The UK offers a large selection of RHD vehicles to choose from. Our instant quote system allows you to instantly price up your export to Australia, including UK collection, marine insurance and ocean freight.

Importing a car into Australia does require jumping through a number of hoops both before shipping from the UK (import approval) and on arrival to Australia, so it is worth researching all of the factors involved before making a decision.

In terms of documentation for shipping, all we need is a copy of your V5 & copy of your passport. We also need to verify you have understood the below import requirements.

Steps to Import a Car into Australia

As mentioned, there are a number of stages to ship a car to Australia from UK and to import the vehicle into Australia.

The difficulty and cost of importing a car into Australia varies based on the age & origin of the vehicle along with your personal situation as the importer.

If the vehicle meets any of the below categories then you will not need to carry out any conversion or modification work. If your vehicle does not meet any then it can be expensive to bring inline with Australia’s strict safety and emissions standards.

• 1) Vehicle has been owned and used in the country of origin for a period of more than twelve months by the person importing the vehicle into Australia.
• 2) The vehicle was originally manufactured or sold in Australia and carries the compliance plate fitted at the time of original manufacture.
• 3) The vehicles date of manufacture is prior to January 1st 1989.
• 4) The vehicle was newly purchased having been manufactured to comply with Australian safety and emission standards.

Once you book a shipment with us from the UK our agent in Australia will be in touch to organise the arrival of the vehicle.

Vehicle Import Approval (VIA)

Before you even ship the vehicle you need approval to import it into Australia, this is applied for directly with the Australian Department of Infrastructure and Transport. The application is made through their online portal.

It costs around $50 AUD to apply and you will need to upload a number of documents specific to your import situation.

VIA must be issued before shipping. If the vehicle arrives in Australia without import approval you could be subject to storage costs and / or export & destruction costs.

Import approval will only be granted to private individuals with a full residency visa or to Australian or New Zealand nationals eligible to drive a vehicle in Australia.

If you are arriving into Australia before you arrange shipment of your vehicle, please be aware that you must apply for your VIA within 6 months of your arrival into Australia.

Quarantine Inspection

Vehicles being shipped into Australia must be clean, all vehicles are inspected by the Department for Agriculture to check they are clean enough. These inspection charges are the responsibility of the vehicle importer and can be researched here.

Air Conditioning

If your vehicle has air conditioning you may need an import licence in order to meet the requirements for entry. It is worth finding out the type of gas used in your vehicle and reading the attached guide to ensure you meet the requirements: Importing vehicles, boats, caravans or and other equipment that may contain refrigerant gas into Australia

Asbestos when importing a car to Australia

Asbestos is a big no-no when it comes to importing a car into Australia. It is best to have a UK garage (we can organise this) to produce a statement showing that asbestos is not present in the car.

Asbestos can be found in older cars brake / exhaust components but usually can be easily replaced prior to shipping. A great resource for finding out more can be found here: Managing the risk of asbestos when importing a motor vehicle

Australian Arrival Charges

On arrival to Australia you will be liable for a number of charges (our agent will organise these for you).

These include any of the costs already mentioned but also costs including customs clearance, declaration fees and delivery order fees will be charged on import depending on your personal circumstances. Generally these are around $1100 – $2000 AUD in total and are exclusive of Duty and Tax outlined below

Duty and Tax for importing a car into Australia

On arrival to Australia, the authorities will value your vehicle and base tax on the value they deem your vehicle to be worth:

The value used is the value they deem your car to be worth plus shipping and insurance costs

Luxury car tax

Vehicles deemed as high value / high specification will have an additional Luxury Car Tax (LCT) imposed which is currently 33% of the value of the vehicle (remember the government’s determined valuation for your car) – they charge this on the landed value, so the deemed value of your car plus shipping costs.

A full breakdown of this can be found here

Registration

So you have got through all the hurdles, all that is left is to register your vehicle. This involves obtaining a roadworthiness certificate from the state’s Motor Vehicle Registration Service (a bit like an MOT) and road tax – not too different to in the UK.

Temporary Imports

If you are only importing temporarily, then you can bring the car into Australia without VIA and instead travelling with a CPD Carnet, please contact us for more information

Car Shipping Quote

For an instant cost to ship your car from the UK to Australia, including UK collection service, please use our below form:

The post Car Shipping UK to Australia appeared first on Car Shipping and UK Import Specialists.

