only needs to be done once, and doing it ahead of time beats the hell out of doing it here.

My two centavos.

FWIW we packed our own stuff too, so, all they did was inspection the contents of each box and we were good to go. Insurance with a zero deductible was 4.00 % of declared value and underwritten by the corporate parent, so, easy to sue them in small claims and satisfy a judgement if it came to that.

@abthree: thanks again for taking the time to share all these details. I didn't know that most moving companies are franchisees, but I should have expected that. Yes, this explains why the experiences with a company can vary so much. I have contacted a couple of places already and will be contacting more in the next few days.

@Gasparzinho 777 thanks again for taking the time to share your information! It was very useful to know about the insurance. We will see how it goes with our boxes, as I packed and installed at least two tight plastic bands on each box using a handheld baling machine. If I have to open all of them for inspection, that will be extremely time-consuming. Anyway, I am learning the process as we go.  :-)

09/12/24 There's a good article on this subject in the latest issue of Expat Magazine:

https://www.expat.com/en/expat-mag/1074 … smart.html