What a problem to have, but I am glad Mr. Howard uses an "ordinary shipping service: FedEx"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/sp...tml?ref=sports
April 16, 2009
N.B.A. Players Line Up a Ride for Their Rides
By JONATHAN ABRAMS
The N.B.A.’s regular season ended Wednesday night. Now wheeled migration can begin.
Most professional basketball players do not have permanent homes in the cities where their teams play, so for those not headed to the playoffs, the mission is to get their luxury vehicles shipped home safely — across the country, or even across the world.
Bentleys, Cadillac Escalades and Range Rovers will be crisscrossing the country, aboard car carriers or driven by friends and family of the players, many of whom have a renowned affinity for expensive and elaborately customized vehicles.
“I would say 9 out of 10 guys don’t live in the actual city that they play in, so you’ve got to ship your cars,” said Keyon Dooling, a guard with the Nets who is headed home to Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “You’re not going to drive it halfway across the country and put all those miles on it.”
N.B.A. teams do not handle vehicle relocation for players at the end of the season. Most basketball players, like their counterparts in other American sports leagues, arrange the end-of-season moves themselves, or enlist their agents.
The Charlotte Bobcats knew for about a week that their season would end Wednesday, enabling Raja Bell, a Bobcats guard, to make plans. A driver for a transport service was scheduled to arrive Thursday at Bell’s house in Charlotte, on the way from Owosso, Mich., to collect two of his vehicles. Bell will rent a car for his trip to the airport and expects to be reunited soon with his vehicles at his Miami home.
“You’ve got to find someone that you trust with your cars,” Bell said. “I like to throw some extra luggage in the back of my cars, so you have to find somebody who makes sure nothing gets taken out of the car. And quickness is a big factor: I don’t want to be without my car for 15 days.”
The cost of such a service ranges from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on the type of vehicle and how far it is going. Cost, of course, is usually not the main concern for players in the N.B.A.; the average salary is more than $5 million.
Greg Giles of Nations Transport in Houston said that his company had transported cars for 45 N.B.A. players in the last year.
“We’ll ship four to five cars at a time for one person,” he said. “A sports car, a sports utility vehicle, a Ferrari, a Bentley, an S.U.V. That happens quite a bit.”
For the transportation companies, the process entails more than just signing, sealing and delivering. Their reputations depend on promptness and reliability, but they earn more points — and clients — if they can accommodate special requests. Tom Meunier of Exotic Car Transport in Orlando, Fla., said he had been asked to transport pets and plants inside automobiles and to transport several vehicles at once, including a 30-foot stretch Range Rover.
The challenges are compounded when international borders are crossed. Foreign players in the N.B.A. find it less expensive to purchase many luxury cars in the United States and ship them abroad than to order them from overseas. Players can also choose from a wider range of models in the United States.
Natasha Cornstein of the sports agency Pinnacle Management Corporation arranges vehicle transportation for her foreign clients, like the Sacramento Kings’ Beno Udrih, from Slovenia, and the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Nenad Krstic, from Serbia.
“Quite frankly, it’s just a lot of paperwork,” Cornstein said. “You can’t ship a car that’s leased. You have to ship it outright. You have to have plates to export it.”
Mark Fromm, whose transport company is based in Westfield, N.J., exports vehicles internationally for Cornstein’s clients. Fromm receives power of attorney for the vehicle. The car is transported to him in New Jersey, then to Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal. From there, it is transferred to a feeder ship at the Port of Cagliari, on the Italian island of Sardinia. Finally, it is forwarded to its destination, usually in Eastern Europe.
“Most of them now don’t ship them back,” Fromm said. “They maintain a home over there and, many times, they bring back one every year.”
International shipping adds more than $1,000 to the cost, and the process takes about 19 days.
Dooling, the Nets’ guard, does not face such complications. He said he and his wife, Natosha, would reroute four cars back to Florida. “All family vehicles,” Dooling said in describing his cars. Like many players, he was wary of publicly revealing much information about his vehicles. His teammate Bobby Simmons said he was arranging for his Escalade to be transported to his hometown, Chicago. The Knicks’ Quentin Richardson was sending two Mercedes-Benzes and an Escalade to Chicago, as well.
For his vehicles, Juwan Howard of the Bobcats said he had used a more ordinary shipping service: FedEx. “Believe it or not, they’ve got a nice system,” he said.
Still, some do it the old-fashioned way. The Nets rookie Brook Lopez and his brother Christopher were preparing to embark on a road trip back to California.
“We are actually excited about driving across the country,” Lopez said. “We’re going to take our time with it.”