Hi - we’re headed to the Pacific Canada Regional from Los Angeles. We haven’t shipped our robot since bag day was a thing and the last time we ventured to Canada we drove it up.
I’m interested to find out what shipping companies are typically used, what the costs are and any other important bits of wisdom from those of you who have experience shipping to regionals. Thanks in advance.
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We design our robots to be taken apart into a few pieces and fit into suitcases. We then take those suitcases with us to regionals. This allows us to be working on the robot until the moment we’re all leaving and makes it easy to go to consecutive regionals.
We’re also going to the Canadian Pacific regional from SoCal, looking forward to seeing you there!
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Honestly I’d drive it if you can. Getting stuck in customs for multiple days is a thing. It’s much easier to describe an FRC robot in person to a customs agent than for them to see “robot” on the manifest in a customs warehouse and try to figure out if any tariff or duty applies.
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@sphuss and @Rezq thanks for making the journey up to Victoria for the Canadian Pacific Regional. We are excited to be playing with you this year and it’s shaping up to be a great event!
Last year we did the opposite of you guys and travelled down to California for the Silicon Valley Regional. We opted to build our own cases, broke the robot down into sections and brought them on the plane as checked baggage. It took some careful planning when designing and building the robot as we knew it was going to come apart for transportation. However, our modular design worked out well and it was easy to travel with. We were able to have the robot back together in the hotel room without too much difficulty.
Make sure to check your airline’s maximum size and weight restrictions. Our cases managed to meet the criteria which save a ton on cost. Overall we brought three cases, two duffle bags loaded with bumpers, two crates and a cart. A team member took one thing each and it saved us from having excess baggage. Don’t forget to drop an AirTag in each case for piece of mind.
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+1 on AirTags.
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+1 on driving to the event in person. The various contraband detectors at the border have a non-trivial false positive rate. I’ve personally seen a team open their crate and find a completely torn apart robot. That’s not something I’d wish on anyone, but it is part of the world we live in.
If you want to ship it, see if they will let you ship it to the venue. If that isn’t allowed, reach out to local teams. Last year we held a Dominican team’s robot before the Long Island regional. Though you should make sure they have the capability to lift the crate you send them into a vehicle for transport.
FedEx is used for shipping to champs, so they might be useful, though not sure about outside the US.
If you can drive it, you should as you are going to be missing much more drive practice and build time to ensure it arrives before the event.
If you must fly, see if you can make it disassemble into 50 pound parts. Ideally if you can fit it inside a tote, we have had ease with checking those.
Having just looked at shipping model airplanes, Southwest checked bags are by far the cheapest option, especially with a lot of people. Just make sure the robot is well packaged. Batteries are gonna be your issue, I don’t think airlines like them.
Driving is easily the most straightforward route and allows batteries to easily be shipped, but with current gas prices (especially the US west coast) it is NOT cheap.
If you’re shipping overweight or oversize bags, Southwest oversize cargo is the cheapest option.
After that, you’ve got UPS/FedEx, although FedEx seems to ship everything thru Kansas at least twice before it gets to the final destination. Note you can ship batteries with FedEx and UPS.
USPS doesn’t like to ship batteries and only allows one per crate, or multiple in original packaging.
If you’re checking it, make sure the dimensions and weight are under what the airline allows.
You can always reach out to other teams at the event and ask to borrow batteries!
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Shipping is definitely a viable option. Tons of teams ship their robot across borders to champs each year and issues are rare.
A few different options are available for shipping:
Mail service (USPS/Canada Post, FedEx, UPS)
Freight/LTL
Speciality services (Greyhound Package Express, Air Canada Cargo)
Shipping to champs is handled by Fedex but via their commercial LTL freight service where they often act as a broker for other LTL carriers doing the majority of the transportation.
LTL will typically have a larger weight and size limit vs. Standard mail service. It also can be much cheaper. However as a commercial service they will ding you for things like not having a customs broker, not having dock height loading, being unable to stack your crates…
LTL has the advantage of being pretty quick and reliable as its often nearly point to point with minimal stops along the way. Lead acid batteries are allowed and searches (particularly between the us-Canada border) are very rare. I’d suggest utilizing FedEx’s freight service as they are generally pretty reasonably priced for small shipments. You could probably borrow a local teams crate if you don’t have your own.
Mail service is another solid option. I’d avoid UPS due to their weird brokerage fees. USPS/Can Post and FedEx are more reliable in my experience. Use a service like ship station for better rates. It’ll require you break the robot up into packages under a certain weight that a human can lift (65lb?) .
