NEWS BLOG

Container ships are the fastest and safest way to move goods across the world in bulk, but when each container is roughly the size of a garage, how can you make the process financially viable for vehicles? This article tells you everything you need to know!

The logistics provider you’re currently using are likely providing your company with plenty of benefits, not the least of which is having a specialist to handle all of the challenges involved with moving your vehicles. Indeed, your logistics providers may be saving your company a lot of time and money. However, are they keeping you as close to your product as you wish to be, and allowing you to have the control you want over the delivery process?

The EL-Rak is the natural evolution of the R-Rak. Using the same fundamental engineering principles, our latest rack is designed to enhance flexibility.

Choosing the right type of steel is vital when carrying heavy loads within shipping containers. Firstly, you need a metal that is strong enough to carry the weight of one or more vehicles without straining or buckling. Some metals can be strong weight carriers but are also brittle and can shatter on impact, which could cause unexpected collapse resulting in catastrophic damage in a containerised car racking system.

Nothing has laid bare the need for demand forecasting quite like the recent global shipping container shortage. With consumers given no option but to shop online, and ports around the world subject to border closures, Covid blindsided global supply chains like a rogue wave. As the world slowly emerges blinking from the pandemic, is there an end in sight to the global container shortage?

Over the years, car transport businesses have come up with a number of car racking systems to increase the safety and capacity of shipping container transport. Why? To increase the economic viability of shipping containers as an alternative to Ro-Ro transport. A 40 foot standard shipping container, with 8 feet of space in both width and height, is the equivalent to about two parking spaces. Therefore, without utilising racking, you will only ever be able to get two cars in a container; a costly proposition if you need to ship multiple vehicles.

High shipping costs are not the only consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic. The cost of consumables and construction materials has also soared, with prices of wood, in particular, reaching exorbitant levels. Since the start of the pandemic, wood prices have skyrocketed – with some metrics suggesting increases of up to 700% - in part because disruption to supply chains has meant a significant shortfall in available resources.

Container shipping for cars is an attractive alternative to RoRo because it reduces the amount of handling and transfers needed throughout a journey. Container shipping costs are therefore lower in terms of damaged stock. However, shipping containers come with a serious capacity issue – they can only transport two or maybe three vehicles at a time. This can add up to higher per unit costs compared with RoRo, which is why container shipping isn’t extensively used in automotive logistics.

It goes without saying that Trans-Rak steel framed car racking systems for containerised transport are the starting point for safe, secure and efficient transport. Although the great benefit of using the Trans-Rak system is optimising the payload within shipping containers, this is not the priority when loading vehicles. 

Global events in 2020 created the perfect storm in the shipping industry, leading to rocketing costs in excess of 350%, as lockdowns crippled international trade, demand for goods from the Far East soared, and the Evergreen incident in the Suez Canal caused months of delays. With the cost of container shipping still high, businesses that need to ship cars overseas face financial meltdown if they can’t find a more cost-effective solution that maximises their use of container space.