I’ve used sendmybike.com the last four years. They are part of Pork Belly Ventures. Bike and one medium sized box are shipped FedEx directly to the PBV camp at the start town. At the end of the week you box your bike at PBV at the end town. Cost is about $325. PBV will transport your bike case or shipping box to the end town. You can pay an up charge to have your bike assembled and disassembled and boxed so you don’t have to do it.

I looked into them, but I found that I can take the bike with me on my Southwest flights for $150 round trip. It’s hard to justify paying more than twice that amount. Based on comparative prices, in my humble opinion, Send My Bike seems to be exploiting folks in my situation. $325 is definitely on the pricey end. I’m just hoping there’s an option better than Southwest as I’m sure they’ll be tossing that box with no regard for what’s inside.

It’s not cheap to transport your bikes. There are a couple things if you decide to bring the bike with you:
1.) you need to have a hard case for each bike. Do you have or can borrow from friends?
2.) You need ship the cases from start town to end town;
3.) How to you fly to and fly back? If you fly round trip to/from Omaha, Then you need to find a way to get your bikes back from end town to Omaha.

I guess the best solution is to join a Iowa-based group, a Des Miones group, for example. Then all your transportation needs will be taken cared of.

For me, time is money. I use Sendmybike with Pork Belly. I own a hardcase, so I pack it and drop it off at my nearby FedEx using Sendmybike label. This gets my bike to FedEx in Omaha, where PBV picks it up and has it at camp – I use PBV for tent service and the whole works. I pay extra to have the bike put together when I arrive at camp. Awesome! I take the PBV shuttle bus from Omaha (where I fly into from Miami) and I was at camp, set up, ready for my first adult beverage by noon!
At the end, I hand my bike to the PBV team, and they pack it and ship it, and I pick it up at my nearby FedEx upon my return home. I take their shuttle bus back to Omaha on that final Saturday at the end town.

For me, the “extra” money it costs to have them do everything is easily justifiable for me. Sendmybike/PBV saves me time, hassle, logistical/schedule planning, and let’s me focus on just riding my bike. PBV is a top-notch team that makes Ragbrai a magical time in the corn that I need every July.

My priority list… 1st: Spouse, 2nd: Ragbrai, 3rd:(distant) Work.

There are many many ways to do every part of Ragbrai, so there is no “right way.”

Enjoy, and Ride On!

gringonick,

I’m familiar with the services offered by PBV and Send My Bike. PBV is just not my thing, so while you did a good job advertising them we already have our plan down. We much prefer to tent ourselves where we choose in each town. I used to live in Iowa, so a lot of my logistics on the ground will be covered by people I know. What I’m simply trying to do is get our bikes delivered to and back from Iowa. For what we need, $650 is an exorbitant amount to spend to just transport bikes. Was just looking for alternatives to the $300 total through Southwest Airlines, but there don’t appear to be any so far. Will wait and see if anyone from the Oregon/Washington region is taking a trailer of bikes, as that would be my ideal way to transport our two bikes.

Niles: It’s not cheap to transport your bikes. There are a couple things if you decide to bring the bike with you:
1.) you need to have a hard case for each bike. Do you have or can borrow from friends?
2.) You need ship the cases from start town to end town;
3.) How to you fly to and fly back? If you fly round trip to/from Omaha, Then you need to find a way to get your bikes back from end town to Omaha.

I guess the best solution is to join a Iowa-based group, a Des Miones group, for example. Then all your transportation needs will be taken cared of.

Hey there. Here are my corresponding answers:

1) My go to local bike shop is covering me for free with the cases. They’re awesome.
2) Our cases will stay in Omaha at my friend’s house
3) We will be hitching a ride from the end town back to Omaha with bikes in tow. I’ve been asking old friends from Iowa about a ride to Omaha, and I recall some teams had extra room for the ride back. I’m not overly concerned about this aspect of the logistics.

I was just curious if there’s anything out there other than the airline or Send My Bikes. Ideally someone is hauling gear from the PNW, so I’m just going to sit back and track this thread.

Many airlines charge $150 per bike each way so $300 round trip for two sounds pretty good.

If you find a team from Oregon with space for two bikes, I assume that you’ll pay them something for the effort. And you’ll need to then figure out the logistics of fetching you’re bike at the start and dropping it off at the end (in the end town or back in Omaha). The logistics are not impossible, but it’s not likely that they will be convenient.

I’d not get my hopes up, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Good luck.

Yes would definitely pay for that! I wouldn’t call it logistically difficult with proper, location specific planning. But it’s certainly not fun to sort it all out.

yashardonnay smith, if you have people in Iowa you can ship your bikes to, Bikeflights is the cheapest way to ship that my friends and I have found. Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestion George! I’ll look into Bikeflights. I have a place in Omaha I can send them to which is also where we will be flying into.

If you are lucky enough to find a Saint to haul your bikes from Portland to Omaha and back, I’d recommend you pay them 5 cents per bike per mile for their time and trouble… :-)

Mike,

I was thinking $300 round trip for the bikes. Same as it would cost through Southwest Airlines. That would probably cover a huge chunk of their gas costs, and is super close to 5 cents per mile. Not looking to exploit anyone. Just would rather avoid having to ship the bikes and keep them in one piece.

Check out shipbikes.com

I have used them for other reasons but have thought they would be great for RAGBRAI riders from far away.

They have an arrangement with FedEx which is very affordable and very convenient. You can get a quote and set up shipping on line. Cost is usually around $50 one way you have to pack the bike in the box. They will pick up at your house then you can have the bike sent to any FedEx store, just need to find the one nearest the starting point. Then at the other end you can actually drop it at a FedEx location to ship home again. You will need to print the shipping labels so I would do that in advance and bring them with you to save headaches.