[Shipping is a big topic, and will have to be divided into segments]
First of all, let’s dispel the great Shipping Myth that has, for some reason or another gained traction.
The free lift (lift = 20 foot shipping container)
You don’t get a free lift when you move to Israel. It is not one of your זכויות. Maybe it used to be; I’ve heard all kinds of stories about what Israel used to give new olim. Someone even told me once that new olim got a free car, which I find particularly hard to believe considering Israel’s general attitude towards car ownership - that cars are luxury items that need to be taxed far beyond their actual value... but I digress.
Another topic which, while not exactly a myth, is that of Splitting a Lift. Some people think that if they don’t have enough stuff to fill a full lift, they need to find someone to split it with. This is not true. Any shipping company will be happy to come to your place, pack up your stuff, and fit it on a lift along with other customers of theirs. They’ll just charge you for the volume (in cubic feet) that your stuff takes up, plus the other usual fees.
Some people are uneasy about their stuff being in the same shipping container as someone else’s. I’m not really sure why, since everything is either in a cardboard box, or wrapped up in tons of heavy duty plastic wrap and mounted on a wooden palette.
The one situation in which it would come in handy to share a lift is when you don’t want to wait. If you ship with a company that doesn’t do a lot of business, or if you ship during a slow shipping season, then the shipping company might have to wait for a couple weeks until the shipping container is full. We avoided this problem by shipping with a company that does a lot of business... more on that later.
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