I am about to embark on bike tour #12. I have always packed my bike into a Trico Ironcase and shipped it to my tour destination. Back when most airlines charged a ridiculous amount of money to check in a bike, shipping was definitely cheaper. Even when airlines stopped doing that, I continued to ship my bike as the most I ever paid was around $80 each way to send my bike cross-country in the US. I fortunately listened to the September 17 Geek Warning episode that went into the changing landscape of bike shipping. Instead of waiting until the week before my trip to get my shipping labels, I decided to check things out early to see if I would be affected by all the changes. It was a bit jaw dropping. Jensen Bikes stopped their bike shipping program. ShipBikes also changed their model and will only ship bikes in cardboard boxes. I then went to Bike Flights and plugged in my trusty Trico Ironcase. The cost to ship my bike from Philadelphia to Lexington, KY one way was now $150+. Part of the increase in price was due to the high cost of fuel these days. The other part was due to what was discussed in the podcast. Both UPS and FedEx are now using lasers to measure packages and anything above an inch is rounded up. That was the nail in the coffin for my Trico Ironcase. All the rounding pushed the case from being classified as a large package to oversize. Time to pivot. I very briefly considered renting a bike as the cost of renting would be around the same as shipping my bike roundtrip. But, I really, really wanted to ride my own bike. Then came the decision to fly with my bike. The size of the Trico Ironcase is within my airline’s size limit and getting it under 50 lbs is possible with my XS carbon bike, but the case is a beast. The thought of dragging it through an airport or schelpping it onto a shuttle bus made my back hurt. I then promptly read every post on Escape Collective about bike cases and ended up procuring an Orucase-B2. So, I did have to sink $600 to avoid paying $300 in shipping charges, but I figured that there’s a good chance that the new case will pay for itself.
Thank you EC for all the enlightenment!