The Economics of Everyday Things - 41. Pet Movers

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Relocating halfway across the world is hard enough for humans. For pets it can require a specialist. Zachary Crockett waits at the airport, holding a sign saying "Fluffy." SOURCES:Amelia Barklow, pet duck owner.Mike Gays, managing director of Global Pet Relocation.Gemma Tappin, pet relocation consultant team leader at Global Pet Relocation. RESOURCES:"Service Dogs Are Allowed on Planes, but There Are Some Requirements to Get Them There," by Zach Wichter (USA Today, 2023)."More Dogs Die on United Than on Any Other Airline. Here’s Why," by Martine Powers (The Washington Post, 2018)."Emotional support peacock denied flight by United Airlines," by Daniella Silva (NBC News, 2018)."Banned by Many Airlines, These Bulldogs Fly Private," by Christine Haughney (The New York Times, 2011).Pet Travel information, by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. EXTRAS:"Should You Trust Private Equity to Take Care of Your Dog?" by Freakonomics Radio (2023).

A few years ago, Amelia Barclow wanted to relocate from the United Kingdom to the San Francisco Bay Area. Like any international move, it was a bit of a slog. She had to ship out all of her belongings, go through a customs process, and find a new place to stay. But Barclow's move also involved a more unique challenge. Those are Barclos' pet ducks, Bean and Wobbles. Bean, she looks like a pinto bean. She has little brown and cream spots all over.

Wobbles is because he's very clumsy and very round and he tends to fall onto his back a lot like a turtle. As it turned out, getting bean and wobbles to their new home in a new country was no simple task. We would speak to someone from the USDA who worked in livestock, they'd be like, no, they're pets. We go to the people who work for importing pets, they're like, no, they're livestock. There was no protocol for what we were trying to do. It was to the point where I'd call someone and they'd go, oh, you're the duck lady. Yeah, sorry, we can't help you. So, Barclow had to turn

to a specialist, a company that has found a lucrative niche in transporting pets all over the world. We had goats, pigeons, sheep, airports of thousands of weird and wonderful animals go through, tropical fish, alligators, lions, tigers, flocks of birds, the occasional duck. This one family had an emotional support hedgehog, which is absolutely fine. For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, pet movers.

Bean and Wobbles aren't the only jet setters in the animal kingdom. Every year, around half a million pets travel by air. Sometimes pet owners just want to take their dog or cat on a vacation. But there are also job relocations and permanent moves and those require an expert. My name is Mike Gaze. I'm the managing director of Global Pet Relocation. We handle pet moves door to door anywhere anywhere to anywhere in the world will help anyone to move their pet. Global Pet Relocation is based in the UK. It's one of around 400 firms around the world that

specialize in domestic and international pet moves. Every year, the company relocates 800 to 1000 pets. Gaze says usually a client's first question is, can't I just put my dog next to me on the plane and do this myself? We get asked that question a lot, way more often than not it becomes now your pet's too big or the route won't take it. And there's a whole bunch of places where you're just not allowed to bring your pet in that way. In some cases, you can take your pet with you in the cabin, inside a soft carrier. The fee for doing that is around $100 to $150 each way.

But airlines have pretty tight restrictions around the weight and size of the pet and where you're supposed to store it. It does have to be a really small pet. Typically, the airlines will say if it's a cat or a dog that's less than eight kilos including the soft travel bag that they have to travel in. So like 18 pounds something like that. Chihuahuas, Boston Terriers sometimes, really small breeds. Some cats generally fit the profile pretty well. Your pet also has to stay

inside the bag, under the seat in front. That's usually the published rules. The majority of pets do not qualify for in-cabin travel. Certain animals like rodents, snakes, and spiders usually are not allowed to hang out with you on the plane at all, regardless of size. Service dogs are an exception, but emotional support pets may not be. A few years ago, United Airlines refused service to a woman who attempted to board a plane with an emotional support peacock. Even if your pet makes the cut, many international destinations won't let you enter with a self-transported animal.

