Shipping POV overseas?

twest0508

Husband is AD Navy, and we are hoping for orders to PCS to Italy.  This will be my first PCS, and I've read that the government will only pay to ship one POV overseas.  Does anyone know how much it would cost to ship a second vehicle (if we decide to ship both), and if it's even possible to do that?

Also, has anyone been stationed in Naples?  That's where we're really hoping to go

tlalli7106

From what I've heard I believe you are only allowed one POV per family. Shipping another will be outrageous and really don't see why you would need a second. Also as beautiful and majestic as Italy may sound, Naples is literally a dump. If you have read/seen the news in the past months there are countless articles of the garbage piling up in the city, so I would do some research before you wish for the next few years living there. My husband and I (both Italian families) were ashamed to see the city like that and quickly changed our minds when we were there, the grass isn't always greener

twest0508

Oh dang, Naples sounds crappy   Husband was stationed there about 10 years ago, and liked it then, but I guess a lot can change in that time period.  I'd really like to go to Italy, especially since we have friends that will be stationed in Germany.  I guess I'll look into the other navy bases in Italy.  And I wasn't really sure if we would even need two vehicles over there.  Here it's a necessity, but I wasn't sure how it would be there over there.

JENandJEH

We were in Germany for 3 years. We had the Army ship one of our vehicles and sold our other then bought a beater car when we got to Germany.  For us, only having 1 vehicle wouldn't have worked.  We lived about 20 minutes from post and I didn't want to get up to take him to PT at 5:30 just so I could have the car for the day. 

 

A friend of ours paid to ship his wife's car over (they got married after he moved to Germany) and I want to say it was around $6000.  They sold her car before they PCS'd back so they didn't have to ship it back. 

twest0508

Holy crap, $6,000?!  Yeah, we can just sell or store one of our vehicles and buy a beater over there for less than that.

Temp76535187505890

I have shipped my car both from Germany to the US and vice versa. It was no where near $6k combined. I want to say it was around $2k each time but that was a few years ago so maybe rates really have gone up that much, doubtful though. It does depend greatly on the size and weight of your vehicle though. I had a little BMW Z4 so if you've got a big van or truck it will be more. You can get quotes online very easily once you get orders and that will help you decide if it's worth shipping or just selling and buying there.

Temp76535187505890

Oh, and how are you enjoying the snow today?

JENandJEH

ArmyQM:

I have shipped my car both from Germany to the US and vice versa. It was no where near $6k combined. I want to say it was around $2k each time but that was a few years ago so maybe rates really have gone up that much, doubtful though. It does depend greatly on the size and weight of your vehicle though. I had a little BMW Z4 so if you've got a big van or truck it will be more. You can get quotes online very easily once you get orders and that will help you decide if it's worth shipping or just selling and buying there.

 

Yeah - sorry.  I just talked to my friend tonight and she said it was $2k.  She was shipping a Pathfinder.  Sorry, $6K sounded high, I'm not sure where I got that number from!

jamie.renee

Not sure about to overseas but my close friend shipped her car back here on her own dime (they shipped one there then bought a van a few years in) and it was less than $1500, going to Texas.  That was just last December.  I think it is weight of the car and also where it is going to that factors in the cost.  We sold our car before we moved to Germany and bought a cheapy German car then later on bought an American car that we did ship back here.

Ilumine

It cost us just over $1,000 to ship my car to Germany.  We choose to go this route, vs purchasing a beater car here because we just bought my car and DH's is a SUV and we wanted to have access to one.

Since we shipped my car, it was here w/in 3 days of our arrival, whereas DH's car shipped by the government took almost 4 weeks to arrive. 

 

meltoine

I would really consider just shipping your one POV and considering buying a second car when you get there. We didn't ship our car at all, and found out we didn't need it once we got here. Also, the roads in Europe and here are a lot smaller, and I know that the car we had (Ford Explorer) would barely fit down the street we live on here, let alone in any of the parking spaces available to us. I'm not sure how different it is in Naples, but I know in Rome a lot of the streets are tiny and narrow like they are here.

Plus, European cars tend to be more fuel efficient, since gas costs about three times what it costs in the States. If you have a gas-guzzling SUV, you'll be paying ~$80 to fill up the tank every week or so.

JessC28

meltoine:

I would really consider just shipping your one POV and considering buying a second car when you get there. We didn't ship our car at all, and found out we didn't need it once we got here. Also, the roads in Europe and here are a lot smaller, and I know that the car we had (Ford Explorer) would barely fit down the street we live on here, let alone in any of the parking spaces available to us. I'm not sure how different it is in Naples, but I know in Rome a lot of the streets are tiny and narrow like they are here.

