Speaker 1: Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Welcome to the show, friends and neighbors.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for tuning in. I am one
Speaker 1: of your host to date, and people call me Ben
Speaker 1: Bowling because that is in fact my name, and people
Speaker 1: also call me by my name, which is Kurt Garin.
Speaker 1: That's right, Kurt. You and I have had this topic
Speaker 1: circling around in our heads for a few weeks now,
Speaker 1: and it's something that longtime car Stuff listeners may be
Speaker 1: familiar with. We know that cars are sold around the world,
Speaker 1: right and in some countries like here in the United States.
Speaker 1: We're lucky enough to have car manufacturing facilities here in
Speaker 1: our own country, so it's pretty easy to ship a
Speaker 1: car from a factory to a consumer here in the States.
Speaker 1: But how did these cars get all over the world?
Speaker 1: After all, cars exist in every country, but not every
Speaker 1: country has its own car company or car manufacturing ability.
Speaker 1: So how do they get from point A to point B?
Speaker 1: I would say, by C and that is not the
Speaker 1: letter C. That is by shipping, Yes, yes, sir. Every year,
Speaker 1: millions of cars or shipped from one place to the
Speaker 1: next via truck, rail, air, even and as you said
Speaker 1: cargo ships, car go ships. Sorry, swinging a miss. That
Speaker 1: is the worst pun. I'm going to acknowledge it, but
Speaker 1: we're not going to speak of it again today, Kurt,
Speaker 1: you and I are focusing on the ships. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if I ever told you, but you know
Speaker 1: it was. It's been a longstanding, uh goal of mine.
Speaker 1: Dare I say a dream to travel via cargo ship? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a thing you can do. You just have to
Speaker 1: You just have to be flexible with your schedule. You
Speaker 1: usually need to book several months in advance. But you
Speaker 1: can go across the Pacific, you can go across the world,
Speaker 1: and you can do round trips. You can do a
Speaker 1: one way slow boat to China kind of thing. You
Speaker 1: just have to be under like seventy seven. So I
Speaker 1: think we've got time, That's what I'm saying. But if
Speaker 1: you and I did that, we would They wouldn't put
Speaker 1: us to work swab in the deck or anything, but
Speaker 1: we would very much just be ancillary passengers. Because cargo
Speaker 1: ships are this enormous industry. They move billions of dollars
Speaker 1: worth of goods and they ship anything from you know,
Speaker 1: like a million beanie babies to just like imagine a
Speaker 1: random thing, fidget spinners, it doesn't matter. And every single
Speaker 1: day cargo vessels are criss crossing these sans of hours
Speaker 1: shipping automobiles, shipping cars, and they're they're specialized vehicles, these
Speaker 1: vessels that ship these cars. Some of them can hold
Speaker 1: up to what eight thousand vehicles, between four thousand, eight
Speaker 1: thousand five vehicles, I believe. Yeah, they're enormous. They're like
Speaker 1: giant parking garages. And some of the levels can even
Speaker 1: raise and lower in height to accommodate taller and shorter vehicles,
Speaker 1: so they're flexible in that way as well. It's very
Speaker 1: very cool vehicles. They're just giant parking lots basically, that's yeah,
Speaker 1: they're floating parking lots and they look weird. Could see
Speaker 1: some fascinating videos of loading and unloading the trucks, which
Speaker 1: we can explore a little bit. These ships move cars
Speaker 1: and trucks to the US. They go to different ports
Speaker 1: on the East and West coast, and then once they
Speaker 1: hit the coast here they're unloaded and the cars are
Speaker 1: transported either to a dealer or to a individual person
Speaker 1: who has purchased a car from abroad or is having
Speaker 1: it shipped and then it just gets on a truck
Speaker 1: where he gets on a rail and off to the races.
Speaker 1: That's right, in fact, just down the road in Brunswick, Georgia.
Speaker 1: I believe it's the second busiest port. First would be Baltimore.
Speaker 1: Brunswick apparently handles about forty ships a month. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. I wouldn't have even thought that because Brunswick
Speaker 1: isn't really um like Baltimore yet sure giant, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: I would have thought Savannah. Savannah handles some of the traffic,
Speaker 1: but um, but Brunswick gets most of the row row
Speaker 1: Oh okay, this is the first time we've used this
Speaker 1: term today. What is r row? It's a ship used
Speaker 1: to carry cars are actually just vehicles, even semi trucks
Speaker 1: or other heavy machinery. And row row stands for roll
Speaker 1: on roll off, which is the way that the vehicles
Speaker 1: get on the ship, so they're not lifted by a
Speaker 1: crane like you're talking about LOLO. There's the road road
Speaker 1: and the LOWLO. I feel like a nine year old
Speaker 1: saying that, but those are accurate terms. LOLO is where
Speaker 1: you use a crane to load and unload cargo. And
Speaker 1: a row road is cutting out the middleman of the crane.
