Shipping your e-bike around New Zealand

Have you bought or sold an e-bike privately and need it shipped? Planning a holiday or moving house and want your bike sent ahead for you? We can help!

Shipping an e-bike around New Zealand

To ship an e-bike you'll need a box to put it in, someone to pack it into the box and a freight company to move it for you. We can help you by:

• selling you a bike box (pick up only) for the DIY legends.
• Packing it up from $99 (including box). Higher costs for cargo bikes or where two boxes/bags are involved. Let us know if you are intending to fly with the bike, as that affects the size of box we aim for. We'll also need to know your weight limits - it may have to go into two separate boxes/bags. You can book here. 
• Sending the bike with Mainfreight wherever you need it to go. Someone will need to reassemble it on the other end, so you might like it sent to a bike shop. Freight cost varies by destination. It's rarely less than $100 within the North Island and can be three times that to places like Queenstown.

If you have a front loading cargo bike (box bike) or a long tail with a lot of bulky accessories bolted on, you are quite likely better off getting it shipped 'as it is' with a motorbike mover, such as BikeTranz or Motomovers. This is often an economical option for a standard e-bike too if you are unable to re-assemble your e-bike on the other end. 

Shipping an e-bike overseas

Leaving the country and want to take your beloved e-bike with you? Moving to New Zealand and trying to bring your e-bike? Unfortunately you are exceedingly unlikely to successfully ship your battery. A typical conversation for us is that a hopeful prospect calls us and says 'surely it's possible, how do you get your bikes into the country' etc, then they don't believe what we say, then they try company after company until they give up. In April this year someone found a company that moved 2 batteries from NZ to Australia for ~$1500 and by May another reports that the same company isn't offering the service anymore. If you have managed to do this recently, please do let us know how you did it. 

To take your bike without its battery out of New Zealand, we can pack it into a box for you as above. It will be far cheaper to take it with you on a plane than to ship it by itself. Let us know if you are intending to fly with it or if it is going with an entire household of goods, this will affect the size of box we pack it in. If your battery is in good condition and is a brand that we sell, we can buy it from you but at a very low price (<$200) - you'll get more selling it privately. There are some potential pitfalls to taking your e-bike to other countries because NZ e-bikes are generally faster than what other countries laws will accommodate. From all customer reports, this doesn't seem to matter in practice when taking the bike on a plane but there's no guarantees in life. Your e-bike might be rejected at the border. 

If you are moving to New Zealand and would like to bring your e-bike, we can certainly supply you a new battery if it uses Bosch, Shimano, Brompton or eZee batteries. As above, note that our e-bikes are faster. I don't recommend going to the expense of bringing your 25kph e-bike all the way here. It might be as fast (slow?) as you are used to, but that doesn't mean you won't wish for a quicker one when you are here, surrounded by faster e-bikes and possibly traversing longer distances with fewer bike paths. It will also be very difficult to re-sell if you move on from our lands and wish not to ship your e-bike again. If your visit is temporary, we offer battery hire.