Sea freight: the last of the red hot deals

Some things are really expensive:  diamonds, platinum, a house in London, plutonium, for instance.  But we often forget about the remaining great bargains in our time.  Things like salt, glass, used paperbacks, and sea freight.

That's right, sea freight -- our topic for this morning.

Moving things around on a boat is incredibly cheap, especially if you're not looking for full-service relocation packages.  And when you're married to a gal like me, you don't need full service because I am a packing MAVEN.  If you don't believe me, I'll send you my Excel workbook.

The quotes for getting a 20-foot container's worth of our stuff from England to Abu Dhabi have come in and average about £2,000.  That number includes getting the container to our door, giving us a couple of hours to load it, making it appear in Abu Dhabi, and delivering it to the Tornado Villa (which still resembles something out of 1980's downtown Beirut, as suggested by a friend).

I looked back at our invoice from 2006 from the UK move and the breakdown was:

export documentation:  $100

delivery of empty container to our house:  $725

ocean freight:  $920

destination CSC (whatever that is):  $205

customs clearance:  $200

delivery to new flat:  $710.60 (why bother with the sixty cents?)

ocean freight:  $920 !!

Now if that isn't the bargain of the century, I don't know what is.