We covered that it is a good idea to downsize before the move, but if you still have things to ship – read on. There are 2 primary ways to ship your belongings to Georgia from a western country that is across the ocean (USians and Canadians primarily): Ocean Freight or Air Freight. If you are a minimalist and only have a couple of boxes – Air Freight takes 1-2 weeks (wrong! in reality it took 5-6 weeks), and despite being more expensive is still a good way to get your stuff to Georgia (or maybe not quite). If you are like us and even after getting rid of most belongings still have a few dozen boxes to ship – the easiest way to do this is to reserve a door-to-door Ocean Freight shipping in a container.
Most common container sizes are 20ft and 40ft. If you plan to ship a car – 40ft is cheaper per volume unit, and you can put your boxes and your car in the same container. We have cars that are not common in Georgia, so I am concerned about parts availability. Also, container will take 2-3 month minimum to arrive, with potential delays due to customs on both sides. Another consideration is financial – your cars need to be fully paid off to ship them, you need to have a title on hand. Financing seems to be a major challenge in Georgia, I still need to figure out how it works, but due to these considerations we decided to sell the cars in the US and buy different ones in Georgia.
I did quite a bit of research on moving companies and decided to go with a company that is local to Boston, I used them successfully for 2 local moves previously and was happy with experience. They are not the least expensive, the value is that they are supposed to handle (project-manage in my mind) all parts of the move door to door – pick up, container loading, shipping, container customs clearance and final delivery.
Here is a link to the company we chose – I will share our experience as we actually use them more, at this point I’ve been very happy with effective communication with multiple points of contact there.
We also decided to ship a few boxes via Air (hoping they will arrive quickly and way ahead of the container), with stuff we hoped to use early on – computers, coffee machine, clothing for the summer, some kitchen stuff. Still turned out to be a couple dozen boxes.
Real life update on the above
Air Shipment
OK, here is a gap in my planning and expectations about Air shipment to Georgia: Georgia customs. You will encounter these helpful individuals quite often, so better get used to the though of dealing with them every time you are shipping or ordering anything from outside of Georgia.
We shipped Air shipment 4 days before the move. It took about a week to be picked up and shipped from Boston area to New York, and another week to get to Georgia. So 2 weeks as expected – great. But not really great – customs apparently do not give a (insert your favorite expletive here) about your thoroughly prepared packing list/customs declaration. They went ahead and opened EVERY. SINGLE. BOX. WE. SHIPPED. So they went through everything. And assigned everything the value THEY think it should have. So don’t waste much time on customs declaration for air shipment. If your are not working in a digital format – at least you can find another creative use for that paper. (If you are a Gen Z – ask your grandparents for an advice with this).
But I digress. I got news that customs got around to checking our boxes 3 weeks after arrival of air shipment boxes to Georgia. I see you are doing math in your head – good, and yes, we are at week 5 now, after it shipped. Apparently they were satisfied, but not COMPLETELY satisfied, as they called in an expert to evaluate the price of my computers (which I built myself). And of course they charged me for this – 614GEL (which is $235USD by today’s rate). And also that took another week. So finally, after 6 weeks (2 weeks shipping and 4 weeks at customs) I got my air shipment boxes delivered (after paying what customs think I owed them in import VAT on stuff I bought long before that, and fully paid for a long time ago). Not going to mention how much exactly I had to pay, memories are too painful. (and the fact that I spent last 30 years in Taxachusetts Massachusetts does not mean I like paying taxes, especially on stuff I owned for a long time, and yes, already paid MA state tax for them as well)
Air shipment summary: it took 6 weeks total. And it was expensive. If I had to do it again, I would have cut down amount of things I shipped via Air, or just skipped it altogether. A month with customs having fun with your stuff makes air shipment a last resort if you are shipping a container via ocean as well.
Ocean shipment
I ended up working with 3 companies related to ocean freight: Gentle Giant (helping to prep stuff for shipping and pick up, then loading into a container), Rainier Overseas Movers (responsible for the ocean freight portion and delivery to port in Poti Georgia) and Gosselin Moving (responsible for unloading the container, getting it through customs and delivering to my address in Georgia). I am very happy with all 3 of them, they did a great job on our shipment. Gentle Giant was the main company, we paid them for door to door international container shipment and they helped coordinate everything else.
We had Gentle Giant crew pick up content of ocean shipped 20ft container 9 days before the move. They took only a couple of hours, and did a great job packing and labeling everything, taking their own inventory and loading everything into their truck.
I was asked for some additional information during the freight time, nothing out of the ordinary. The part which was somewhat painful was (think about it, and try to guess… OK, did you guess right? … … … Of course it was the Georgian customs! To get your container content through customs, you need a fairly thorough customs declaration. Of pretty much all your content, which could be grouped by item type. And – guess what – customs here need not only a list of items, but also their approximate current cost (used) AND WEIGHT!!! OF EVERYTHING!!! Without the weight associated with your items list (which should be a fairly close match with total shipment weight) you cannot import your items to Georgia. Sorry. But at least now you know, and can write down approximate weight of stuff as you pack it. Just be ready for this.
It will take you quite a bit of patience, and maybe a few adult beverages (amount may vary depending on how much you like this kind of activity) to get this done. I was working closely with a representative of Gosselin in Georgia, and she really helped me compile, tune and fine tune this list. Multiple times. It took about 53 back and forth email exchanges (yes, I just checked), so be ready for that as well. But – at the end, we had a completed list with prices and weights.
Our container arrived to Georgia (surprisingly) just a week after we got our air shipment boxes delivered. It took another week to unload it, get it from Poti to Tbilisi and file a customs declaration. Gosselin needed a notarized power of attorney document completed to do all the steps in Georgia, it took me a couple of _days_ to actually find attorney/translator combination who spoke English and could prepare a document for me. It took them just a few hours, and I was able to stop by their office the next day and get my notarized POA form. Here is WhatsApp contact information of a translator I used: +995 five five five 55 39 31.
After we filed customs declaration an actual miracle happened – it got approved(!) by customs. So I paid my fees and was able to get the whole container content delivered 2 days after that. I am very surprised that customs did not decide to open every of 100+ boxes we had in the container, but miracles do happen, and thanks again to Gosselin person who helped me to get that customs declaration completed.
Total time we had container in transit: 8 weeks. Not bad at all. So far everything looks intact, except 1 cheap OSB drawer from a small cabinet, which has the top damaged.
Ocean shipment summary: it is expensive but you are not charged by weight (but by volume), so can pack whatever heavy items you want to ship in the container. Just make sure to allow sufficient time to create an inventory of items with used price (in USD) and weight (in Kg) as you pack them.