I'd like to thank all the guys here who have posted about moving a Bridgeport, your experience and ideas made this happen. I bought a very nice
1J 9x42 and without all the good advice here I know the move wouldn't have gone as nicely as it did. I rented a good trailer and a forklift, total cost $250 and it was well spent. A good friend an I trailered the machine 120 mile to here, used the forklift with the 2x4, 1x4 scheme on the forks to lift it off and set it on a very nice dolly provided by the guy I bought it from.. His dolly really made things go well. It was basically 2 herky pieces of angle iron made in a 'depressed' style.. Meaning that the wheel mounts on each end were stepped up so the bottom of the machine was just above a 2x4 in height... It was duck soup to bar the machine up onto a 2x4 with a 1x4 on top of it and pull the dollies out.. then bar up and crib down to 2x4, then 1x4, then the floor.. The move went totally with out problems and I was making chips today. We removed the table and motor before the move to lighten the load and the machine fit easily through a standard door.I can highly recommend the guy I bought the machine from. His name is Don Miller (some of you Californians know him) He rebuilds these machines and they are as good (better?) than the day they were was made, absolutely nothing is wrong with them. I paid his price, $2800 with out haggling, I didn't want a project, I wanted a tool. I surveyed several machines in this price range that were junk. On evilBay used machines like this are going for this price and most are on the east coast.. I'm more than happy with what I got. Here's a link to a Craigslist add that shows his work, and yes that's the 9x42 machine I bought.
And for those of you who remember my post selling a shaper, that was for cash and room to do this :-)
Dave