Speaker 1: You're able to physically move the vehicle on its wheels
Speaker 1: into the vessel. Yeah, they just drive them on. What's
Speaker 1: weird about this is that we don't really think about
Speaker 1: the amazing journey a lot of these vehicles take before
Speaker 1: they end up in the dealership or double parked in
Speaker 1: front of your favorite grocery store. Car Carrier ships are
Speaker 1: these industrial workhorses. Some can haul up to eight thousand
Speaker 1: five vehicles, which is the highest number I had found.
Speaker 1: And and there was one particular case that really stood
Speaker 1: out to me because I think there's a good, uh
Speaker 1: specific example that we can look at to get a
Speaker 1: snapshot of the industry overall, and that is a boat
Speaker 1: called the Andromeda Leader. Pretty cool name for a boat, right, Definitely,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a spaceship or something that does, and
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like a spaceship. The scale is
Speaker 1: just enormous. It's huge. It has a cargo capacity of
Speaker 1: twenty one, four hundred and forty three tons. That makes
Speaker 1: it bigger than some of the largest cruise ships on Earth.
Speaker 1: This one specifically is carried of five thousand, five hundred vehicles,
Speaker 1: which is right in that range you described earlier. And
Speaker 1: it's built to Panamax standards. Yeah, the ship is a
Speaker 1: thirty two meters or one hundred and five ft wide.
Speaker 1: Panamax is the dimensions of or it's the requirements to
Speaker 1: go through the Panama Canal, and I believe that that
Speaker 1: is a round about the largest that could fit through
Speaker 1: the Panama can Hour, at least the old standards. They
Speaker 1: did update these, I believe in two thousand six. It's
Speaker 1: a bit wider. I think a few of the locks
Speaker 1: are now a little wider, but still you'd want to
Speaker 1: you want to fit through any of them. Check over
Speaker 1: Panamax and so for a while, that was a hard
Speaker 1: limit on even the biggest ships making that kind of route.
Speaker 1: The Andromeda Leader, despite sounding like a spaceship, as a
Speaker 1: cargo ship, it moves Toyota, Lexus, Scions and so on
Speaker 1: across the Pacific and it gets them to the US.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. Some of us listening may be
Speaker 1: familiar with the former football player Joe Montana. The name
Speaker 1: is at least from Joe Montana, at least from what
Speaker 1: I can remember, was kind of well known for throwing
Speaker 1: ugly passes that get the job done. In the Andromeda
Speaker 1: Leader and these car carrier ships, they're kind of like
Speaker 1: a Joe Montana pass because they look ugly as sin.
Speaker 1: Their performance is not you know, they're not gonna win
Speaker 1: a beauty contest. The nuts and bolts of the ship
Speaker 1: and its propulsion are I guess impressive in the scale,
Speaker 1: but not not as impressive as you might think because
Speaker 1: this is a transport craft. It is only supposed to
Speaker 1: move cars without wrecking them or sinking itself in the process.
Speaker 1: And if you see it on the on the water,
Speaker 1: it looks goofy because it looks like it's standing too
Speaker 1: far out from the water, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: They're very very tall ships. They're like nine or ten
Speaker 1: stories tall, and they're just they're giant boxes, so they
Speaker 1: look like, I mean, very few windows. Some of them
Speaker 1: do carry passengers like you alluded to earlier, but the
Speaker 1: ones that are built purely for rolling cargo, they are
Speaker 1: just giant boxes purpose built to get from point A
Speaker 1: to point B. Yeah, only about fift of the hull
Speaker 1: on the Andromeda Leader is actually submerged when it's in
Speaker 1: the water, and the captain to tell you a fund
Speaker 1: is fine. The captain describes the ship as a quote
Speaker 1: floating coconut. It sails at seventeen to nineteen knots and
Speaker 1: its journey takes it twenty eight days. It leaves from
Speaker 1: a port near Nagoya, Japan, where there's an awesome Toyota museum,
Speaker 1: to Jacksonville, Florida, and then these cars are unloaded in Jacksonville.