Since Brexit & Covid we have switched a number of routes from container to RoRo (roll-on-roll-off) purely because the cost of containers have been so high it makes it a much less feasible shipping method.

With container prices falling we are now offering some routes by container again, for example Hong Kong to UK.

A weak value of pound sterling does have a benefit to our clients living outside the UK looking to purchase a car for export to their country. We have seen a huge (over 600%!) rise in enquiries through our instant quote system for shipping vehicles from the UK to the USA and Australia for example.

UK to USA Car Shipping

Recently this has been our most popular route of enquiry, mainly due to the drop in value of GBP.

Only a number of months ago your USD would have bought you £0.75, now you are looking at almost $1 buying £1 – a huge bonus for buying a UK car to ship to USA

Rules for importing a car into USA

The main thing to note is to make life easier for you (and in fact possible at all) you want to look for cars here that are over 25 years of age, to meet the strict EPA import rules.

To get an instant quote for shipping a car from UK to USA, including marine insurance and even UK collection, all priced up straight away with no obligation please visit our home page www.shipmycar.co.uk and click the ‘need a quote’ button

So here are some examples:

Classic Land Rovers

Ford Escort Cosworth

Classic Jaguar

The post GBP falls but so do Container Prices appeared first on Car Shipping and UK Import Specialists.

RoRo Car Shipping Quote

RoRo stands for roll-on-roll-off shipping. Instead of your car / vehicle being loaded in a container, it is instead loaded onto a giant car ferry. Vehicles are loaded inside and strapped to the deck so they are very safe during transit.

Our unique shipping calculator has been updated to allow you to instantly obtain a quote for our RoRo routes:

Why Choose RoRo?

Container prices globally are currently higher than we have ever seen them, this is due to a number of factors that have affected the global supply chain in the last couple of years.

If you are shipping smaller goods, this increase can be spread over a number of products in a container, so the effect is not as large as shipping 1-4 cars in a container and having to spread the extra cost over fewer items.

RoRo avoids these high surcharges for vehicle shipping, is safe for your vehicle and the costs of unloading at the destination are significantly less

UK to USA RoRo Car Shipping

We now offer shipment from Southampton, UK to New York, Savannah, Galveston (Texas) and Port Hueneme (California). Our shipping calculator can calculate everything from collection from your door in the UK through loading, marine insurance and RoRo shipping costs.

Our quotes do not include US arrival charges but with RoRo these are usually only a few hundred dollars and we can put you in touch with our excellent US agent to help you with this.

Shipping Cars to the USA

When considering which cars to ship to the USA, the first rule is that they must be either a previously US registered vehicle, or be over 25 years old. This is to comply with the strict entry requirements to the USA that the EPA impose.

As UK classics are generally reliable we see a lot of classic Land Rovers, Minis and Jaguars beng shipped recently, along with some of the 80’s classics such a Escort Cosworth, Sierra Cosworths, Lotus etc

Limitations

Well with compromises always comes a slight limitation and with RoRo there are two points to consider, the first is that you can not load any personal effects / spares within the vehicle and we can hold no liability for anything at all shipped within your vehicle.

Second, the vehicle must be a reliable runner, so not suitable for project cars or some classics. Speak with a member of our team if you have any questions regarding this

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Export Delays

Ports around the world are struggling with congestion meaning it is taking a lot longer to get containers onto vessels.

The congestion is due to a number of issues but mainly the imbalance of containers across the world. Usually container shipping & logistics is an extremely well oiled machine, when things stop however, it quickly goes south.

In the last year obviously Covid has created port slowdowns, but also the number of vessels has decreased for Covid precautions and staff shortages.

Trade issues with China between the EU / US and Northern Africa have left containers inn places where they wouldn’t usually build up.

We even had the Ever Given getting stuck in the Suez canal to add to the shipping industry woes

Timescales for clearing customs and loading onto a vessel out of the USA for example have increased from around 2 weeks to around 4-8 weeks in some cases.

Port Congestion

Congestion in the UK has been a problem since Brexit but even now in July 2021 it is still a huge issue with many vessels simply skipping the UK, unloading in Europe and then bringing containers back to our shores on smaller feeder vessels (a process called transshipment)

The USA has seen huge port congestion at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in particular with around 40 cargo vessels at any one time anchored off the cost waiting to unload.

Why?

