All,

Does anyone have any views on boat transportation.  Is there any kind of market for transporting boats around the country for people?  I was thinking about this whilst sat on the m25 on saturday with a tyre blown out on the trailer waiting for the pickup company. 

You could easily use a small sliding back flat bed truck and transport boats around the country for people who for instance dont have road bases or just dont want to have to travel to the pick up new or used boats and the same applies for events and taking the boats to them for the customer

Well this is the thing you need to price it carefully but at the same time making sure that you make some money.  To be honest I dont really know. Have you got any suggestions??

Insurance might well be a nightmare as this would have to go under a commercial policy. 

This is true.  What prices do you think would be acceptable

The Mirror Class used Tony Ainsworth to transport 24 Mirrors to the World Championships in Sweden last year.  Tony uses car transporter style trailers and runs a successful business transporting dinghies around Europe to major events,  the key benefit being competitors can fly out without the hassle of towing.  In theory you could do this for UK events,  but would take some co-ordination

Yeah thats the badger. And refering to the sailboat deliveries thing there can be more than one or 2 companies doing the same thing I feel. 

Where do you ger a trailer like that bad boy??

What kind of prices do they offer though?

Oh hell yeah that would be a knightmare

Very much doubt you'd be able to make any money doing single trips. If you're transporting 4 boats over a 200 mile round trip, that's pretty much a day's work, by the time you've d*cked about loading and unloading. You'd have to allow £2000 pa for insurance as a minimum, I'd have thought, plus the cost of a big, heavy duty trailer that would be adaptable to as many different sizes/shapes of boat as possible. That could cost anywhere up to £10k. Then there's the big truck/van to pull it, and running costs for that would have to be around 40p per mile. Then work out what you want to earn from your day's work, and how many days you'd expect to be working over a year. I'd have thought that overall you'd have to charge around £2 per mile to make it worth investing in the kit, so if you had 4 boats for a 200 mile round trip it works out to £100 per boat.

Then there's the issue of when you get to go sailing if you earn a living dragging boats around for other people, and what you do with yourself for the weekend if you're booked to take the boats back!

Could be a good way to pay for your trips to Euros/worlds if you could get the trailer built on the cheap, but I wouldn't want to try to make a living from it. Sorry to be the voice of Doom!

Neil

Lol classic Idea TT.

I do have to say I think the Sailboats Deliveries do quite well out of the competitors for events but they also do comercial stuff too, After having helped him fill 2 containers worth of boats I know that they do transport a LOT of boats.

The 8boat trailers are amazing the whole of the Hungarian Team came behind/in a Minivan (was quite a sight I must say.)

Now olly You need to market it at sailors at the upper end of the tables one for whom daddys boat and credit card are just something to fill up the weekends with. Preferable ones with two boats so if it does all go pete tong then you can call on those willing cherubites to drive over at the last min with the second one

Olly,

If it does all go Pete Tong, I have just been revising "Negligent Misstatements". I think we may have a case against TT.

However, my legal advice is not so free, but my fees are very reasonable.

btw talking about it all going pete tong

i did hear a story that a large trailers of ISO's toppled over a few years ago.

any one know anything else about this story??

Tony Ainsworth charged me about £330 to take my Musto Skiff to garda and back. He lives in Newcastle and picked boats up from 3 pick up points around the uk on the way down to dover to get the ferry. I think there were 9 boats on the trailer.

His Trailer was made by West Mersea Trailers he has 3 of them!!!