Trucking - Associated Boat Transport

I'm looking into truck transporters as a way of getting our boat from the east coast to the PNW. Has anyone had any experience with Associated Boat Transport? They came recommended to me and have been knowledgeable and responsive, but it's always helpful to hear more than one person's thoughts (especially given the nightmares that can sometimes happen with trucking a boat across the country).

Any experiences with them would be gratefully appreciated.

Thank you!

Endurance said:

I'm looking into truck transporters as a way of getting our boat from the east coast to the PNW. Has anyone had any experience with Associated Boat Transport? They came recommended to me and have been knowledgeable and responsive, but it's always helpful to hear more than one person's thoughts (especially given the nightmares that can sometimes happen with trucking a boat across the country).

Any experiences with them would be gratefully appreciated.

Thank you!

Click to expand...

I'm sorry, I have no experience with Associated. But if you should decided to look elsewhere, I can recommend M&B Yacht Transport out of Menominee, Michigan. Mom & pop operation with a great reputation and nice equipment. www.mbyachttransport.com Nice people who also run a marina. They know boats. If your schedule lines up with another haul, they should be able to cut you a decent deal. They hauled many, many boats for the Carver and Cruisers factories over the years....as well as for individual owners.

Endurance said:

I'm looking into truck transporters as a way of getting our boat from the east coast to the PNW. Has anyone had any experience with Associated Boat Transport? They came recommended to me and have been knowledgeable and responsive, but it's always helpful to hear more than one person's thoughts (especially given the nightmares that can sometimes happen with trucking a boat across the country).

Any experiences with them would be gratefully appreciated.

Thank you!

Click to expand...

We've recommended Associated for years, as they are a company that owns the tractor and trailer (so they tell me). This means that your boat will not be swapped off to a series of drivers as it crosses the country.

Dudley's is the other company that we recommend.

I don't know anything about Associated, but let me make a suggestion to you based on something I did with my boat.

Find out the yard you're going to use to put it together, then have the technician who will actually tear it down fly back to supervise the teardown.

The tech who put my boat back together was the one who took the flybridge off. He marked every wire on both sides of the cut so when it went back together there was no guesswork on which wire went to which.

GFC said:

I don't know anything about Associated, but let me make a suggestion to you based on something I did with my boat.

Find out the yard you're going to use to put it together, then have the technician who will actually tear it down put it back together fly back to supervise the teardown.

The tech who put my boat back together was the one who took the flybridge off. He marked every wire on both sides of the cut so when it went back together there was no guesswork on which wire went to which.

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Excellent suggestion. Eliminates blame game. Just like moving, never want different crews at the two ends.

Endurance said:

I'm looking into truck transporters as a way of getting our boat from the east coast to the PNW. Has anyone had any experience with Associated Boat Transport? They came recommended to me and have been knowledgeable and responsive, but it's always helpful to hear more than one person's thoughts (especially given the nightmares that can sometimes happen with trucking a boat across the country).

Any experiences with them would be gratefully appreciated.

Thank you!

Click to expand...

Nick

Is Endurance an American Tug? If so, I would contact Tomco (LaConner, WA) the manufacturer. They are a great group of guys. They may be willing to take it apart and put it back together for you. They may also have suggestions on the Trucking Company.

Good Luck

Shawn

Thank you very much everyone!

Shawn, yes, Endurance is an American Tug 395, and yes, I'm shipping it back to Tomco for them to put back together. You're right, they are an absolutely terrific group of people, Kurt Dilworth has been incredibly helpful, patient, and supportive (this is our second AT)(actually, third). Their customer service is the best I have ever seen. I am hoping to have the same person from Tomco who commissioned the boat when we bought it and it arrived on the east coast to be the one who dismantles it.

I'm hoping to find a way to have it trucked without needing to remove the flybridge, and avoid all the associated headaches. I've been told this is theoretically possible, but very costly, and probably not practical for a cross-country trip.

Dudley and Associated have both been recommended to me, but, given my past experiences with having a boat trucked (which were not always positive, though that was another outfit that caused me problems), I greatly appreciate hearing everyone's thoughts and suggestions here.

Thanks again!

GFC said:

I don't know anything about Associated, but let me make a suggestion to you based on something I did with my boat.

Find out the yard you're going to use to put it together, then have the technician who will actually tear it down fly back to supervise the teardown.

The tech who put my boat back together was the one who took the flybridge off. He marked every wire on both sides of the cut so when it went back together there was no guesswork on which wire went to which.

Click to expand...

We had our 44 Ocean Alexander shipped from Lake Travis, Austin, Texas to Michigan some years ago. I did something similar, but completed most of the detailed disassembly myself while taking dozens of digital photos. Also marked wires and bagged/labeled all hardware. Then wrote a detailed narrative in exact order of reassembly so that the yard at the other end could do the job. I e-mailed the instructions and photos to them and they said it went off without a hitch.

