Moving Shop

Any of the U-Pack-It type moving companies will do. Have them drop a trailer at your staging area, you rent a box truck with lift gate to get your palletized stuff to the trailer, back box truck up to trailer, throw down a piece of plywood and palette jack right across. A flatbed wrecker can be used to load stuff like a forklift into the trailer. At the far end do the same in reverse. Been there, done that and lived to tell about it.

PS: A container is nice, but delivery and pickup is normally done with a big tilt bed trailer and winch and is expecting the container to be empty, i.e. 10,000# light, not loaded with another 20,000# of cargo.

I've not seen any portable side load rigs that will handle real ISO cargo containers, only the rigs for the tiny little "PODS" or similar.

As for tilting a loaded container, that isn't a problem if they are packed properly. Those containers see plenty of tilting on the slow boat from China and the cargo generally arrives intact. Well, except for the few that get blown off the top of the stack in a good storm and end up at the bottom of the ocean, but I bet the contents are still secure when they settle on the bottom.

There are side loading rigs that will pick up a loaded container, keeping it pretty parallel to the ground. Even if a tilt bed would pick one up loaded, not the hot setup when loaded with machinery!

Jon

Pete

Hire somebody with the necessary lifts etc to get the stuff out of the basement and into a container. Then cover everything with plastic. Shoot a big load of expanding foam in and shut the door quickly. Ship to the location and put in a shop that is ground level.

Take a second job to pay for the heavy lifting moving etc. You will not regret this.

Wher are you moving this stuff from and to?

Bob AZ

Nice rig, I expect they are a bit difficult to find. Of course you can always have a regular crane come out for an hour and load the container onto a standard container chassis.

I've not seen any sites, but I can tell you how I would do it:

- Jack the container up on solid concrete blocks to gain access to the bottom (18" or so).

- Lag bolt the machines onto very solid palettes (temporary).

- Lube up the machines with plenty of rustproofing grease.

- Wrap the machines tightly in stretch wrap (leave access to the bolt points).

- Load the palettes into the container and position appropriately.

- One by one, remove each lag bolt, drill a 1/2" hole down all the way through the hardwood floor of the container, install a long 1/2" bolt through a 4" square x 1/4" thick washer plate up through the hole in the container, through the palette and through the machine foot and secure with a washer, nut, lock washer and backup nut.

- For tall items and all other non boltable stuff, secure to palettes, lag bolt palettes to the container floor, secure additionally with 2" ratchet cargo straps to the welded in D rings along the container walls.

My friend moved his shop from CA to MT in 2 40' containers. He had to hire a crane at each end to load and unload the containers from the flatbed.

His biggest problem was that he had too much stuff and had to off load some because it weighed too much.

As a second thought you could just load the machines on to a flatbed. My friend needed temporary storage at the destination end so he opted for containers. If weather is a problem the load can be tarped.

I've not seen one either, but as I'm looking into moving my shop to Oz, I wondered how the heck to get a loaded container down to port. Guy that sells containers locally came out to see my location, due to the narrow and downhill nature. He can drop off and pick up an empty 20' container no problem with his tilt bed. But he assures me there's a guy in Sacramento that has a side loader that will pick it up with 20,000+ loaded, in addition to the weight of the container! That, I am going to be -very- interested in watching! Here's one link I found to this type of rig:

I don't even want to -think- about my shop ending up in Davy Jone's Locker... But wonder, have you seen any sites on proper loading of containers for international shipping?

Jon

Pete, please forgive me if I am mistaken, but none of these machines weighs over 1,000 lbs, right? Hardinge TM seems to come closest at 900 lbs.

If so, if it was up to me, I would just rent a U-Haul trailer > What are good, economical ways to move a home shop? The move is 1500

Buy yourself a trailer for hauling, and then you can more easily buy more cool stuff too.

Bob La Londe

On Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:37:59 -0500, the infamous "Pete C." scrawled the following:

Cool. I wonder what those run, pricewise.

Yeah, for only $500 or so, unless crane owner/operators are having a slow day, too.

-- If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. -- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

If you have a way to get things up to height to load in, you might be able to get a container dropped off on a normal container trailer and save the whole lifting the container thing for the big cranes at the port. I can't imagine the cost of having the trailer chassis left for a while would be that high. It would also give you easy access to the underside of the container for bolting machines down.

Guy in West Sac gets $125/hr. A run to Grass Valley is 3 hours round trip plus whatever time he spends here. I was thinking of storing the container on a friend's property, moving to Oz, then arranging to have it picked up and taken to port. Give that I'm looking at $500 to move it

5 miles to the friends, I think it'll be worth the effort to pack for shipping and have it taking straight away from my driveway to port! Or having the container placed at the friends and using a trailer to move machines from the shop to the container. I don't imagine those rigs are cheap, gotta move a lot of containers to make the payments!

A crane big enough to lift a loaded container sure won't work for my situation. Power lines on one side of the driveway and 60Kv transmission lines not far from the other side of the driveway...

