The Global Motorcycle Supply Chain!It costs approximately $900 to ship 1000lbs of bikes, gear & container from the US West Coast to the East. Time from Seattle to San Diego is 2-4 days. The shipper, ForwardAir, ships to Mexico as well, but recommends against it for street-licensed vehicles. They would rather you took care of the paperwork yourself at the border. They do not ship to Canada, due to unspecified customs problems. Apparently most of their business comes from bikes sold on ebay.

Typical shipping procedure works like this: You ride or truck your bike to a shipping point in a major city, usually near an airport. At the shipping center, you prep your bike by draining all fluids(You must bring your own containers) and removing easily damaged parts(i.e. mirrors & windshields). The bike(or two) is put in one of three types of containers, one plastic, two metal, depending on the bike's size.


Then you sign a Release of Liability form, show them the bike's Title, pay them & away your precious steed goes. Pickup is the same, but you must sign another waiver if you want help removing the bike(they don't want to be liable if it falls over). As of this writing, it is not possible to purchase one of their containers, but they are working on fixing this, for customers who want the option of permanently storing their bikes.

It's apparently only about $1000 to fly your bike to europe(one way), though your choice of airports is limited to less than half the total. (only those with cargo facilities, IOW) Trucking the bike to another destination is apparently quite expensive and the ForwardAir crate has to stay with the plane.

DLA Piper is a global legal chain that has a number of useful publications on how to do business in far-flung regions. Their booklet on China is especially recommended. All information is in pdf format, apparently no hardcopies can be ordered.
DLA Publications

CSCMP (The Council of Supply Chain Professionals) is an
Here is a discussion the CSCMP hosted in November 2006 titled "The End of Cheap Oil and it's Impact on the Supply Chain"

This online resource is packed with Supply Chain/Logistics info:
logisticstoday.com as well as their online forum site http.forums.logisticstoday.com/

The (Sea)Port of Seattle offers a number of tours of it's facilities. Perhaps in summer.

Some relevant definitions:

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT(SCM): Planning & controlling the operations of a supply chain of goods that move from points in the process of getting raw materials, constructing goods & transporting them to sales points.

LOGISTICS: The art of acquiring the right item, in the right quantity, at the right price & at the right place, at the right time.

SOURCING: Finding a supply of something

PROCUREMENT: Buying it!