18 Sep 7 Crazy Custom Freight Calls
Stories from across the globe –
Have a custom freight request? We’re confident we can help you out. Here at Compass Transport, we’ve developed a reputation for being the best Brisbane freight company the city has to offer — and we’d be all too glad to show you why. We’ve got bags of experience in helping businesses just like yours get their goods where they need to be, on time and within budget.
And if you think we might baulk at the idea of transporting something that’s slightly different to the usual freight requests, don’t be. Take a deep dive into the history of freight shipping — and we did — and you’ll see that there have been some highly unusual custom freight requests made to various freight companies – from all over the world!
In this post, we’ll outline just seven that caught our attention. Keep in mind that all the items on this list did make it to their eventual destination in one piece, which just goes to show that, in the freight shipping world, anything is possible!
An Intergalactic Voyager
We’re used to having people ask us to freight ship odd things, but so far, all of those things have been destined for use on planet Earth.
Back in 2021, an intergalactic voyager was transported nearly 6000 miles from California all the way to Kourou, French Guiana.
That voyager’s name? The James Webb Space Telescope. This telescope, by far the largest ever made, provided quite the logistical headache when it came to transporting it to the South American country where it would depart Earth’s atmosphere forever.
As you might expect, this was a meticulously planned operation. You don’t transport a 14,000-pound telescope to another continent without being sure everything will go to plan. Happily, it did! If you like, you can view the first images the telescope sent back to Earth here.
Dinosaurs!
Yes, believe it or not, dinosaurs have not only been requested to be freight shipped — they actually were freight shipped. OK, we’re not being entirely serious here: they weren’t real dinosaurs (shocking!), but rather replica dinosaurs.
But don’t let the fact that they weren’t real diminish how impressed you are that a company could transport them in one piece. These were lifesize replicas, which is another way of saying: they were huge. They were also made of steel, which meant they weighed over 1,000 pounds each.
They were transported in an open-air truck, which allowed other drivers the unique experience of driving past three lifelike dinosaurs. Pretty cool!
A Bank
Running a bank can be profitable eventually, but you’ll need a lot of money to get things up and running. Any idea that can save you some cash, therefore, is worth considering.
Still, it’s unlikely that you’ll come up with a plan as brilliant/insane as William H. Coltharp did when he needed to build a larger bank in a neighbouring town back in 1916. Put off by the amount of cash wagon freighters were charging to transport bricks to the new site, Coltharp used the United States Postal Service to send the 80,000 bricks at half the cost.
Alas, if you thought you might do that yourself, think again. Following this stunt, the USPS limited how much weight an individual could post per day.
A Gray Whale
People try to freight ship animals all the time. In most cases, it’s illegal, and the request will not be granted. But there have been instances when animals have been freight shipped. One such example is the story of J.J., a baby grey whale that became stranded on a beach in California. After being rescued and nursed back to health, it was decided that J.J. should return to her natural habitat. The only problem was that, in the 14 months that had passed, J.J. had become an adult grey whale, and now clocked in at 30 feet long and some 18,000 pounds.
The flatbed transportation operation was a success, and today J.J. is believed to still be going strong out in the wild.
Sand…To a Country That Has A Lot of Sand
It wouldn’t be that unusual for someone to request sand to be freight shipped. However, it is unusual for that request to come from a country that is overflowing with sand. You might expect Denmark to freight ship sand into the country, but not Egypt.
One freighting company received a request to transport sand from Rome to Egypt and rightly became a little confused. However, it turned out that there was a perfectly logical explanation — the receiving company was a glassmaking company that needed a specific type of sand for one of its projects.
Children
OK, we’ll be honest; no one has ever tried to freight ship children in bulk, but this story was so odd that we felt we had to include it. Back in the early days of the United States Postal Service, the blossoming organisation hadn’t yet clarified what could and could not be sent using its service.
And so people — well, seven at least — used the service to mail their children to their grandparents and other relatives, because why not? Not only did they try to mail their children, but they succeeded. It was only later that the USPS forbade the shipping of children. Simpler times!
The Statue of Liberty
How do you transport a 150+ foot, 225-tonne statue? Answer: with great difficulty. After it was officially unveiled to the United States in France, the statue had to be completely disassembled and packaged into 214 crates for its journey across the Atlantic Ocean.
Receiving a gift that is such a faff to transport is a little frustrating, but given that the statue is still standing tall today, we’ll wager that the United States were pretty happy with it.
Contact Compass Transport Today
You probably won’t have a request as crazy as any of the ones outlined above, but even if you do, we’re all ears (within reason!). To tell us more about your custom freight requests, please call 0426 268 184 or click here.
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