By the way, I refused to remove the flybridge, so the height was about 15'6" (over the 13'10" limit). This meant the load had to travel via a slightly more circuitous route (with a lead pole truck). The extra cost was roughly offset by the cost of removing the bridge and loading it on another truck or rigging up a support structure on the bow or the forward end of the trailer. The arch and the fiberglass sunroof were lowered to a purpose built wooden structure on the aft deck. In the process I removed the venturi, wheel, compass, radar, all flybridge railings and seats, antennas, electronics, canvas, anchor, etc. The trailer configuration allowed for the props to remain on the shafts. The dink sat on a cradle behind the tractor.

By the way, this company did a nice job of getting it there, but they were supposed to send two men in addition to the driver to help with the loading. They never showed up, so the driver and I ended up removing the hard top, and the arch (with an assist from the yard who provided the travel lift and a huge fork lift). The driver was PO'd to say the least.

Shawn - I just noticed your signature. Are you the very lucky owner of one of the first AT 485's? Congratulations! What a beautiful, magnificent boat! It's truly a dream boat! You should have a lot of fun with it!

Which hull # are you? When do you expect to take delivery?

Congratulations again!

For those who have moved your boats by truck, can you post the boat length, it's displacement, beam, height, miles traveled, and rough cost of the move? Or cost per mile might be a better value to keep the cost private.

We live a couple of hours from the nearest place we could dock a boat and with current work/family requirements, the odds are that we would only be able to use the boat during the summer. We own enough land that we could easily store the boat at our place which would allows us to work on the boat as needed and would be cheaper and safer than keeping in a yard or docked. The idea is to put the boat in the water in the late spring when we would have more family time and haul the boat to our place in the fall.

We are looking at Diesel Ducks with largest model being 51 LOA, 15 beam and 72,000 with a full load. Air height worries me a bit as does the weight.

I have seen other posts of similar boats being moved 200-300ish miles, about what we would have to do, for $2,000-3,000.

Thanks,
Dan

Endurance said:

Thank you very much everyone!

Shawn, yes, Endurance is an American Tug 395, and yes, I'm shipping it back to Tomco for them to put back together. You're right, they are an absolutely terrific group of people, Kurt Dilworth has been incredibly helpful, patient, and supportive (this is our second AT)(actually, third). Their customer service is the best I have ever seen. I am hoping to have the same person from Tomco who commissioned the boat when we bought it and it arrived on the east coast to be the one who dismantles it.

I'm hoping to find a way to have it trucked without needing to remove the flybridge, and avoid all the associated headaches. I've been told this is theoretically possible, but very costly, and probably not practical for a cross-country trip.

Dudley and Associated have both been recommended to me, but, given my past experiences with having a boat trucked (which were not always positive, though that was another outfit that caused me problems), I greatly appreciate hearing everyone's thoughts and suggestions here.

Thanks again!

Click to expand...

I also should have mentioned that we used Dudley about 6 times without any problems.

Salish Lady

Endurance said:

Thank you very much everyone!

Shawn, yes, Endurance is an American Tug 395, and yes, I'm shipping it back to Tomco for them to put back together. You're right, they are an absolutely terrific group of people, Kurt Dilworth has been incredibly helpful, patient, and supportive (this is our second AT)(actually, third). Their customer service is the best I have ever seen. I am hoping to have the same person from Tomco who commissioned the boat when we bought it and it arrived on the east coast to be the one who dismantles it.

I'm hoping to find a way to have it trucked without needing to remove the flybridge, and avoid all the associated headaches. I've been told this is theoretically possible, but very costly, and probably not practical for a cross-country trip.

Dudley and Associated have both been recommended to me, but, given my past experiences with having a boat trucked (which were not always positive, though that was another outfit that caused me problems), I greatly appreciate hearing everyone's thoughts and suggestions here.

Thanks again!

Click to expand...

Endurance said:

Shawn - I just noticed your signature. Are you the very lucky owner of one of the first AT 485's? Congratulations! What a beautiful, magnificent boat! It's truly a dream boat! You should have a lot of fun with it!

Which hull # are you? When do you expect to take delivery?

Congratulations again!

Click to expand...

Yes, we are expecting the second of the 485s. Unfortunately, she is over a month behind schedule, so we will miss the April launch. We are currently expecting her just before Trawler Fest in May. We will be taking her on the AT Broughton trip as her major shake-down cruise in early July.

Shawn

dannc said:

For those who have moved your boats by truck, can you post the boat length, it's displacement, beam, height, miles traveled, and rough cost of the move? Or cost per mile might be a better value to keep the cost private.

Thanks,
Dan

Click to expand...

