Hello, I'm new to this forum, so please bear with me... We are moving from the UK to Bern at the end of April, so I am organising most of our stuff to be shipped over on pallets, while I drive the rest of it over in our van. The van will then be travelling back empty. So, if you need anything moving in either direction, please let me know, and I'm sure we can come to some arrangement.

Thanks, Jeremy.

Hi Jermey,

Im moving to London on 3 SEP and am looking tino different options of moving our personal belongings to Lonond (my husband will come over in OCT-NOV).
Cold you pls let me know how you shipped your stuff over (which company and were you happy with them).

The van you mentioned is it yours personally?

Thanks
Sigrid

Hi Sigrid,

we did it two ways when we moved here from UK: shipping and self-drive. We packed everything into boxes and strapped the boxes on to pallets for shipping by a standard commercial pallet shipping company. Most commercial companies don't like taking domestic belongings but we found one - Westward Freight (lee@westwardfreight.com) which didn't mind. But you can probably find find better/cheaper. Just put internationale spedition into google.ch. We paid about £900 for about 1.5 tonnes on six pallets (a standard pallet is 1000 x 1200 x as high as you dare). We specified that they should not put anything on top of the pallets (we had to pay more than standard rates because of this), but they stacked them up anyway, of course. This price included transport from the north of England.

The van is ours, but is now back in UK. I drove it over full to the brim. With hindsight, there was not much benefit to doing this, except that we had the use of a van for a few weeks. It takes a lot of time and a lot of fuel (and potentially a lot of hassle at the border, although I didn't have any problem - just had to stop and buy the autobahn vignette). We should have just added a few more pallets to the shipping consignment instead.

I don't know about standard removals companies, but I think that the competition for removals work is quite strong, and the international groupage systems generally work pretty well, so unless you want them to do all the packing and everything for you, you may find it works out nearly as cheaply as doing it yourself. Depends what you're taking, too, of course. And don't forget to haggle!

To put it in perspective, the standard commercial rate for a full 38 tonne articulated lorry between UK and CH is around £1200. Plus VAT. But that assumes no insurance requirements, no paperwork problems, fork lift trucks available at both ends, no restrictions on delivery and collection times...

Hope that helps. Let me know if I can help in any other way.

Regards, Jeremy

I think you will find a full 38mt truck, UK to CH costs a little more than the equivalent of Sfr 2'500.-- you need to add on at least 50% more

Hi Jeremy,

thanks for the info.
Westfrieht cannot do this if it's not professionally packed they told me.
I got a quote last week from a UK based company that will move my stuff (13 cubic meter) for £ 900 + £100 swiss custom fee (?) + £30 import fee at UK border + 17% VAT --> Total: around £1200
I think this is not a bad deal, even if it will take 10 days for my stuff to arrive.

Cheers,
Sigrid

Hi Sigrid, maybe Westfreight were put off by their experiences moving our stuff... Anyway, it sounds like you have found a reasonable deal. Good luck with the move. Jeremy.