Question going out to those teams who have transported pits and robots too far away Regionals.
Typically when our teams attend a regional it is between 100 and 200 mi. one way. We load our stuff into a tandem axle trailer and tow it there. We are potentially planning a trip this year that is 20 hours away. Teams that do something like this how do you pull it off?
4 Likes
For Championship, we rented a box truck and had a friendly parent (and district employee) drive over a couple days with our gear and 3489’s gear. We picked up the hotels for stopovers, obviously.
2 Likes
2386 has done it 2 different ways over the past 10-12 years while travelling to events in the states.
The most common method for us is to pack everything into the bottom of our coach bus. There’s typically 3 “compartments” under the bus that we the customer have use of. Two of these compartments are allocated to robot stuff (robot, pit, tools, batteries, etc.) and the third compartment is where we play Tetris with everyone’s luggage (We typically travel with a close to full bus, 45-50 people, and always have enough room for everything). The biggest thing to watch our for here is the overall height of these compartments. Reach out to whoever you’re chartering the bus through, and find out how tall that space is. The furthest we’ve gone using the bus is about 1700km/1000miles one way.
The other option we’ve used was back in 2014 when we flew to San Antonio, Texas. We had a student on the team who’s dad worked for a logistics company. They sponsored the team that year by shipping our robot crate and 1 skid of tools/pit supplies to our hotel and back. From there we used the passenger vans we rented to load in at the venue once we arrived.
It’s also becoming more common these days for teams to bring their robots as checked/oversized luggage on their flights (or at least there are more teams posting about it in recent years). There’s a few threads on here going into the details/logistics of that.
We do the same for long trips.
Pro tip: select a box truck with a hydraulic lift gate. The bed in most box trucks is much higher off the ground than for a tow-behind trailer. Trying to get heavy pit gear up and down a steep ramp is difficult and can be dangerous.
1 Like
I called a local coach company, the quote was $18,000 for our trip. I did check the compartment size and it may be doable for our two teams.
We have a truck and trailer just trying to avoid having mentors drive 40hrs round trip and take off extra days of work.
Also checked with LTL truckers but super expensive.
I have heard of hot shot haulers who have trailers and big pickup trucks, but haven’t tracked any down yet.
Yup, the invoice for a coach bus sucks. For us it still usually ends up being one of the cheaper and easier options though. The typical coach we rent seats 52 people. So the question then becomes, can you find another mode of transportation (along with logistics for all your gear/cargo), for less than $350 per seat, round trip? Obviously that number starts to climb if you don’t need every seat on the bus.
1 Like
We try to look for non-mentor options for driving the equipment.
If your team is a school-based team, does the school participate in other activities with long trips? A person who drives other school teams or organizations might be willing to drive for the robotics team. Teachers and coaches often know who to ask.
Another option is a parent or a grandparent of a student team member. These relatives of team members may not feel comfortable trying to help create the robot, but may be interested in contributing to the team in a straightforward way like driving.
This is exactly what we do. We’ll rent an F250 and pay for fuel and overnight lodging. The school used to have a person who worked in facilities who drove the school owned bus for sporting events and stuff who would drive the trailer for us back in the day.
I’ll also say that a coach bus for close to a day is awful— you run into labor contract stuff, like adding a 20+ minute break every two hours, that add hours to the trip. I would personally suggest flying the people and shipping the robot, and just accepting you won’t have your full pit. Get some nice tablecloths and some standard luggage sized cases to bring the essentials in, and make note of anything you’ll need that won’t be legal to carry on a plane.
1 Like
Who would you recommend for shipping? I would be concerned about arrival time and having someone there to receive it…
Last time we did this (Silicon Valley 2019) I believe we used FedEx and arranged it to be delivered and picked up from the venue. Obviously you need to confirm that all the timing works out. I believe we shipped it almost immediately after our first event. I didn’t personally arrange it, but I know the person who did said Fedex was very helpful making sure everything worked out after he called them.
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.