Scotland Shuttle cannot carry liquids, batteries, perishable food, cash, jewellery or hazardous goods, in either direction. The rules are strict because your boxes travel in a shared load, so one bad item can damage many customers' belongings. This guide explains the reasoning behind each exclusion and the best alternative for every category.
Why a shared shuttle is stricter than your own car
Three facts drive the whole list. First, your boxes are stacked with other customers' boxes, so a leak or a fire risk is never only your problem. Second, loads travel via our Oxfordshire hub on a fortnightly schedule, so items can be in the system for up to two weeks. Third, nobody opens or inspects boxes mid journey, which means the only place a problem can be prevented is at packing. Everything below follows from those three facts.
Liquids
Even well sealed bottles fail in transit. Stacking pressure, road vibration and temperature swings between a Scottish morning and a southern afternoon work caps loose and split cheap plastic. Laundry liquid, cooking oil, shampoo and bottles of alcohol are the usual culprits, and one split bottle at the bottom of a stack soaks down and across into boxes that belong to other people.
What to do instead: use things up in the weeks before the move, decant and give the rest to flatmates or neighbours, and rebuy at the destination. Toiletries you cannot part with travel in your own washbag. A bottle you genuinely want to keep travels with you, not in a box.
Batteries
Lithium batteries are the serious one. A crushed or punctured cell can go into thermal runaway, a self sustaining fire that burns fiercely and cannot be reached inside a sealed, unattended load on a motorway. Loose spare batteries and power banks are the highest risk because their terminals are exposed. This is the same logic behind airlines requiring batteries in the cabin rather than the hold.
What to do instead: carry laptops, power banks and all batteries with you personally. Take dead batteries to a shop collection point or household recycling, never a packing box. If you are unsure whether something contains a battery, assume it does and check.
Perishables
On a fortnightly schedule, food can sit in the system for up to two weeks. Anything that can rot, melt or go off will do exactly that, and the consequences spread: smells and leaks ruin nearby boxes, and spoiling food attracts pests, which endangers every load around yours.
What to do instead: eat it, give it to flatmates or neighbours, and donate unopened long life food to a food bank. The store cupboard is cheap to rebuild at the other end and is never worth moving. If you are unsure whether a particular food item counts as perishable, leave it out or ask before collection day.
Cash and jewellery
These are excluded for a different reason: not danger, but consequence. Cash and jewellery concentrate enormous value into small, anonymous packages whose contents can never be verified after the fact, and no payout makes a lost envelope of notes or a grandmother's ring right again. Carriers across the industry exclude them rather than pretend otherwise, and we would rather be honest about that than quietly accept the risk.
What to do instead: bank the cash before you move. Jewellery and small sentimental items, whatever their monetary value, travel on your person or in your hand luggage. The pocket rule is simple: if losing it would break your heart, it stays with you.
Hazardous items
This covers gas canisters and camping stoves, aerosols, paint, white spirit and solvents, petrol, fireworks, firelighters and strong oxidising cleaners. Pressurised containers and flammables have no place in an enclosed van that is loaded, driven, unloaded at a hub and loaded again.
What to do instead: household waste recycling centres accept paint, chemicals and gas canisters. Part used paint can go to neighbours or community reuse schemes. Camping gas is cheap to replace at the destination. Petrol can never travel in any form, and if you own petrol driven tools, ask before booking rather than assuming a drained tool is fine.
The grey areas: ask first
Some items sit on the line. Perfume is a liquid and alcohol based, so carry it. A snow globe is a liquid. Anything with a built in battery, from an electric toothbrush to an e-bike, needs a second look. The habit that solves all of these is the same: anything that can leak even slightly, anything pressurised and anything containing a cell gets a question before packing day. One message before you pack beats an opened box at the kerb and a scramble to rehome something on collection morning.
The one line rule
If it can leak, burn or rot, deal with it before moving day. If losing it would break your heart, carry it yourself. Everything else, pack it well, label it clearly and send it. The list exists so that every customer's boxes arrive in the state they left in, including yours.