Speaker 1: They're generally meant for the Southeast if they're unloaded there,
Speaker 1: and then it goes to Newark where it unloads some stuff.
Speaker 1: And then on its return leg as it's as it's
Speaker 1: sailing back home, it stops in Puerto Rico to drop
Speaker 1: off a few more cars, and then it goes to
Speaker 1: Japan empty. And I would assume it travels a little
Speaker 1: bit faster without all that weight. So that's an example
Speaker 1: of a specific vehicle. But how does the rubber hit
Speaker 1: the road here? How how do they get these cars
Speaker 1: into these vessels? There's a science to it, arguably all
Speaker 1: so an art. We'll answer that after a word from
Speaker 1: our sponsor, and we're back. And as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: maximizing the number of cars the ship can carry while
Speaker 1: minimizing the damage of those cars can be complex, which
Speaker 1: is why they switched to a vessel that you can
Speaker 1: roll the cars on and off of. Until of the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, they were generally using cranes to transfer cars
Speaker 1: off one or two at a time. The introduction of
Speaker 1: car carrier ships changed that. Before that, there were amphibious
Speaker 1: vehicles and ships that would transport vehicles to shorelines and
Speaker 1: various other places, and ramps would load the vehicles on
Speaker 1: and off of land. So rolloffs kind of started long
Speaker 1: before they were introduced in kind of like a commercial sense.
Speaker 1: So the ramps are also incorporated on the ships of today.
Speaker 1: On the large rorow ships, they have a one giant ramp.
Speaker 1: It's usually towards the back of the ship, the stern,
Speaker 1: I guess that is what they would call that, and
Speaker 1: cars are driven on one by one very quickly, though
Speaker 1: very efficiently. If you've ever seen this done, it's a
Speaker 1: ballet of sorts. Yeah, it's fascinating, especially because it feels
Speaker 1: like it's like watching a circus performance or watching those
Speaker 1: uh stunts where motorcycle motorcycles drive in sphere you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Because I keeping the game of inches, yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: I keep expecting something to wreck you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Even the Semis when they load them on, they're driving
Speaker 1: them up the ramps that are just wide enough to
Speaker 1: fit these vehicles, so there's very little margin of air.
Speaker 1: They need about ten centimeters or about four inches of
Speaker 1: overhead clearance. UM. So the high determines which deck they're
Speaker 1: parked on. Like I said before, some of the decks
Speaker 1: can lower and raise. On the Andromeda specifically, the shortest
Speaker 1: deck is too short for suv certain SUVs, but like
Speaker 1: you said, two of those decks on the Andromeda specifically
Speaker 1: can be raised to a pretty big height. It's like
Speaker 1: sixteen feet right, and so, and spacing between the cars
Speaker 1: is just as critical. They allow for about thirty centimeters
Speaker 1: or about a foot that separate the front and rear
Speaker 1: bumpers of the car. There's a gap of some six
Speaker 1: inches from side to side. If you've ever seen some
Speaker 1: of the catastrophes where the cars of either they were
Speaker 1: not secured correct or they had come loose during shipment,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine complete disaster for everything around them.
Speaker 1: So I guess parking them close to each other limits
Speaker 1: that damage a little bit. If one car comes loose,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of room for it to travel,
Speaker 1: but those types of things are rare, but they do happen.
Speaker 1: So that said, the mirrors are folded in to make
Speaker 1: for more room to park, and according to a guy
Speaker 1: named Bill Barrett, a national logistics manager for Toyota, consistent
Speaker 1: spacing is the key here and says, you don't want
Speaker 1: scratches on bumpers, you don't want dense scrape ups and
Speaker 1: so on, so parking them this closely doesn't do the
Speaker 1: job by itself. They also lashed the vehicles down, and
Speaker 1: at least in the case of Andromeda, they specifically use
Speaker 1: a minimum of four nylon straps that are looped through
Speaker 1: these removable hooks at the bumpers or on the frame,
Speaker 1: And of course large vehicles need more straps, and those
Speaker 1: parked perpendicular to the keel needs more straps, and the
Speaker 1: clasp on the other end of the straps are attached
Speaker 1: to holes or rings on the floor and these things
Speaker 1: are super taught. They want the cars to barely be
Speaker 1: able to budge at all, because if evil one comes
Speaker 1: loose when they're part that closely, it can kind of
Speaker 1: minimize damage to an area. Depend on how rough the
Speaker 1: seas are, how bad the bumps are. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, if the boat takes a big enough knock
Speaker 1: and there's a loose car, that thing could cran everywhere.