Btw, sorry again for the massive fubar on directions to my place. Trying to cover too many bases at one time right lately, just a bit more scattered than usual. Enjoyed chatting. And thank you for the shirt, hope I offloaded enough stuff to make the shirt and side trip worthwhile. I plan to wear that shirt next time I get called for jury duty...

Jon

First thing I would do is set down with a chunk of paper and pencil. Then figure out what space you will actually need. Also don't use cheap pallets if you want your tools to stay put. Make those out of 4X4s and planking. Plan out the load so it's close to balanced as well. Once you have a workable floor plan call for your container.

Rent an off road fork lift with enough capacity to lift the largest item. Use it to lift the items out of the basement and position them on the skids/pallets using slings/rigging. If you plan it and have the equipment ready to move all of this can be done in a day easily.

Now have them bring you a container and leave it on the chassis. Load everything up and secure it VERY WELL. Tie straps and chain is cheaper than parts for many machines.

Once loaded they can take it to a terminal OR place it into storage on a will call (get this all in writing and verified before they bring the container) basis. IF you have someone on the other end already you could even ship it out now.

Great advice, thanks. Thanks to everybody for their input. Regarding getting a trailer capable of hauling the lot, I won't do that due to distance, expense, and limitations of my 13 yr old 1/2 ton Suburban. I just don't want to contemplate dragging a load that heavy 1500 miles.

I have quote requests in to gauge the cost of a container move. I probably have time to plan. Our current home must sell first, and that may take a while. Meanwhile, I'll be getting ready. This week I intend to get the tool cabinets and start organizing my stuff into the Vidmars.

I'll post progress and results when things get under way.

Pete Keillor

Remember that household stuff is lighter than shop stuff, so if you plan well you can pack all the house stuff on top of the shop stuff. You can readily bolt or weld in some supports for an upper level to stack regular moving boxes, furniture, etc. Done properly, you need to keep little separate beyond basic luggage with clothes for the flight to catch up with the semi. You can even load your Suburban into the container, and load the Suburban itself with the more fragile items.

On my 1,700 mile move, my Chev K3500 CC DRW pickup was loaded into the

53' semi, with my Deere riding mower in the bed of the pickup, my glasses, dishes, etc. inside the pickup, and my forklift behind the pickup with the forks under the truck. All this portion of the loading was readily accomplished with a flatbed wrecker in short order.

For my situation, I'm laying out everything I will pack in 3D CAD. Just have a wireframe box of the interior dims of the container along with all the interior tie down points, but drawing exterior dims of major machines and cabinets in solids. Trying to balance out the loading, but I'm not even sure what I'm bringing yet, so that's a bit tough. Except that I plan to put the heaviest stuff in the center as much as possible. Have been advised that the cleaner my container looks when opened, the less likely Australian Customs will want to do a full unload. I want to make sure they can get clear to or at least near the back. Leaving an aisle down the center could be an interesting challenge. The issue of bolting machines through the floor makes great sense with respect to keeping things in place. But if Customs decides to do a full unload, that'll really run up the bill. Assuming everything can just be unloaded with a fork truck, full unloads can cost close to a grand. If they had to get underneath to unbolt pallets.....

I'd planned to try and crib things in place with wood, using the knee for instance to push a sturdy wooden or tube steel frame up against the ceiling (where I'd place timbers to spread the load) Maybe I can just build some massive 4x4 box structures (think timber framing), bolt and crib the machines securely to this. Wouldn't too difficult to really secure this structure within the container using chains and wedges.

If not for the high cost of quality machines down there, I'd sell them here and just take the tooling. Sure would make it easier. At least I don't have to haul my machines out of a basement!

Part that sucks is not knowing if I'll be making this move by years end, or years down the road. Depends on the economy and it's impact on my work as well as whether or not I can get a decent job locally. Have a friend trying to help get me into Northrup-Grumman. That would be a dream job! Resume went in well over a month ago, could be months before I hear anything at all. If they are interested, would be several more months to get through background checks.

Plan for the worst, hope for the best....

Jon

Bolt all the heavy machines in a line down the middle of the container, with easily removable packages down the sides. Then it is easy to remove the small stuff and have full access around the bolted down machines to inspect. I can't imagine they'd want to unbolt the machines if they have full access to inspect all around them. Of course sanity may have no bearing on things.

I certainly wouldn't want to do any cribbing which could apply damaging loads to things like my mills lead screws and nuts. Your design will add a lot of weight and complexity vs. simple bolting. It will also not look at all neat to any customs folks looking in the container. Stretch wrapped cosmolined machines bolted to the floor will look vastly neater.

Not entirely sure why you'd be moving down there, most of their folks move up here it seems. Either way, advance planning is always a challenge.

Or look for a trucker equipped with a 'curtain van' - basically a flat-bed complete with integral side winches and tiedown straps but with weather resistant fabric sides and a top. These seem to be gaining increasing popularity.

David Merrill