Well a lot of it has to do with demand. People have been buying a lot of stuff and having it imported. Plus, they have not been exporting much. The UK is importing a lot of goods, yet has reduced many exports.

The USA has an imbalance of 4:1 on imports to exports, the highest levels ever recorded. Meaning ports are under the strain to get containners unloaded.

Getting containers unloaded has been difficult with many workers off due to Covid, or who have changed jobs due to the pandemic.

Even haulage has suffered with many container lorry drivers switching to other driving industries with better hours and pay e.g. Amazon

Car Shipping

So how does this affect the car shipping process?

Well it does have an impact, and we try to keep anyone looking at shipping a car as informed estimate on leadtimes as is possible at the time of making a booking.

In general we are looking at a few extra weeks overall for the shipping. Not ideal, but your car will arrive as close to the ETA as we can give.

Our live container tracking system in our client portal works even if a shipment is transhipped so you can keep track of where it has been and where it is next to visit.

DVLA Delays

The DVSA had their moments with IVA testing suspended but we can appreciate they didn’t have much choice when Covid showed up.

The DVLA almost got back to normal, then they decided they were not happy with the working conditions at Swansea and started industrial action that has been going on for weeks now.

They are now up to around six weeks to register a car, we can ship a car from Australia in less time. All the while the people waiting for their registrations are left without a vehicle.

We chase as much as we can on timings of each application.

The post Car Shipping Delays appeared first on Car Shipping and UK Import Specialists.

Why are there delays?

We are told that there are a few issues all comiong together which are causing the delay in having containers moved from ports to depots across the UK.

1. Shortage of drivers – many EU drivers are not here working due either to late holidays or quarantine processes. Brexit also has not helped with fewer EU drivers moving to the UK.
2. Furlough – many drivers were furloughed during lockdown and then went to work in places such as retail or distribution with local companies such as food delivery which pay higher wages than container haulage and subsequently have not returned. Some of the ports we are told still have staff on furlough and are therefore short staffed.
3. Social Distancing – many firms now operate strict social distancing measures. Where a container of goods would be unloaded by a team of warehouse operatives they are now only allowed one worker in a container at a time meaning the driver is sat waiting hours instead of a short drop off.
4. Port Congestion – with more containers now on vessels the ports are being hit with congestion so it is harder for hauliers to move the containers when needed.

What problems does this cause?

The main issue is another bottleneck in our process. We have had to work hard to manage the large number of vehicles we now have in our warehouses due to delays at DVSA and DVLA and we now have to deal with containers arriving at different dates and times than we have planned.

With containers being delayed at ports it has a knock on effect to our planning in regards to IVA testing and storage logistics.

As well as additional vehicle storage costs due to DVSA and DVLA delays we are now also incurring demurrage / container storage charges as well as extra staffing costs to unload containers out of hours.

What we are doing to mitigate

We are using both hauliers provided by the shipping lines and independant hauliers to try and move containers as quickly as possible.

We have excellent in-house IT systems which schedule IVA testing and we are constantly monitoring arrivals to try and pre-empt any delays in order to reschedule IVA tests before they become an issue

We are doing all we can to ensure cars keep moving as smoothly as they can.

The post Container Haulage Delays UK appeared first on Car Shipping and UK Import Specialists.

There are also a lot of great places to find the perfect car, with lots of car dealers, online marketplaces and specialists .

Here at ShipMyCar we offer a shared container service to the USA using R-Rak loading systems. This is a very safe and very cost effective method of getting a vehicle shipped by ocean freight

Some of the most popular vehicles we export from the UK to the USA are Minis, Land Rovers, Bentleys and Triumphs but the UK is also a great place to pick up all kinds of different European marques.

What can I ship?

This is the first and most important question to answer. The USA is very strict on what can be shipped there, due to their EPA regulations. Therefore, you should only be looking at vehicles over 21 years of age.

This is not a rule you can really get around, and can end up a very costly exercise to try and ship anything there without first getting prior approval.

How it Works

Let us go through the process of finding a car, pricing up the shipment and handling the shipment to the USA.

For this example we will use one of our favourite places to find some great cars: www.collectingcars.com and specifically a lovely 1959 Triumph TR3A that was recently sold for £23,500

Collecting Cars is an online auction platform with a very high standard of imagery and description of every vehicle listed. Giving you the buyer a lot more confidence in your purchase.

