How to Pack and Ship a Bicycle

There are a lot of ways to pack and ship a bicycle.
Here is how we do it:

  1. Get two bike boxes from your local bike shop (one for shipping, one for packing materials)
  2. Remove the wheels, fenders, pedals, handlebars/stem, seat/seatpost.
  3. Cut the sides off of the donor box and place them in the bike box to give it double walls
  4. Do the same with the bottom of the box
  5. Loosen the handlebar binder bolt and wrap the handlebar assembly in cardboard.
  6. Put cardboard around the ends of the front fork
  7. put cardboard around the rear dropouts (where the rear wheel's axle attaches to the frame)
  8. Place the frame into the box, allowing the handlebar/stem assembly to hang in front of the fork.
  9. Cut a bunch of 6” cardboard squares, put a hole in the middle of each and push them on to the wheel axles until the axles are covered.
  10. Place the wheels in the box making sure you use enough cardboard to protect the frame.
  11. Loosen the seat binder bolt and fold the seat post down into the seat.
  12. Wrap the pedals in newspaper
  13. Wrap the pedals and seat assembly in newspaper and place them in a plastic bag along with any other bagged small parts
  14. Tie this bag to the frame.
  15. If the bike box does not have handles, cut 4 "U" shaped handles around the box and reinforce them with tape
  16. Ship via UPS, FedEx, DHL (I think DHL is stopping domestic shipping).
  17. Be sure your box is under the shipper’s “Oversize” rules.

More tips:

OldRoads.com