In most cases, your pet's only option is to fly as checked-in cargo in a temperature-controlled cabin in the bottom of the plane. It's a specially designed pet cabin, typically towards the front or the back of the aircraft, below deck, so not with the luggage. Lights are typically dimmed down low. It's nice and quiet and calming in there. That's Gemma Tappan. She works in operations at Global Pet Relocation. The captain will know that there's a pet on board and therefore all of the controls are monitored continuously

to make sure everything's just right. So things like oxygen pressure, you know, temperatures, etc. Even though they kind of go in the same part of the airport, everything is totally separate. They'll have their own pet van that will be air conditioned from the warehouse to the cargo door. Pets typically are the last passengers to go on board. So it won't be like the plane's leaving in an hour, let's get the pet on. It'll be like, we're gonna close the doors in five minutes, then we'll get the pet on and safe.

The cost for flying a pet as cargo is much pricier. Airlines tend to base the price on volume and weight. For a domestic trip, an airline might charge around $300 for a chihuahua and $1,000 for a mastiff. International flights can be two to three times more. Usually, like if you have a Labrador, an average-sized pet, it's a very large box, and the airlines will charge a premium

for the fact you're sending a live animal. This can be easily into thousands of dollars just for the air freight alone. Pets in cargo also have to travel in airline-approved sky kennels. You can find small or medium-sized sky kennels at a pet supply store for around $100. But some pets, like a Bernese Mountain Dog or a St. Bernard require crates that are far more expensive. For a Great Dane that's needing something that's bigger than the standard SkyCanal, you could easily be looking at a thousand dollars. They have to be custom made. There's

not a huge amount of people out there that make them. So we will provide the sky canal for whatever it is. If it's a cat or a giant dog or two ducks, we'll get it fabricated. Accidents with pets on planes are pretty rare, but they do happen. Between 2015 and 2020, the Department of Transportation reported 112 pet deaths and 81 pet injuries related to airline travel. Many of these incidents involved snub-nosed dog breeds like bulldogs, boxers and pugs, who struggle to breathe when it gets too hot. The problem became so prevalent that most airlines now refuse to transport them year round.

Hardly any major airlines around the world take pugs, English Bulldogs. Really the only ones left are Turkish Airlines, Lufthansa and a couple of others. So when you have a move which is say London to New York, we have to think, all right, well what's the next best way of doing it? And we would typically either fly them on Lufthansa, London, Frankfurt, and then over to the States, or we would pick them up in London, drive them to Frankfurt, and fly them on a single flight from there. If you're really opposed to flying your pet over on a commercial flight, you do have a few other options. For starters, you can charter a private jet. On Facebook,

there's a group called Chartered Air Travel with Pets. It has 41,000 members who post questions like, how do I get a spoodle from Tunisia to the US? And anyone else transporting a cat from Norway to Italy? If enough people are going to the same place at the same time, they can band together and split the cost. But that can still be prohibitively expensive for the average pet owner. A one-way flight from New York to London on a chartered mid-sized jet might cost around $60,000, and it only holds eight passengers. There's also the Queen Mary 2, a cruise ship that travels between New York and Britain.

For around $1,000 per voyage, your dog will have access to fresh-baked biscuits, daily walks, and even a fire hydrant to pee on. It's like booked out a year or at least in advance. It's a super hot ticket for pets. But figuring out how to move a pet from one part of the world to another is just one small part of Mike Gaze's job. Every country has different rules around non-human immigration. And depending on where you're going, and what kind of creature you're bringing with you,

things can get messy. That's coming up. In most countries, rules about animals are set by the agriculture department. In America, for instance, the USDA plays the dominant role in setting standards. And those standards can vary depending on what kind of animal you're bringing in and where it's coming from. For example, you can't legally bring in a hedgehog from New Zealand or any place with foot and mouth disease. At global pet relocation, navigating all of these laws

