A shop on a southern island buying eleven bikes to sell on, and a previous consignment from somewhere else that had arrived with salt water in the wiring of three of them.
That is what happens when machines are strapped to an open deck for a long crossing in the wet season. Spray gets into connectors, into the back of the instrument cluster and into the fuse box, and the damage does not show on arrival. It shows four months later as intermittent electrical faults that cost more to chase than a crate would have cost to build.
So we crated all eleven. Plywood crates, machines on their own wheels and strapped inside, fuel drained to the level the boat requires, batteries disconnected and the contacts taped, and a desiccant pack in each one. It added about 340 rufiyaa a machine.
Everything went as one consignment on one boat, which is where the real saving is on a fleet order: one manifest, one loading fee, one arrival to receive. We handled the manifest and the loading note, and we gave the shop a realistic arrival window rather than the sailing date, because the two are not the same and pretending otherwise makes a customer who is standing on a jetty.
Inside each crate was a sheet: what to check on unpacking, in what order, the pre delivery inspection the shop needed to do before selling each machine, and the two settings that need doing after a crossing. We also sent a small box of the parts most likely to be wanted in the first year.
All eleven arrived dry. The shop has ordered twice more since, both times as single crated consignments.