Friday 9 September 2011
I have spent the morning at Southampton Docks (yes, glamorous I know!) looking at ships and seeing exactly how cars are shipped for roll-on/roll-off. This is all for our New England Fall Colours Tour next year, as we shall be shipping cars from the UK and Europe to the USA for the three week trip.
I am very impressed with the operation that Wallenius Wilhelmsen are running. Firstly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many new Jaguars, Land Rovers, Range Rovers or Minis in one place, which makes me positive about the current British car industry. And with the launch next year of the Jaguar CX-16 this will no doubt increase. So I reckon if WW ship all these cars all over the world, they should be able to handle our classic cars.
The ship I was shown around can hold up to 6,600 cars! Each car is driven onto the deck and secured at each end with strong webbing straps onto the wheels or towing eyes. For our cars the wheels will be secured, around the tyres, to strapping points in the floor. At no point do they let any metal touch metal and all the straps metal parts are covered in soft rubber. Each car is parked 40cm apart so that they never touch.
RO-RO has a number of advantages over containerisation. The most obvious is price; it’s less than half the price of shipping in containers. We are looking at a ball park figure of £2,300 per car (depending on the cars value), which will include all handling, shipping, customs, marine insurance, temporary import bonds etc., compared with around £5,000 per car in a container with 1 or 2 other cars. Containers also have the disadvantage of occasionally falling off the ships – never to be retrieved if this is at sea! This is clearly a massive issue, albeit a rare one.
I appreciated the time WW spent talking it all through with me, and showing me around. They care about cars and I would be happy to entrust them with my E-type or Morgan. Someone else had too – there was a S1 E-type from Mississippi. And over the course of three weeks, shipping is the equivalent cost to hiring a SUV once in the USA. So in many ways it makes sense to ship your own car!
Read more about our New England Tour here.
Classic Travelling was established in 2003 and offers motoring holidays for classic, vintage and sports cars. The founder of the business, Sarah Dowding, has extensive experience of touring and motoring, having driven well in excess of 250,000 miles over the finest roads in Europe, North America, and southern Africa. 