Speaker 1: It could be like a ricochet effect. Enough enough cars
Speaker 1: get dislodged. Obviously, cargo shifting in a boat like that
Speaker 1: it's not a good thing. So if massive amounts of
Speaker 1: these things are not secured properly, it could spell disaster
Speaker 1: for the ship itself. When you were a kid, did
Speaker 1: you ever do those relay things where you have to
Speaker 1: like run with an egg and a spoon, but you
Speaker 1: can't drop the egg. This is to me, this is
Speaker 1: like that if every every moment that you ran with
Speaker 1: the spoon was worth millions of dollars, and if you
Speaker 1: drop the egg, uh, if you drop the egg, people
Speaker 1: could die their lives on the line. And that leads
Speaker 1: us to something else that we we wanted to hit
Speaker 1: when we talk about the amazing journey that your cars
Speaker 1: take a across the world to meet you, and that
Speaker 1: is that this kind of endeavor, in this kind of trip,
Speaker 1: not only is it complicated, not only is there a
Speaker 1: lot on the line, but it can also be dangerous.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you why afterward. From our sponsor, and we
Speaker 1: are back, Kurt. This is something you and I talked
Speaker 1: about a little bit off air, and I think maybe
Speaker 1: we alluded to it in the episode already. But there
Speaker 1: have been a lot of accidents with roll on and
Speaker 1: roll off vessels. I see. It turns out that there
Speaker 1: are quite a few row Row vessels that have taken
Speaker 1: on water and capsized or actually sank due to one
Speaker 1: problem or another. Problems with the loading doors, pretty common
Speaker 1: problems with vehicle decks and other things that could happen
Speaker 1: to any vessel. Yeah, I would imagine that when one
Speaker 1: of these begins to take on water, it fills those
Speaker 1: giant cavities fairly quickly, and I guess that's why they're
Speaker 1: so disastrous when and if they do have issues where
Speaker 1: they start to leak. Probably one of the worst disasters
Speaker 1: in terms of human life was the MS Estonia in
Speaker 1: nineteen four. And of course some of these are passenger
Speaker 1: ships as well, because I would imagine that a lot
Speaker 1: of the pure car only our vehicle only row rows
Speaker 1: wouldn't have too many people on them. That's true, you
Speaker 1: want to minimize the amount of people you need on board.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the Estonia was a row row, but it
Speaker 1: was it was a faery, so it had a lot
Speaker 1: of passengers on it. And in the sinking of the
Speaker 1: Estonian eight hundred and fifty two people lost their lives
Speaker 1: because she listed different rowroad accidents. Now, not all of
Speaker 1: these are huge disasters, but they do continue to happen.
Speaker 1: For instance, consider the story of the m V Golden
Speaker 1: Bay which capsized on September nine, nineteen, and that's a
Speaker 1: that's a car carrier through and through. Here's how things
Speaker 1: went down. It was at the port of Brunswick Harbor
Speaker 1: after it unbirthed and was heading towards the Port of Baltimore.
Speaker 1: It had some serious listing and they immediately closed the port.
Speaker 1: The United States Coast Guards sent a rescue mission to
Speaker 1: find four of the twenty three crew members that went missing.
Speaker 1: They were all eventually rescued. They appeared to be in
Speaker 1: okay health and as far as they could guess, the
Speaker 1: incident was probably caused by a sudden loss of stability.
Speaker 1: Maybe they had stowed the cargoing correctly, or maybe the
Speaker 1: water ballast was miscalculated. They were carrying Kia and Hondai
Speaker 1: cars that were meant to be delivered in the Middle
Speaker 1: East Hondai executive said, well, there was some kind of
Speaker 1: internal fire and it couldn't be controlled. Then it capsized,
Speaker 1: So people still weren't completely in agreement on what happened.
Speaker 1: And can you imagine if we were loading those cars ourselves,
Speaker 1: we definitely wouldn't want people to say something was wrong
Speaker 1: with the way it was stacked in, you know. And
Speaker 1: although there were no lives lost in this accident, obviously
Speaker 1: there's an environmental impact to the general or to the
Speaker 1: surrounding area where the accident happens, as well as damage
Speaker 1: to the cargo. You know, all those all those cars,
Speaker 1: and they have a lot of redundant safety measures in place.