Boat LOA: 58'
Beam: 15'5"
Empty Weight: 57,000lbs (Required Supermax Trip Permits)
Miles Traveled: North of Detroit to Portland, OR (About 2800 miles due to detours & circuitous route he had to take)
Transport Cost: $20K

The flybridge had to be hauled on its own trailer with a cradle they built especially for it, and towed by its own truck. The weight of the load necessitated Supermax trip permits which cost a few bucks more. The trucker had to pay that, not me because my contract with him was to get the boat from point A to point B. He also had to eat the cost of the second truck/trailer/cradle because of his error. He said he'd hauled this particular model boat before and had placed the flybridge on the bow. Wouldn't work because of the overall height so it required its own truck and trailer.

The flybridge didn't weigh a lot, but it needed its own trip permits because it's 12' wide x 24' long.

Check our JDaniels yacht transport. They have a cool sight with lots of pics.

GFC said:

The tech who put my boat back together was the one who took the flybridge off. He marked every wire on both sides of the cut so when it went back together there was no guesswork on which wire went to which.

Click to expand...

You would think this is electric 101! My dad taught me that when I was 7....

Tom, I know it SHOULD be pretty basic, but my fear was that the selling brokerage would just start cutting wires and not taking the time to mark them. They were pretty pi$$ed at me for the deal they made, but I kind of had them over a barrel. (Long story there that I won't go into here.) They would have done just about anything to save time and money to get the boat on the road.

One of the things the brokerage wanted to do was lift the flybridge off by prying it up with a series of crowbars. Only when the technician who was representing me raised a serious ruckus over that did they relent and hire the crew from the marina to lift off the bridge the way it should be done, and it was then done without damage.

The arseholes at the brokerage (not the marina involved) were serious jerks about the whole deal.

Anyone ever hear of someone doing it by Canadian railway?????

Boat Shipping

I moved from Charleston South Carolina down to Fort Lauderdale Florida and I had a 32 foot Mariner shipped down by All Day Boat Transport out of Florida. The hauler loaded my boat and trailer on a 38 foot Flat Bed . It ran me about $2700 for the trip which I thought was pretty good. The driver told me they transport boats from every state.

That looks to be Eriksen Marine, Lake Travis ?

Underway said:

We had our 44 Ocean Alexander shipped from Lake Travis, Austin, Texas to Michigan some years ago. I did something similar, but completed most of the detailed disassembly myself while taking dozens of digital photos. Also marked wires and bagged/labeled all hardware. Then wrote a detailed narrative in exact order of reassembly so that the yard at the other end could do the job. I e-mailed the instructions and photos to them and they said it went off without a hitch.

By the way, I refused to remove the flybridge, so the height was about 15'6" (over the 13'10" limit). This meant the load had to travel via a slightly more circuitous route (with a lead pole truck). The extra cost was roughly offset by the cost of removing the bridge and loading it on another truck or rigging up a support structure on the bow or the forward end of the trailer. The arch and the fiberglass sunroof were lowered to a purpose built wooden structure on the aft deck. In the process I removed the venturi, wheel, compass, radar, all flybridge railings and seats, antennas, electronics, canvas, anchor, etc. The trailer configuration allowed for the props to remain on the shafts. The dink sat on a cradle behind the tractor.

By the way, this company did a nice job of getting it there, but they were supposed to send two men in addition to the driver to help with the loading. They never showed up, so the driver and I ended up removing the hard top, and the arch (with an assist from the yard who provided the travel lift and a huge fork lift). The driver was PO'd to say the least.

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BIGB said:

I moved from Charleston South Carolina down to Fort Lauderdale Florida and I had a 32 foot Mariner shipped down by All Day Boat Transport out of Florida. The hauler loaded my boat and trailer on a 38 foot Flat Bed . It ran me about $2700 for the trip which I thought was pretty good. The driver told me they transport boats from every state.

Click to expand...

Just a little curious why didn't you just sail down the ICW instead, that's a fun little five day trip on the ditch, seems like a good excuse for a cruise..

We used Associated to truck the GB we bought in Alameda, CA to Puget Sound. They did a great job. They told us that of the GB line the GB36 is the largest model that can be trucked on the West Coast without having to remove the flying bridge which is a huge hassle and expense because it then has to be put back on correctly.

They said on the east coast with older roads, lower, old and narrow bridges, and bridges in poor condition, the flying bridge of a GB36 may have to come off depending on the route they had to take. Even here they recommended hauling our boat to a yard in Tacoma rather than all the way to Bellingham because there were a couple of iffy clearances north of Tacoma.

The cost in 1998 for this haul was just shy of $4,000 which included the pilot car and driver. The haul took two days.

Vehicle shippers can be a slippery bunch so if you've got a good recommendation and you get a good feel from them, that's something I would probably pursue. I've used a car shipper, a1autotransport for boats, in the past and they were definitely one of the more affordable options I came across. I was only going from Texas to California at the time, but they operate throughout the U.S. I believe.