Obviously, with this vehicle being built in 1959 it is over twenty-one years of age, so no issues there with getting it into the USA.

Paying for your Purchase

The great thing with buying from Collecting Cars is that you know your costs upfront, you place your bid and if successful you are charged a fixed premium by their platform. You can then make payment to the seller which is another area we can save you some money…

We can have our foreign exchange broker set you up on their platform to enable you to make a same day money transfer to the seller’s account in the UK at much better rates than if you used a bank (generally around 4% which on this Triumph would save over $1000 alone)

Shipping your Purchase

Shipping a car can be a very stressful process, with so many different costs and processes it is easy to get completely lost and end up spending a lot more than you expected.

Luckily for you, we have developed an instant quote system for shipping a car from the UK to the USA. Our online calculator will take the address of the vehicle you are interested in and immediately price up:

• Transport to our loading depot
• Loading and export customs fees
• Marine insurance
• Ocean freight costs
• US unloading and handling fees
• Estimate of US customs bonds

The system is free to use and works 24/7, so no matter which way your auction is heading you can be sure of how much it will be costing to ship it to you.

Step One – Let us know the make and model

Step Two – Let us know where the car is located

As you can see, our system calculates the cost to transport your purchase to our loading depot here in Milton Keynes. This is by fully insured car transporter.

Step Three – Let us know which US port you want to ship to

Step Four – Let us know some final details

That is all we need in order to give you a full breakdown of all the costs involved, we then email you a nice PDF of this quote with an estimate of your import duty payment (for most cars this is 2.5%)

Shipping Methods

Cars are generally shipped by either RoRo (roll-on-roll-off, a bit like a giant car ferry, just without the people / buffet), 20ft container (one car, one container) or shared 40ft (2-5 cars in one container)

For shipments to the USA we ship by either 20ft / 40ft containers, we can also quote for air freight but here we will just be discussing ocean freight options.

20ft containers are easy to explain, your vehicle will be loaded, strapped & chocked to the deck. Moisture protection is added both inside the vehicle and using modern moisture tubes hung to the container walls which will remove all the water content from the air within the container.

20ft containers are great but are not the cheapest method, and this is where the shared 40ft option comes in. We use metallic racking systems called R-Raks to load vehicles into the container. The vehicle is safely fixed to the rack and lifted above another car, meaning multiple cars can share one container and share all the costs.

We will complete an EPA declaration and then get your shipment underway. Exciting times.

The journey

Once you make a booking with us, we set you up on our Client Portal. Here you will be given a checklist of documents we need that you can upload easily so we have everything we need for UK export and arrival into the USA

You can even track your shipment in real time

Arrival to the USA

On arrival to the USA we will put you in touch with our agent who will be able to assist with customs clearance and duty payment.

Once clear, we can arrange onward delivery directly to your door, a quick visit to the DMV and you will be US registered in no time!

What did it cost?

OK, the moment you have all been waiting for… Let’s go through all the costs:

So in total you would be looking at roughly £26,000 or $32,000 in today’s money (2/7/2020)

The best thing is, you could find out all of these costs involved in advance using our instant car shipping calculator.

If you are looking at buying a car in the UK, or anywhere in the world, and are looking at having it shipped, be sure to try our instant quote system at www.shipmycar.co.uk

The post Shipping a Car from UK to USA appeared first on Car Shipping and UK Import Specialists.

Containers

“While the UK is on lockdown from Coronavirus measures, I thought I would take a look back through the history of our company. I hope all of our clients, staff, friends and families are well and stay safe during these difficult times”

Nick Roach – Company Director

Being based in Milton Keynes and almost the furthest point from any sea port makes handling sea containers seem like a strange idea, however quite often the cost of moving a container from a port of arrival to here is not much more than say Tilbury -> Felixstowe.

Milton Keynes is in a perfect location to get to easily, we have the M1 motorway, Luton airport and Milton Keynes train station all close by.

Combining those two factors makes our central England location actually quite an interesting idea.

It certainly makes for an easier journey to collect your car than some of the sea ports, plus on arrival here you get to be put through advanced roundabout training with over 130 roundabouts to practise on.

Unloading a container with some cars in is easy right? Well, if you are thinking that, let me give you some information on how cars are loaded into containers and why handling them safely takes investment and training.