Speaker 1: It's just that you can't plan for everything, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And the weird thing is that these
Speaker 1: sea going pure car carriers row row car ferries have
Speaker 1: a reputation on the seas for being what's called high
Speaker 1: risk design. They're considered notoriously tough to keep stable, and
Speaker 1: they've actually been referred to before as roll on rollovers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of like when Jeep gets a hard time, you know,
Speaker 1: And we know that any improperly secured loading door can
Speaker 1: cause the ship to start to take on water and
Speaker 1: sink that happened in eight seven with the Herald of
Speaker 1: Free Enterprise. It can also this is so weird, but
Speaker 1: water sloshing on the deck can make something called the
Speaker 1: free surface effect, and this makes the ship unstable and
Speaker 1: it makes it capsize. Free surface water on a deck
Speaker 1: was the likely cause of the nineteen eight capsizing of
Speaker 1: the TV Wahin. But you might ask, why would people
Speaker 1: do this if it were so risky? Right, the sheer
Speaker 1: volume that you can ship in this manner would justify
Speaker 1: the risk involved. Really, how else are you going to
Speaker 1: get the massive amount of vehicles from Japan to the
Speaker 1: United States or from the United States to other countries
Speaker 1: around the world. This's just see sames like, it's the
Speaker 1: most cost effective and safe estoption, even with the accidents
Speaker 1: that can happen. Yeah, and people are still working on
Speaker 1: and refining the row row idea. And there are a
Speaker 1: couple of different variations of row row that you may
Speaker 1: have heard of. One is the l m s R
Speaker 1: Large Medium speed roll on roll off, which refers to
Speaker 1: some military craft and these are the things that are
Speaker 1: purposely built to carry you know, armored vehicles other military cargo.
Speaker 1: Then there's the con row. The con row is a
Speaker 1: hybrid of the row road and container ship. Conrow ships
Speaker 1: are pretty cool because they can carry a you guessed it,
Speaker 1: combination of containers along with heavy equipment, oversized cargo, and
Speaker 1: cars so well, plenty of cars are shipped in containers
Speaker 1: as well. It's a very common way for individuals. The
Speaker 1: ship we even talk about that, Yeah, lay it on me.
Speaker 1: Usually when you would want to ship a car over
Speaker 1: these most people probably think of enlisting the services of
Speaker 1: a company that would use just a giant shipping container
Speaker 1: to haul the car in and put it on just
Speaker 1: your standard container ship. And normally they can get one
Speaker 1: or two vehicles depending on the size of the car
Speaker 1: into these containers. They build wooden ramps and whatnot to
Speaker 1: elevate one car over the other if the size is right. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's a fairly fairly safe, tried and true way
Speaker 1: to ship a car. It's just a little bit more invasive.
Speaker 1: There's a little bit if you're concerned about your vehicle
Speaker 1: getting scratched because there's a lot of handling when you're
Speaker 1: shipping in a cargo container. It's a lot less if
Speaker 1: you're rolling the car on and off the ship a
Speaker 1: lot less can happen to the car that way. When
Speaker 1: you ship in a container. If they're going to stack
Speaker 1: the cars, they would have to go around your car
Speaker 1: and build a Basically, it's a wooden structure around your
Speaker 1: car to elevate the other car above it. So obviously
Speaker 1: things can happen there, but it was a pretty neat
Speaker 1: option to explore though. If you're looking to ship your car,
Speaker 1: and you can find plenty of people and outfits online
Speaker 1: that have pretty good reps that will give you a quote,
Speaker 1: I suggest shopping around if you're read reviews. Of course,
Speaker 1: always read the reviews, and then if you're able to
Speaker 1: see what kind of shipping vessel they're going to use,
Speaker 1: let me know. If they've got some extra extra seats.
Speaker 1: Maybe this would be the time I can ride along
Speaker 1: with your car across the high seas. So this concludes
Speaker 1: today's episode, but not our show. Have you ever worked
Speaker 1: on a cargo ship? Have you ever shipped a car
Speaker 1: across the planet? If so, let us know. You can
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter where we are
Speaker 1: Car Stuff HSW on Facebook and Twitter, and The Car
Speaker 1: Stuff Show dot Com is where you can find us
Speaker 1: on the worldwide Web. With every single episode that we
Speaker 1: have ever ever done. Kurt Scott and I just going back,
Speaker 1: oh gosh, going back further than I would like to admit.
Speaker 1: As always, folks, thank you so much for tuning in
Speaker 1: and we look forward to hearing from you. Tune in
Speaker 1: for our next episode. Thanks to everyone. Car Stuff is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
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