The Eagle has Landed!

After spending a week longer than we would have liked on the I95 intersection in the arse end of Brunswick, we have finally picked Jim up from the docks and are living on the road. Jim arrived intact, with no damage, and sufficient battery power to drive off the ship without assistance. To prove that this whole blog isn't a sham to make me look adventurous, here's a picture of Jim in front of some palm trees.

The whole process of shipping was fairly straightforward but it can be a little daunting for the uninitiated like myself. The following is a little about my experience to help anyone else attempting something similar. It will be fairly boring to anyone not interested in shipping a vehicle overseas, but the process was a fairly steep learning curve for me, and their may be some people who will find the little I learnt useful now, or in the future.

I started looking at shipping Jim across the Atlantic with a company called Seabridge, based in Germany. Seabridge are specialists in transporting European motorhomes to the Americas for overland adventurers. They make transatlantic shipping extremely simple, and will organise everything on your behalf; you simply tell them where you want to go, and they will take care of the rest. They are even able to arrange American vehicle insurance (something I hadn’t understood the usefulness of), provide Propane adapters, and sell you 240/110v transformers to allow your European motorhome to use the US power supply. For this simplicity you pay a small premium over taking on some of the workload yourself, although in hindsight, the added cost is extremely reasonable and not as high as I had first thought.

For people like myself who want to keep the cost as low as possible, there are alternatives to Seabridge. I started calling shipping companies who listed transatlantic RORO (roll on, roll off) cargo as one of their specialities on their website. I quickly learnt that large shipping organisations such as K-line and NYK Line, do no trouble themselves speaking to people like me, or indeed anyone but shipping agents. To book cargo onto one of their boats, you must organise it through a shipping agent who uses their lines; the only exception that I could find to this rule, was with Walenius Wilhelm, who were willing to give me a cost for shipping cargo with them. With this established I contacted a number of shipping agents, some based on recommendations from the shipping lines themselves, some just found through google searches.

I was immediately confronted with a barrage of terminology and customs which seemed like gibberish before I spoke to someone who understood that I had no idea what they were talking about and took the time to explain the system to me. The prices varied considerably, partly based on the shipping line that the agent used, and partly based on other factors.  It is sometimes difficult to compare quotes as the rates quoted may not included all costs, but to compare prices fairly you should at least consider:

• The volume/weight cost. This will be quoted per cubic meter for low density roro cargo.
• The BAF/bunkerage surcharge. This is a surcharge added due to increased fuel costs, either through market fluctuations or through choosing a destination a long way around the chosen route.
• Port charges. The local port will be in the home currency, the destination port will be in foreign currency.
• Customs clearance costs. This will be in foreign currency.
• Customs clearance assistance. Customs clearance at the destination port can be complicated and the cost of assistance is not always included.

There may be other costs depending on the country that you are leaving from and arriving in, but the above will comprise the bulk of shipping costs.

In the end, the decision to go with NMT shipping was not difficult, as they were the only agent that I spoke to who were using K-line routes. I have no particular preference to K-line over any of the others (all use large, modern, well maintained vessels, as they make their money shipping high value cars, trucks and other specialist mobile cargo), however K-line offered the only route stopping at Southampton. The alternatives offered to me on this side of the pond were Zeebruge, Bremerhaven and Antwerp, all of which are considerably further form London. As it happened, NMT’s quote was amongst the cheapest I could find, and Mike Medley took the time to guide me through the process and make it as straightforward as possible. An additional benefit of using NMT is that they have a local office in Florida, and were able to offer their services as a local shipping agent to help me clear customs in the US.

The total cost to ship 63m3 of cargo, was £2,550, plus an additional $850 for customs clearance and assistance in the US ($350 of which comprised of a customs security bond for the temporary import of a vehicle, $150 for general customs clearance, and the remainder for assistance in filing the necessary paperwork). This cost was based on a route which travels directly from Southampton to Brunswick, only stopping at Baltimore en route. Choosing a route which stops in a large number of places on a longer journey will increase costs and travel time.

Once I had agreed to ship Jim with NMT, I was told to call back no earlier than 6 weeks before my intended leaving date, to make further arrangements. Long distance shipping is clearly difficult to run to a strict schedule, as once a delay is incurred, it cannot easily be made back. As I learnt, predicting exactly when a ship will turn up even 6 weeks in advance is difficult, particularly in winter. This made meeting Jim without excessive waiting awkward, as booking a plane at the last minute can be extremely expensive. On calling NMT back, I was given an approximate sailing date, and was told exactly where to drop Jim off, with a 4 day drop-off slot, ending 4 days prior to sailing. As it turned out, the sailing date had slipped nearly 2 weeks in the period between me provisionally booking Jim onto the boat, and me dropping Jim off. Fortunately I was able to get Jim onto an earlier sailing, although unfortunately by the time this boat got to Brunswick, it was a week later than had been scheduled on the sailing date and was only 3 days ahead of the boat I was originally booked onto.

Provided you have the assistance of a shipping agent at both ends. the act of dropping off and collecting your vehicle should be fairly straightforward, although something I learnt is that US ports are nothing like their UK counterparts. In Southampton, you can walk right into the port without persuading anyone that you are not their to cause mischief; in Brunswick this is absolutely not the case. First I had to get a temporary security pass after handing over my passport, then I had to arrange for a security escort to take me to Jim. The escort costs $50, and the nearest ATM is about 3 miles north of the port. After nearly getting arrested trying to hitch hike to the ATM, I had to wait an hour for a $30 can ride to the ATM and back to the port. My $50 escort was in a filthy pick-up truck, and lasted about 90 seconds. To collect the truck I needed a delivery order, which was sent to me by NMT.

Regarding security, I was told to be wary of thefts and damage during shipping. If this advise had only come from speaking to overlanders and reading blogs I would have felt nervous trepidation, but unfortunately this advice also came from the shipping agents which I used. I was told that any area accessible during the journey would be liable to be emptied of its contents. With some careful preparations including blocking access between the cab and box, and fitting shipping boards over the skylights, I came away unscathed, although this was undoubtedly because I spent nearly £500 on shipping insurance. Had I neglected to buy insurance the truck would surely have been robbed of it's contents before sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic in a unprecedented natural disaster. I probably partly owe my success to a great idea given on Steven Stewart's blog; his trick was to hide a key to the back of the truck in the cab, and only disclose the location to the shipping agents. This way if customs need to search the truck, they have access to the key (after calling your agents for the location), but the port and ship workers do not have access to anything other than the cab.

I apologise that this blog post includes lots of text and not many photos, but as we are now doing more fun stuff, and less boring stuff, the ratio should improve.