Service
Shipping a car from China: RoRo, container and what it costs
There are only two ways a car leaves China, and the choice changes the cost per vehicle, the transit time and how exposed the car is on the way. RoRo takes the vehicle on its own wheels; a container holds two to four cars and travels sealed. Which one is right depends almost entirely on how many units you are moving.
RoRo: one car, simplest route
On a RoRo vessel the car is driven aboard and secured on a deck, then driven off at destination. There is no crate, no container and no consolidation, which makes it the default for a single unit or a first order.
The trade-offs are real. Sailing schedules are less frequent than container services, so a unit may wait for the next vessel. The car sits exposed on deck for the crossing. And because RoRo quotes are per unit rather than per box, buying two or three cars this way usually costs more than filling a container.
Container: two to four cars per box
A 40ft container normally takes two to four passenger cars depending on size and how much space the loading crew is willing to work with; a 20ft takes one or two. The cars travel sealed, out of the weather and away from anything that could scrape them in transit.
Once the box is full, the freight per car drops below the RoRo rate on most lanes. The container also protects against the small damage that RoRo crossings occasionally produce, which matters more on a high-value unit than on a workhorse.
- 40ft high cube: usually 3–4 saloons or small SUVs, 2 large SUVs
- 20ft: usually 1–2 vehicles
- Loading is supervised and photographed, and the box is sealed on camera
Loading ports and transit times
Vehicles are loaded at Shanghai, Tianjin, Nansha (Guangzhou) and Lianyungang, depending on where the stock is and which line calls at your destination.
Transit ranges below are the working figures we plan against. Actual sailing time moves with the carrier, the routing and whether the vessel tranships on the way.
- Red Sea and the Gulf (Jeddah, Jebel Ali, Dammam): roughly 18–28 days
- West Africa (Lagos, Tema, Abidjan, Lomé, Cotonou, Dakar): roughly 30–45 days
- North and Central Africa (Algiers, Douala, Pointe-Noire): roughly 30–45 days
- South America west coast (Callao, Guayaquil, Iquique): roughly 30–42 days
- East Africa via Salalah or Djibouti for landlocked destinations: roughly 28–40 days
What the freight figure includes, and what it does not
The freight line in a CIF quote covers the sea leg to the named destination port. It does not cover port charges at each end, terminal handling, storage or demurrage if a unit sits after arrival, clearing agent fees, or the inland road leg to a landlocked destination.
Those are real costs and they are quoted separately rather than buried. A landlocked market such as Mali, Niger, Chad or Bolivia is decided by the inland leg as much as by the sea freight, so it appears as its own line.
Questions
Shipping a car from China: RoRo, container and what it costs
- Is RoRo or a container cheaper for a single car?
- RoRo, almost always. The advantage flips once you have two or three units going to the same port, because a 40ft container is priced once rather than per vehicle.
- Can I put anything else in the container with the cars?
- Parts and spares can travel with the vehicle where the destination allows it, which is often cheaper than shipping them separately. It has to be declared on the packing list.
- Is the car insured during shipping?
- Marine insurance is quoted as a line item rather than quietly assumed. It is a small percentage of the CIF value and it belongs in the landed cost from the start.