ctulen
12-31-2007, 06:36 PM
If you haven't heard of John Deller before reading this post, then I can safely say that your team probably hasn't done much international travelling. In fact, a quick search of the forums and you end up finding a lot of information on him and some of his current and former customers. Some good, some bad. See the problem is that a lot of people are only motivated to post on a forum if they feel very strongly about a subject. This seems to be especially true of John Deller. In fact, some seem to outright blame him for everything bad that happens on a team's international trip. At best, most seem to acknowledge that he gets the job done, but only grudgingly so. Very few of the many schools that John has helped through the dizzying array of items that must be tracked in taking a car international have felt the desire to come to his defense.
I wanted to try and break that mold and offer up my experience with him for others to read and use as a factor in deciding who they should ship their car with. Use John or not, I feel the more information out there on FSAE shipping the better. I definitely wish I had more to go on when I was planning our cars international shipping. I must disclaim upfront that I am currently working with John. While my work with him does have to do with shipping, it wasn't started until after I had left the student world of FSAE. You may, then, wonder how you could trust my experience, that it is somehow 'tainted'. In response to this I will only have you consider three things. 1) Is someone's emotional reaction to a litany of wrongs (most having nothing to do with John) any more valid? 2) While I have had an overwhelmingly positive experience with John, it hasn't all been perfect and that I have no problem relating both the good and the bad. 3) Having spent a lot of time researching how to get a race car from country A to country B on a shoestring budget, I would still recommend John as the best way to safely and effectively get your car to competition on time and in a condition ready to race. But trust me or not, this is a tale of my experience with him.
My involvement with John revolves around the Dartmouth team and our ambition to branch out from just Michigan. It wasn't that long ago that the only other option than Michigan was to travel to either England for Formula Student or half way around the world to Australia. We didn't really give much thought to Australia, however we have heard that it is a great competition, but in the end it just came down to the fact that England was closer. The first year Dartmouth attended FS was the year before I joined the team. They used an ocean going cargo container because someone knew a guy and it was free. It took reams of paperwork, two trips down to the lovely New Jersey port, and several months for the car to make it round trip. Needless to say it wasn't an experience we were keen to repeat the next year (my first year). I was tasked by the captains to get the team over to FS, which is where I began my research in earnest. Shipping again wasn't really an option because the guy who knew a guy was sleeping with his wife or something. So we needed to move on. I did the same thing you are doing right now and reading stuff about various transportation options. It basically boiled down to either ship or plane. Since we would have to pay for the ship this time, the container would cost about $20,000. In talking with UPS and other 'big name' shippers, I was quoted around $7,000. Then I found out about John on the forums. I decided to contact him and see what his deal was. He was a bit hard to get a hold of and it required some persistence on my part to get his attention. I also, unfortunately, had started my search about the beginning of April, which was normally pretty late for him to consider us because usually he can't find the space. We asked him very nicely and he actually managed to find a spot for us flying out of Toronto for about $3,000. Not ideal (9 hour drive), but he said that he could drop the car off towards the end of the summer back at Dartmouth, so we thought it was a great deal. Plus, he would deliver it right to the competition in England, so we just had to worry about getting the team members there. That was a huge load off my mind in terms of planning. It seemed like it was too good to be true, but we didn't have the budget for anything, so it was either that or bust. At that time there wasn't a lot of information to go on, so we took a big leap of faith. I also tried to email him about once a week to make sure everything was still on target. He helped me figure out the whole Carnet thing (the car's passport) and we waited till the last week of June (this was back when FS was run over the 4th of July) and hoped everything would go smoothly. There was some mix-up at the Canadian border, but the customers officer was able to figure things out from the Carnet and we dropped the car off at Toronto and hoped it would be at FS when we got there. We arrived and there she sat, ready to race. We placed top 10, then packed everything up and left it right where we found it. Couple weeks later John was knocking on our shop door car in tow. All our equipment made the trip, except for one box. Somehow it ended up with the Drexel team (from Pennsylvania), but that was quickly sorted out. The entire time we were waiting for the other shoe to drop and for our car to end up in Africa or something, having been sold for parts. It never happened. It worked just like he said it would.
Overall, my first year working with John went very well. It certainly wasn't perfect and got scary for a minute at the Canadian border and it would have been nice not to have 'lost' one of our equipment boxes. But in the end we really had nothing to complain about. And having gone through the whole process once, I now understood exactly how the whole process worked. To be honest, shipping is a very shady business and not like anything you have probably encountered before. The competition is fierce and independent cargo shippers can get pretty cut throat with each other. On top of that, custom officials can be arbitrarily subjective in how much 'attention' each shipper gets. So as wide-eyed university students, this is obviously all above our heads. We just want to race our cars. If John seems a little less than 'above board' to you, that is because this is product of the world he lives in and he is exceedingly good at it. For instance, this past FS one of the teams from India had shipped their car with another shipper who ended up getting their car stuck in customs for the first couple days of competition. Once it became clear that the shipper wasn't going to be able to help them out, the team went to John and asked if there was anything he could do. They all drove down to the airport that day and had the car back at Silverstone that afternoon. To me this illustrates two points: 1) Even though the team used a different shipper, he stepped in and helped out because he wanted the team to have the chance to compete in FS for as much as they still could. 2) He knows how to grease the system to get what he wants. I can't think of a better person to trust your car with. John seems to get the fact that FSAE isn't like normal shipping. We need to have our car there on time or we suffer. We are also students and most of us are new to international shipping, so mistakes on official forms are to be expected. He gets all that and works around everything to get the car where it needs to be. I thought it was best summed up when I overhead this at FS last year (talking about John): "After all, you are trying to get your car to competition, not looking for a date to bring home to mother. "
I'll write again about the rest of my experience with John. I have a few more good stories and some general tips that you should keep in mind when shipping international (regardless of whether you use John or not). In the meantime if you have any questions or would like to get in touch with him about shipping your team's car with him, then please feel free to email me at ctu.pub@gmail.com.