Plus, European cars tend to be more fuel efficient, since gas costs about three times what it costs in the States. If you have a gas-guzzling SUV, you'll be paying ~$80 to fill up the tank every week or so.

This, plus we had a friend PSC to Naples a couple of years ago. I think it was around $2000 for them to ship their car (more than the car was worth). They ended up going with just buying a cheap car there that got good gas mileage. We've spent a lot of time in Naples visiting him, and if your car is even kinda halfway nice, I wouldn't ship it if I were you. Driving is CRAZY there, and accidents are really really common. Crime is really common there as well and we've heard lots of car vandalism stories. 

Visiting Naples is always really fun... I'm not sure if I'd want to live there because of the trash and crime, but it was really pretty and there was a lot to do. The naval base was pretty nice.

When we PSC'd to England, we didn't ship either of our cars, and it was really cheap and easy to pick up two new cars because there were so many people PSC'ing out at the same time. 

desmerelda317

https://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/46554498.aspx

Somebody asked me what it was like to live in Italy yesterday, and that link shows my reply.  Honestly, we do like it.  But we're in Sicily (NAS Sigonella) not in Naples.  And from what I hear, Naples is not the best place to be stationed.  Sicily is still pretty dirty (trash is EVERYWHERE - ugh, it is so gross.  It isn't just a Naples problem, the entire country seems to have this issue) and there are a lot of things that you'll have to get used to.  Life out in town can be interesting.  A friend of mine described it as a "camp out with four walls."  Utilities come and go (just last month our entire community lost water pressure for a week and I had to fill my washing machine by hauling buckets of water from our downstairs bathroom - we had water downstairs, but not enough pressure to get it to the upstairs faucets).  The cost of living is insanely expensive (we get COLA, but we still have to be careful with our budget).  And while Italian food is truly AWESOME, don't expect to be able to go out for a hamburger if ever you get the hankering for one - in Italy there are pretty much ONLY Italian restaurants.  When we travel we refuse to eat in Italian restaurants because we're just craving American food so badly lol.

I don't say these things to make you change your mind, just to give you some perspective.  Life in Italy is not the romanticized experience you see in movies like Eat Pray Love.  It is a very different culture from American culture and it takes a ton of getting used to.  I just wish I'd been warned about some of these things because it might have made the culture shock less intense.  I was literally in tears the first week we were here wondering if we'd made a mistake in volunteering for my husband's orders.  Now, I'm glad we are here, but if your husband does get orders to Italy be prepared to experience some serious culture shock when you get here.

As for the car, we only shipped one car and my husband drives his motorcycle to and from work (we shipped the motorcycle with our HHG).  It has worked out very well.  I don't think we would have paid to ship a second car - there are always families leaving that need to sell their beaters that they bought here (if you purchase a vehicle here in Italy, it needs to be denationalized so that it is officially an "American" car - but you cannot actually ship it back to the States and you cannot sell it to an Italian, it has to remain in the American system in Italy, so there's always plenty of cars available to the Americans coming in being sold by the Americans going out).  If your second vehicle is an SUV, I would definitely leave it Stateside.  The roads are small here and I wouldn't want to drive around in a big car and risk getting stuck in a tiny road that my GPS tells me to go down (happens all the time to folks here).

twest0508

We both drive trucks, so even if it's not that expensive to ship, it still would probably be a good idea to just ship his truck, and I could get some little car while we're there.  And I definitely think I'm probably romanticizing the idea of being in Italy, lol.  Living there for 3 years is a whole lot different than visiting, I'm sure.  And we'll have a one year old with us, so that will make it more interesting.  I definitely want to get stationed somewhere other than the CONUS, since I've lived in Virginia my entire life.  Any other cool places to get stationed in the navy aside from Italy, Hawaii, and Japan?

pazrana

I have friends who just did a tour in Naples. They didn't love Naples, but they loved being in Italy and traveling all over Europe. What kind of car do you have? The roads are tiny there and there really isn't room for large cars/suvs.  They left their infiniti in storage stateside and bought a beater. Also we lived overseas (guam) for 3 years and just shared one car.

twest0508

We both have Chevy Colorado trucks, so not the best vehicles for tiny Italian roads, lol. 

 

I've been looking at Rota and Sigonella also, cause we really want to be somewhere in Europe, so we can travel.  Anyone has experience at either of those bases?

MallardDucky

Something to keep in mind, is that for the most part you have to get an execption to policey to reg. a second car. So lets say you were denied and you shipped your car you would be out $2-4K for a car you can't use.