Shipping cars to and from Alaska requires car haulers to work with shipping companies to arrange shipments. There are two ways to ship your car over the ocean: roll-on/roll-off shipping, or RORO, and container shipping. RORO shipping is fairly self-explanatory: someone drives your car onto a ship and sends it off on its journey. But how exactly does container shipping work? Let’s explore how this style of auto shipping keeps vehicles safe and secure.
Choosing the Right Container
The first part of the process is picking the right container for your specific car shipping needs. Your two options are to get a dedicated 20-foot container for your vehicle to be shipped solo, or to ship it in a larger 40-foot container with a few other cars. As you may guess, reserving a dedicated container for your car is more expensive, but it ensures that your car gets the star treatment. Of course, if you don’t feel as though your car needs its own dedicated container, then you can ship it perfectly safely with a few other vehicles.
Loading and Securing Vehicles in Their Containers
Loading cars into containers is the most difficult part of the process, but Alaska Auto Transportation has plenty of experience doing this. Firstly, your car needs to actually get into its container. The most common way we do this is by simply driving it into the container on a ramp. Occasionally, we instead use a flatbed truck, backing it up to the container and driving the car from there.
Next, your car needs to be secured inside its container. We accomplish this through a combination of tie hooks and wooden blocks or metal chocks. The tie hooks secure your car in place, ensuring it cannot shift much during travel. The blocks and chocks prevent any tire rolling. When combined, these two pieces of equipment ensure that your car will not roll around or bump into anything as it sits on the back of its transport ship.
Finally, the whole container needs to be loaded onto the ship that will take your car across the sea. We’ll use one of our cranes to load the container onto our transport vehicle. Port workers will then use a crane to load it safely onto the ship.
Unloading Is the Same Process in Reverse
After your car makes its journey across the sea, the same process of loading occurs in reverse. First, a port worker will unload the container containing your car, placing it on our transport vehicle. We then drive it wherever you need your car to go, whether it’s still in its container or in one of our enclosed car transport carriers! Of course, we have to take it out of its trailer to do the latter, but we’ll take similar measures to ensure your car’s complete security.
Container car shipping is easy and stress-free when you choose to work with us. For a free quote on your next car shipment, fill out our quote form today!