has become a more central part of Mike Gaze's job. When he first started out in the industry 20 years ago, most moves were between major developed cities. But nowadays, it is really truly anywhere to anywhere, the globalization of workforces of companies spreading out all around the world. Every year we have more and more destinations than we had the year before. In recent years, many countries have tightened quarantine and

vaccination requirements for incoming pets. And Gaze has had to spend a lot of time studying pet imports and export laws all over the world. We have developed a library of checklists for pretty much every country in the world. And it has exactly what's needed for that country, depending on where they're coming from, what vaccinations are required, what format it has to be in, how it all has to be written out. So our teams there check everything, go through it all with a fine tooth comb. In some cases, those rules are being worked out for the first time. We had a move a couple of years ago from Morocco to Mauritius for, I think it was a couple of years ago from Morocco to Mauritius for, I think it was a couple of cats. They looked like there had never in history been movement of pets between Morocco and Mauritius. So we sort of had to help facilitate and guide the Moroccan and Mauritian governments to come up with

like a trade agreement to send these two pets that is way above the pay grade of us pet shippers. Other countries laws are notoriously hardcore. If you wanna take your dog to Australia, you'll have to wait up to four months for a permit. Once little buddy is there, he may have to quarantine for 30 days or more. Cats and dogs make up around 97% of the pets that Global Pet Relocation works with. But Gaze has seen it all. Guinea pigs, rabbits, parrots, tortoises, no job is too

small to take on. We're currently working on a move of seven goldfish from the UK to Boston. It will be a mix of air and water so when you're up at altitude the pressure doesn't cause the bag to pop and stuff like that. Generally they're packed inside polystyrene boxes and it's dark. You can't just take them off the plane and open them up into a bright room because it will shock them. So they have to go into a room wherever lighting is low, they have to make sure temperature is okay. But some jobs are a little too big. We had an owner in New York in Manhattan and they had a cat. This guy wanted us to pick up his cat at like three in the

morning or something like that. Lived in a nice townhouse in New York and our driver went to collect the cat, went up the flight stairs, hey how you doing? Gets let in and comes into the guy's living room lounge area and inside is a Bengal Tiger. The driver's standing there holding a skycanner that would be perfectly good for a cat. It's like, I got a minute, why is he called Killer? We had to politely decline that one. When Gaze got the call about moving two ducks from the UK to San Francisco a few years ago,

he was tempted to pass that up too. He knew it would be a tough one, since the USDA considers ducks poultry, not pets. Typically, if you're moving ducks or poultry, you are a big commercial outfit and you're moving 10,000 ducks for whatever reason. So there wasn't really the infrastructure or the methodology to move two ducks. But he decided to take on the challenge. In the end, getting bean and

wobbles to the states required months of conversations with the USDA, salmonella tests, and a stopover at a quarantine center in New York. They flew on British Airways over to JFK and then we had to organize 30 days quarantine for them in and around JFK Airport in a special quarantine center. They set the ducks up with their own big room. They had a swimming pool as ducks need. They had a log. They had all the creature comforts a pair of cool ducks could ever ask for. The 30 days go by and they're good to go so we get them on one more flight from New York to San Francisco, get them off at San Francisco airport, take them home to two very happy duck owners. The bill for that move clocked in at $14,000, around twice the cost of a typical move through

a pet relocation company. But for Emilia Barclow, getting Bean and Wobbles back home safely was worth every penny. I was feeling really nervous because I wasn't sure if they'd remember me. But the second they saw me, they both just began quacking, crazy. And it was like nothing ever happened. What was the first thing Wobbles said to you? Give me food. For the economics of everyday things, I'm Zachary Crockett. This episode was produced by me and Sarah Lilly and mixed by Jeremy Johnston.

We had help from Daniel Moritz-Rapson. What's the landlord's duck policy? Once they see how small they are and that they wear diapers and that they don't make a mess, they're usually okay with it. The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything.