From: Harv@cup.portal.com (Harv R Laser)
Newsgroups: rec.autos
Subject: Re: Exporting cars to Europe
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 92 17:55:55 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

I worked in the International Freight Forwarding & Consolidation
biz for 15 years... and in that time although most of the companies
I worked for (5 of them) didn't really like to handle cars,they'd
often do it as a favor to a regular customer, or VIP type personage.
Mostly these things went smoothly. However I remember one particular
incident in which we imported a rather exotic sports car from
Italy (to Long Beach) which was to be unpacked at our warehouse where
the owner was going to pick it up. 

Someone early mentioned roro ships and crating as the two ways to ship
a car. There's a third - the ocean freight container. These things
are generally 20 or 40 feet long and trucked to and from the ports on a 
chassis. Many people think they're just "trucks" but they're not. They are
huge steel or fiberglass-walled boxes which are lifted onto and off of
container ships and chassis by enormous cranes. (Longshoremen can
work one of these huge containerships literally overnight, loading or
unloading 1000 or more containers in that time). But I digress..

The expensive exotic car had been driven into a container 
for which it was supposed to have "exclusive use" i.e.: no other cargo
co-loaded with it. Well open opening the doors at our loading doc our
warehouse dudes were rather amazed to see a literal hurricane of
corrugated cardboard carton dust swoosh out. It seems that the
shipping co. in Italy or France or wherever the shipment had originated
decided to stuff in a few hundred cartons of something for a "free ride"..
in other words they snuck it past the steamship line by not declaring
it along with the car in the container. The car had not been tarped
or covered in any way, and due to the shifting and movement of
cartons atop it, some areas of the car's paint on the hood and roof
had literally been worn away down to the bare metal!

So if you decide not to use a roro ship, and decide not to have
your car crated, and let a shipping co. talk you into having it
driven into a container, be prepared to take your car out on the
other side in a rather sandblasted condition unless you either get
exclusive use of that container (and put the seals and locks on 
its doors yourself, after the car is driven in and braced in)
or have the shipping co. build a "shelf" over the car (which can
be easily done) if you agree to accept to have your car shipped
as part of a "consolidation" container. Even if they tell you
they're going to load cartons of marshmallows and cotton candy
on top and it won't hurt the car, don't believe them. that
top load cargo shifts constantly on the sea for 2-4 weeks
and you don't want that stuff sandpapering away at your paint job.

Oh.. a previous poster here said you should take the car to the
pier before loading with a full tank of gas. I have always been
told to instruct customers (err.. "had" not "have" since I don't
work in freight anymore) to get their gas tank as close to empty
as possible before delivery. Gasonline is a hazardous flammable
red label commodity. I understand that it is also common for the
loading co. to disconnect the car's battery as well before
loading. As I used to tell shipping customers, they can promise
you the world in their mahogany-lined meeting rooms but ultimately
the condition of your cargo comes down to that guy on the forklift
out in the warehouse.

Harv
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