A third cool option to look into, Air Canada Cargo. It’ll require you to tender your cargo to the terminal at the airport within a certain window. Then they’ll load it on the next flight out and give you a window to pick it up. It’s probably the fastest and cheapest option of them all but it can be a bit logistically complicated.
Considering the event isn’t on the mainland, keep in mind that ground shipping requires a costly ferry transfer and air shipping typically isn’t direct. It might be a good idea to pick it up in the mainland and drive it over to the event, there are likely mainland teams that could help you with this.
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I can’t speak for Canada, but I would like to point out that this is into the U.S., and the team in question is asking about going to Canada. So it may be very very different. And a lot of teams abroad carry their robots in luggage to championships too, because international shipping, even to a well established event like championships, is not a cake walk.
Typically, a team shipping their robot from Canada to the US must also ship their robot from US to Canada at the end of the event. While in recent years a couple Ontario teams have been pooling a truck to ship their robots down, many Canadian teams have been shipping their bots successfully for years.
Canada’s largest trading partner is the states. 50% of their Fruits and Veggies are imported from the states. The volume of things crossing the US-CAN border is unimaginable. These factors contribute to making shipping cheaper and simpler versus shipping from a country like Turkey or Australia.
As a team who has been to 5 Canadian events from the US (Hawaii), we will never ever ever ever ship our robot directly into Canada again. Too many chances of things going wrong beyond our control. Instead we use either Delta, American, or United Air Cargo (airtags inside our crates)…and ship it to another nearby US location and drive across the border. We have not been stopped for more than 5 minutes once we got to a custom’s agent either direction, and have never had to open up our crate.
Flying it into another country has variability that we cant afford, especially doing back to back events, which could take days. In addition, the paperwork is way more complex and more restrictions apply.
To each its own, your miles may vary.
The U.S. is also No. 2 and 5 in terms of export and import partners with Türkiye - that doesn’t mean anything is easy to ship between the two. 
I’m just pointing out that, going back might not be as easy as coming in - and if you have specific knowledge to the contrary go for it, otherwise, international shipping is a nightmare. 
Teams from Türkiye ship TO the U.S. with relative ease, and then their robots are returned to them in August. …
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I will point out that those numbers appear to be for Turkey’s top partners. The numbers I found for the US didn’t list Turkey in the top 30. Meanwhile the US and Canada are both top trading partners for each other.
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Unlike Turkey, most of Canada and most of the US is connected by land. This allows FedEx to use ground LTL shipping. Due to the volume of goods moving via ground and additional screening and clearance requirements in place very very few LTL ground shipments coming in from the US are ever physically inspected by the CBSA. It’s something like .3%.
Additionally FedEx uses a slower service for the return of crates from champs.
I do agree with Glen. If you don’t want to bring your robot in your luggage, shipping the robot within the states and driving it over is a good option. It’ll save you from the pain of dealing with a customs broker who probably won’t want to deal with a one off shipment. I’ve brokered my own shipments in the past for this reason but it’s a real pain.
Yes that was from the Türkiye side. My point was that huge volumes of trade do not automatically make things easy. Man I wish that was the case.
Edit: Actually I was at the American Chamber of Commerce in Türkiye annual gala the other day, and that’s where I learned this. I was surprised myself. The U.S. is a long ways from Türkiye, there’s a lot of wealthy countries much closer.
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When we dealt with a broker, things got complicated and they felt like it was such a hassle to deal with. In the end, we never got our robot on the day we were supposed to get it. This was for Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. The Vancouver one was worse since I had to ferry it anyway to Victoria. Easier to ferry to Victoria via Port Angeles for a US team.
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the crates arrive in Türkiye in like June. Customs takes teams months to get their robots back however. The crates fly to Houston and come back by boat. But the boat isn’t the problem.
@sphuss This is a Regional Director great question for a regional director. [email protected]
“Retired guy with a truck” is the the best method if you can find one, “disassemble & pack” is second, and shipping is last resort.
Expect to lose 2 weeks of build time if you do choose to ship it, and another week+ to get it home. Or build 2 robots.
Ask your school board if they have an existing relationship with a customs broker.
Robot, batteries & unique spare parts in the crate. Crate weight must remain under 400lbs. Assign each student is 10lbs of tools to pack. Expect to borrow more stuff than usual at the event, you’re 1000 miles from home.