First let us look into the different methods of shipping a car by sea that we use:

Roll on Roll off

This often seems the cheapest method, it involves driving 6,000+ vehicles onto a giant ferry. Main drawback for us unloading these in Milton Keynes is that it would be impossible due to our distance from ports. Sadly, the canal network was not built to transport a 740 ft vessel, otherwise we would be able to unload them too!

20ft Container

This is how I used to imagine cars being shipped in containers before we started doing this. One car, lashed down and chocked in a metal box. If you have the money, it is the safest and quickest sea freight option

40ft Container

This is the method you may not have realised existed, 4-5 cars in one container, loaded on racking to fit them all in. Traditionally this is done with wooden racking but more recently this is replaced with metal racking such as Trans-Rak’s R-Rak system.

We had experience of seeing wooden racking systems being used and knew it was a huge operation to unload the cars and dismantle the wooden racks. You need forklifts, power tools, cutters, ramping and disposal solutions in place to move the discarded wood. We went shopping for all of the above.

Here was our first in-house unloaded container, it was a proud moment.

Most wooden racking systems are OK, they follow a standardised approach and therefore you can get into a routine of building an off ramp, lowering the cars and dismantling. Some however, are not so easy and take a lot of effort to plan and offload the cars.

We had followed Trans-Rak long before we started unloading containers in-house. We love innovation, and wooden frameworks to unload cars seemed wasteful and time consuming. With metal racking systems you hoist the cars down, and drive them out.

Using metal racking systems, the safety aspect and return of racks to the owner requires some planning and training. Luckily the people at Trans-Rak are some of the most helpful in the industry and so we set up a session of on-site training with them, they even came to assist with our first container.

Using R-Raks is a dream, and being able to offer the unloading of R-Raks opened us up to other shippers looking to have a UK depot to handle their containers.

Things got busy again so our second warehouse was born. Just two doors from Unit 20, it could store vehicles unloaded and prior to collection by the clients

As always, it didn’t take long until this was full as well….

So now we could load and unload cars all in-house! Things just kept getting busier and busier, and it felt like we needed a bit of a re-vamp.

The clipart logo was a bit busy and the website was getting a bit tired. ShipMyCar v3.0 was launched, new signage, new logo, new uniforms and a full redesign of our instant quote system.

Now we really were flying, with over ten years experience in the world of car shipping we were now the best in the UK. If it had wheels, we could ship it, anywhere, anytime, and get it registered here in the UK.

Then in 2016, seventeen million four hundred thousand people voted to leave the EU.

Now this is not the place to get political and argue the wrongs and rights of this decision, but for us it made the future much more difficult to predict.

We had had some tricky global situations to get through during the last ten years yet had seen year-on-year growth, will this continue?

Find out in the next chapter, Chapter 11 – Brexit and 2020

The post Chapter Ten – Containers appeared first on Car Shipping and UK Import Specialists.

The logistics industry as a whole is suffering a major impact from the Coronavirus which will take some time before everything is back on track. Supply chains and lead times are all being affected across the world for reasons linked to the Covid-19 outbreak.

The issues started with the drop in output from Chinese manufacturing facilities (straight after the already quiet Chinese New Year period), this had a huge impact on the number of exports from China and therefore a large decrease in demand for containers from that region.

This drop in demand lead to shipping lines cancelling numerous sailings. Moving containers around the world is usually perfomed with containers full of stock heading back again, but the drop in demand leads to blank sailings for shipping lines, when one part of the system slows it has a knock-on effect across the entire process.

RoRo vessels are being held up also as the crew are checked at various points for symptoms of the virus, plus export permissions from countries suffering with lockdowns are being delayed.

Chinese ports such as Shanghai / Tianjin are suffering from delays due to lack of stevedores to work the quayside.

In regards to UK arrivals we would anticipate likely delays to aspects of the car shipping process in regards to potential staff shortages at HMRC / DVLA and DVSA

Here at ShipMyCar we are doing all we can to mitigate any issues / isolation requirements. We have invested in a Gigabit data connection and a new VOIP phone system so remote working for our office staff will be no problem. The workshop is aware of hand washing requirements and will do all possible to stop the spread of the virus should it reach our facility.

The post Coronavirus (Covid-19) and Shipping appeared first on Car Shipping and UK Import Specialists.

We can provide collection services from anywhere in the UK and handle all export procedures on your behalf without you needing to be in the UK.

The post Exporting from the UK appeared first on Car Shipping and UK Import Specialists.