Last month one of our valued clients touched base with us to step in and take care of the end to end transport and location of some Buddha’s. We love moving fine art, sculptures and statues, most often they are from UK Point A to UK Point B. But this time they were coming from Thailand, and being delivered to 2 x locations in the Surrey.
With an operation like this there is an awful lot to consider, a variety of logistical elements and a multitude of things that can go wrong. Let’s not forget that just one of these Buddha’s weighed in at around 2,700kg
So just what was needed to get these Buddha’s into their new homes.
- Sussex Transports Freight department got to work on planning the shipment and ensuring all the elements of an international shipment were in place.
- An artic vehicle in Thailand was organised, loaded and taken to the dock, where…
- …it met a team who forklifted and secured the Buddha’s into a shipping container that our team had organised.
- Once the export paperwork was completed the Container was crane lifted onto the Container Ship.
- Many miles and weeks later the ship docked in Southampton ready for the container to be removed (via port crane) and readied for collection.
- Our Flatbed artic with twist locks (for securing the container to the vehicle) headed in to collect the container and transport to our warehouse
- Up stepped our Goods In team and their fork trucks to unload the cargo, check for any damage or discrepancies and subsequently re-load into our Artic Moffett for delivery.
- At the delivery sites (who of course don’t have their own personal forklifts tucked away) our driver and his Moffett mounted forklift truck set to work to safely unload, drive through to location and deliver exactly into position.
Giving the team at Sussex Transport responsibility end to end stopped the client from having to potentially deal with up to 7 different parties.
After all, they’d worked hard enough to secure these pieces of art and even before we started the move, the client had to take all the Buddha’s to the Thai Heritage Protection Bureau to get export licences! That was a drama in itself!