Ciao,
Colin
I wanted to try and break that mold and offer up my experience with him for others to read and use as a factor in deciding who they should ship their car with. Use John or not, I feel the more information out there on FSAE shipping the better. I definitely wish I had more to go on when I was planning our cars international shipping. I must disclaim upfront that I am currently working with John. While my work with him does have to do with shipping, it wasn't started until after I had left the student world of FSAE. You may, then, wonder how you could trust my experience, that it is somehow 'tainted'. In response to this I will only have you consider three things. 1) Is someone's emotional reaction to a litany of wrongs (most having nothing to do with John) any more valid? 2) While I have had an overwhelmingly positive experience with John, it hasn't all been perfect and that I have no problem relating both the good and the bad. 3) Having spent a lot of time researching how to get a race car from country A to country B on a shoestring budget, I would still recommend John as the best way to safely and effectively get your car to competition on time and in a condition ready to race. But trust me or not, this is a tale of my experience with him.
My involvement with John revolves around the Dartmouth team and our ambition to branch out from just Michigan. It wasn't that long ago that the only other option than Michigan was to travel to either England for Formula Student or half way around the world to Australia. We didn't really give much thought to Australia, however we have heard that it is a great competition, but in the end it just came down to the fact that England was closer. The first year Dartmouth attended FS was the year before I joined the team. They used an ocean going cargo container because someone knew a guy and it was free. It took reams of paperwork, two trips down to the lovely New Jersey port, and several months for the car to make it round trip. Needless to say it wasn't an experience we were keen to repeat the next year (my first year). I was tasked by the captains to get the team over to FS, which is where I began my research in earnest. Shipping again wasn't really an option because the guy who knew a guy was sleeping with his wife or something. So we needed to move on. I did the same thing you are doing right now and reading stuff about various transportation options. It basically boiled down to either ship or plane. Since we would have to pay for the ship this time, the container would cost about $20,000. In talking with UPS and other 'big name' shippers, I was quoted around $7,000. Then I found out about John on the forums. I decided to contact him and see what his deal was. He was a bit hard to get a hold of and it required some persistence on my part to get his attention. I also, unfortunately, had started my search about the beginning of April, which was normally pretty late for him to consider us because usually he can't find the space. We asked him very nicely and he actually managed to find a spot for us flying out of Toronto for about $3,000. Not ideal (9 hour drive), but he said that he could drop the car off towards the end of the summer back at Dartmouth, so we thought it was a great deal. Plus, he would deliver it right to the competition in England, so we just had to worry about getting the team members there. That was a huge load off my mind in terms of planning. It seemed like it was too good to be true, but we didn't have the budget for anything, so it was either that or bust. At that time there wasn't a lot of information to go on, so we took a big leap of faith. I also tried to email him about once a week to make sure everything was still on target. He helped me figure out the whole Carnet thing (the car's passport) and we waited till the last week of June (this was back when FS was run over the 4th of July) and hoped everything would go smoothly. There was some mix-up at the Canadian border, but the customers officer was able to figure things out from the Carnet and we dropped the car off at Toronto and hoped it would be at FS when we got there. We arrived and there she sat, ready to race. We placed top 10, then packed everything up and left it right where we found it. Couple weeks later John was knocking on our shop door car in tow. All our equipment made the trip, except for one box. Somehow it ended up with the Drexel team (from Pennsylvania), but that was quickly sorted out. The entire time we were waiting for the other shoe to drop and for our car to end up in Africa or something, having been sold for parts. It never happened. It worked just like he said it would.
Overall, my first year working with John went very well. It certainly wasn't perfect and got scary for a minute at the Canadian border and it would have been nice not to have 'lost' one of our equipment boxes. But in the end we really had nothing to complain about. And having gone through the whole process once, I now understood exactly how the whole process worked. To be honest, shipping is a very shady business and not like anything you have probably encountered before. The competition is fierce and independent cargo shippers can get pretty cut throat with each other. On top of that, custom officials can be arbitrarily subjective in how much 'attention' each shipper gets. So as wide-eyed university students, this is obviously all above our heads. We just want to race our cars. If John seems a little less than 'above board' to you, that is because this is product of the world he lives in and he is exceedingly good at it. For instance, this past FS one of the teams from India had shipped their car with another shipper who ended up getting their car stuck in customs for the first couple days of competition. Once it became clear that the shipper wasn't going to be able to help them out, the team went to John and asked if there was anything he could do. They all drove down to the airport that day and had the car back at Silverstone that afternoon. To me this illustrates two points: 1) Even though the team used a different shipper, he stepped in and helped out because he wanted the team to have the chance to compete in FS for as much as they still could. 2) He knows how to grease the system to get what he wants. I can't think of a better person to trust your car with. John seems to get the fact that FSAE isn't like normal shipping. We need to have our car there on time or we suffer. We are also students and most of us are new to international shipping, so mistakes on official forms are to be expected. He gets all that and works around everything to get the car where it needs to be. I thought it was best summed up when I overhead this at FS last year (talking about John): "After all, you are trying to get your car to competition, not looking for a date to bring home to mother. "
I'll write again about the rest of my experience with John. I have a few more good stories and some general tips that you should keep in mind when shipping international (regardless of whether you use John or not). In the meantime if you have any questions or would like to get in touch with him about shipping your team's car with him, then please feel free to email me at ctu.pub@gmail.com.
Ciao,
Colin