Pontevedra Bikes Are Out of Freight Jail
Sure to ease the concerns of upwards of 200 racing athletes, the bicycles in the care of TriBike Transport during the World Championship event taking place in Pontevedra, Spain last Autumn are being released from the custody of the freight forwarder who has them. The triggering event was the apparent acceptance of the claim filed by TriBike Transport with its marine insurance company Travelers Property Casualty Company of America.
The bikes aren’t quite home free, however. They are said to be released in the greater Los Angeles metro area – per an email sent to the athletes directly by Travelers – and are at the warehouse of Intelligent, SCM, LLC, (ISCM) the freight forwarder. Owners of these bikes will still need to get them from that warehouse to wherever it is they live.
ISCM did not immediately respond to questions about this news, namely, are they in agreement that the bikes are free to be retrieved? And if so what sufficiently satisfied the freight company? A copy of the email sent to the athletes, shown to Slowtwitch, says, “we are writing to advise that Travelers is entering into an arrangement with ISCM that will resolve the unpaid invoices and charges that generated this situation.”
Still outstanding is a lawsuit against TriBike Transport by ISCM, and lawsuits against ISCM by TriBike Transport as well as a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of the athletes against ISCM. The fate of all those lawsuits is unknown as of now, however ISCM’s claim against TriBike Transport would be largely or entirely be satisfied if Travelers and ISCM agreed on terms of the settlement, as the phrase in the email suggests.
While TriBike Transport is not as of now operational the efforts by its owner Marc Lauzon, and his attorney, to cure the problem of the 186 unreturned Pontevedra bikes survived the ceasing of operations, and the fruit of that work appears evident. In a separate email directly to TriBike Transport Travelers wrote that it “is entering into an agreement with ISCM so that the bikes will be made available to the athletes where the bikes currently reside in California.”
UPDATE: Since this article was first published, ISCM confirmed with Slowtwitch that an agreement to release the bikes has been reached and is expected to be concluded "within days."
This is an evolving story.
