Cost of horse transport

MrsElle

MrsElle

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I have been ringing round getting quotes to transport Fat Lad back home. Now I know that transport companies have overheads, insurance, vehicle maintenance, wages, fuel etc, but blimey, the quotes have made my eyes water.

The most expensive was £920 plus vat, the cheapest £475 plus vat. This is for a journey of 275 miles, which I accept is quite a distance, but goodness me, £920 plus vat :eek: I don't think so!

None of the companies I have spoken to are doing shared loads due to the possibility of virus' spreading, so looks like a hefty pay out to transport a little 13.2 pony.

Wonder if I can talk OH into me buying a lorry with a view to selling for the same price after, thus saving the transport costs. Of course no one will want it after so I will have to keep it........... :D :D :D
 
A year ago I transported my pony with a professional company for £80 over a distance of around 120 miles (I think). So I'm sure you should get it cheaper than that, but it took me a lot of searching. I'll see if I can find the website I used...
 
This is it... It works like eBay in reverse... You register and state the journey you need and people will offer you bids to do the journey. The bid I accepted was obviously from a professional company and it just happened he saw my ad and had a horse to collect locally and take back with him after he'd dropped mine off, which reduced costs.

http://www.uship.com/landingpages/c...t_experiment&gclid=CJ778LzvwrYCFRMftAod1DoAUA
 
wench said:
Can you get somewhere that hires a box out for the day?
Click to expand...

The nearest box hire company is 40 miles from us, which in itself isn't a huge problem, but they require utility bills to prove address. We have a live in job so don't have utility bills...... Bit of a pain, we have had the problem when trying to rent a van to move house with, in the end my dad rented it in his name and put me down as a named driver. However, we live many miles away from family now, so can't go down that route :(
 
Look for shared loads or lorries coming back empty. I have a pony coming from Wales to day, its about a four and half hour journey £195 fully insured. Look on local Face book as the oten post their routes.
 
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I'd do a bit more looking around at trailers. I hire a trailer for £30 a day from a woman who has never asked for proof of address/ bills etc. I found her as she runs a livery yard, might be worth ringing a couple of livery yards perhaps?
 
The last transport we used was £50 for just over 34 miles and the same to transport 2 horses 9.5 miles.... the lady was very good and very helpful though and she had a trailer cam too which meant we could keep an eye on our lot who we were unsure would travel well. We are all much happier with the places our horses are now at so money well spent really :)
 
You should definately manage to get your transport for cheaper, the transported I use to bring Taz from uni (Aberystwyth) back home to Edinburgh, costs £480 for 336 miles, which is just over £1 a mile and that is Taz travelling on his own the whole way, also the transporter comes from about 50 miles north of edinburgh to get us.

Hope you manage to find a cheaper alternative
 
If you have a driving licence and bank account statements in your name and current address, won't horsebox hire accept these? Plus if you show them any other semi official correspondence? Seems a bit off in the circumstances.
I think £1 mile is pretty standard, but if not shared load and long distance returning empty I can see why they might charge more.
 
Look on www.findhorsetransport.org

You are looking at £1.50p per mile

Although it might only be 275 from pick up to drop off don't forget the horse lorries can't 'beam' there for free!

Also cheap may mean this

http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/competitionnews/387/316334.html

With many of the utility companies being online for paperless billing I think your self drive operator needs to update their booking procedures and choose a different way of verifying your address. Self drive looks to be your cheapest and safest option
 
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