Michael: The Breakdown

Chicken on the bus
With its cackles sticking out
Of the ragged bag.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Thursday we waved goodbye to the empty shipping container we had loaded nearly a month ago in Los Angeles. At one dreamy point I had considered buying some containers and living in them, but after all the hassles and cost of shipping, living out of containers would only add to the headaches and expenses of dealing with containers and shipping. No, I’ve had my fill of containers and don’t plan on making any moves that will involve them for the foreseeable future.

Using S.D.C. International to ship, here is the breakdown of our costs with a few brief notes:

1. Shipping to Panama - $6,500
    That included transport and unloading from Panama City to our storage unit in Chiriqui. (We loaded the container ourselves in Los Angeles which saved a couple of thousand dollars, but limited our insurance options. We decided not to purchase marine insurance.)
2. U.S. Customs Inspection fee - $2,500.
3. Port Container Storage - $600 ($75 per day).
4. Container Retention - $ 424 ($28 per day).
(After 5 days the port in Panama assesses these fees. Our container was in the port for 13 days. Why the two separate fees, I don’t understand. Seems obvious to me that if it’s being stored it’s also being retained, but I’m not a shipper so the nuances of the trade are perhaps over my head.).
5. MSC THC - $254 The T.H.C. stands for Transport Handling Charge.
6. Customs Inspection Fee - $103
(This is where getting a Pensionado Visa is suppose to save you big bucks. Typically, I’ve been told, the customs fee can run between $2,000 - $5,000. Of course the Pensionado can run up to $2,000 after all the expenses and fees are added up, so it’s a bit of a wash if that’s the only reason you’re getting this type of visa.).

That’s a grand total of $10,011 which doesn’t include the expenses of rental trucks and movers at both ends of the move. Throw in those expenses and it’s closer to $10,500.

We were rookies at this and if I had done more research and planned better, we could’ve probably done it for substantially less. But it’s over and done with. If we move from here I feel it would be far less expensive and far more emotionally gratifying to take whatever goods we can’t give away and haul them up the volcano - Robert DiNero style in The Mission - and dumped them in there.