International · by road
Taking it out of the country
On an international move the recurring complaint is almost never handling. It is a customs file assembled after departure rather than before it — and a load stopped at a border for a document nobody started in time.
Four routes have their own pages. We are a road firm: no sea freight, no air freight, and we will say when a local firm would do it better.
Four routes, each written round its own failure
Spain, Portugal, Greece and Croatia. Each page leads with what actually goes wrong on that route rather than with a sales paragraph, and carries the road out, the regions we deliver into, and a document list split between the rows you obtain and the rows we obtain.
Removals from the UK to Spain
Almost nothing goes wrong on this route that was not foreseeable at the survey.
- Costa Blanca — Alicante and Murcia
- Costa del Sol and Málaga
- Valencia and the east
- Madrid and the centre
Removals from the UK to Portugal
On this route the gap in the middle is the norm. Plan for it and nothing goes wrong.
- The Algarve — Faro, Lagos, Tavira
- Lisbon and Cascais
- The Silver Coast
- Porto and the north
Removals from the UK to Greece
If you are moving to an island, the honest answer may be somebody else. We will say so before you book.
- Athens and Attica
- Thessaloniki and the north
- The Peloponnese
- The Ionian mainland and Epirus
Removals from the UK to Croatia
Zagreb is the easy part. Dubrovnik is most of a day further on, and the map does not show why.
- Zagreb and the interior
- Istria — Pula, Rovinj, Poreč
- Zadar and northern Dalmatia
- Split and central Dalmatia
Where the complaints come from
Read enough accounts of international moves that went badly and the same shape appears: a firm that treated the customs file as an afterthought, a document the customer was never told to start, and a load sitting somewhere expensive while somebody tried to fix it retrospectively.
So every country page here divides the documents into two columns. The rows marked Us are ours to build from the inventory. The rows marked You are attached to you as a person, take real time to obtain, and are what actually stops consignments. Knowing which is which weeks in advance is most of the job.
The second complaint: the transferred load
The other recurring account is goods that arrived incomplete after being consolidated, transferred or repacked somewhere en route. It is a legitimate way to run freight and it is not how a household move should be handled.
One vehicle and one crew from your door to the destination, with nothing transferred on the way. It costs more to run and it removes the largest single cause of things going missing over distance.
Collecting from anywhere in Britain
Where a continental run is already in the diary, second and third collections on the way cost far less than a separate job. We build European loads out of London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Bristol routinely. Tell us where yours starts and we will say whether it can join something or needs its own vehicle.
Two things we will not put in writing
A transit time before the route, the load and the vehicle arrangement are settled — the honest spread is far too wide for one figure, so the quotation carries an estimated window for your own consignment. And a duty outcome, which turns on your residence status and your documents. Both are things firms state confidently and then revise, which is precisely the behaviour this site exists to avoid.
International
Questions about moving abroad
- What actually goes wrong on an international move?
- Paperwork, in almost every case. A tax number nobody applied for, a certificate that takes weeks, an address registration that has not happened. The handling and the driving are the predictable parts; the file is where moves stop.
- Which countries do you run to?
- Spain, Portugal, Greece and Croatia have pages of their own here. The same vehicles reach France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Austria and Slovenia on established routes, so ask. Where a destination is not routine for us we say so rather than treat your move as practice.
- Do you ship outside Europe?
- No. A container or a crate to another continent is a different trade with different insurance behind it. We refer those rather than taking the booking and handing it on — which is itself one of the complaints this site is about.
- Would a local firm at the far end sometimes be better?
- Sometimes, and we will say so. An island delivery in Greece or a stepped old-town address in Dalmatia is occasionally better handled by somebody who does it weekly. Telling you that before you book is cheaper for everybody than discovering it afterwards.
- Dedicated vehicle or a shared load?
- A dedicated vehicle carries your goods alone and departs when you say. A shared load travels with other consignments going the same way: less to pay, leaving when the route fills. On the quieter routes we will tell you honestly how often a shared load actually runs.
- Can goods be held in the UK while the file is completed?
- Yes, and on the longer routes it is the normal sequence rather than a fallback. Collect on the date that is certain, hold the goods listed, and ship when the far end stops being provisional.
Where is it going?
The country, where in Britain it leaves from, and whether the far end has a confirmed address. Those three decide the vehicle, the route and the file.