I'm pretty familiar with the whole UK transport cost issue, as I've been involved in importing container loads of stuff from the US to here in the past. Like you I have always been staggered at the high charges from handling agents and internal UK transport - it always seems like money for old rope to me.

Last time I did a personal import by sea (a second-user Mistubishi Pajero from Japan) I avoided quite a bit of the cost by going down to the docks at Dublin and dealing with the paperwork myself. The only snag I had was getting my container down from a massive pile of several hundred of the things and persuading the dockies to put it somewhere where I could open it and drive the car out!

All told that was an interesting exercise in faith, as I bought the car, sight unseen, from a Japanese auction, relied on a Japanese agent that I didn't know to deal with the deregistration, export paperwork and packing into the container and had the excitement of opening the container doors several weeks later not knowing quite what I'd find inside!

Still all worked out OK and I even managed to avoid VAT and duty by temporarily registering the car in Eire, driving it over the border to NI, re-registering it there on NI plates and driving it back home to Scotland, where I then lived. At that time second hand imported cars were exempted from tax and duty in Eire, making it the obvious place to bring in goods from outside the EU.

Jeremy