June/July 2018
Shipping from Australia to South Africa
Our lesson for this time: You can’t do much for the longest time,
then suddenly you’ve got to be ready to move fast!
We started gathering shipping options, information on available routes and price quotes for shipment of our vehicle from Melbourne to Durban much too early this time. We knew we would need to leave Australia at the expiration of our visas in early June so we began our research in January. Other than the most broad strokes of what the route might be and which ports might be best, it was impossible to get any real information so far in advance. We knew this would be the case, but at the same time we wanted to be able to book our flights home and on to South Africa, we wanted to be able to make doctors and dentists appointments and other arrangements for things we wanted to do when we were in the US and the Tiger was at sea. We knew we were being impatient, but pressed ahead anyway. We would advise others — and remind ourselves next time — to not begin contacting agents until about three months prior to your anticipated shipping date; it just doesn’t do much good earlier than that.
Remember that we ship RO/RO. Details will vary if shipping by container, but the process remains the same.
The Arrangements:
In the end, we were unable to lock in any meaningful dates until thirty days before the sailing date. This was frustrating, but is the way of the world right now. Any schedule you are looking at online that is more than thirty days in advance is only a guess by the shipping company, nothing more. The shipping agents know this so they won’t go out on a limb by offering anything that they don’t have confidence in.
Our early online search did help us to understand that costs would not be much different regardless of our port of departure in Australia, and that Durban appeared to be the preferred port for RO/RO shipping into South Africa — we inquired about that and each of the three agents we were checking with recommended Durban; other ports such as East London or Port Elizabeth may be better for container shipping; Cape Town is good for containers, but has not RO/RO facility. We also determined that there was no way for us to ship directly from Australia to South Africa, but that our vehicle would first have to stop in Singapore and change ships there. Wallenius-Willemsen, on their online route map, shows a direct route going the other direction, from South Africa to Australia, but this route continues east from there, it does not show back and forth ships between the two countries. In the long term the need to stop in Singapore doesn’t really matter, but it does introduce the possibility of problems in meeting schedules and being able to successfully transfer from one ship to the other.
The whole issue of changing ships in Singapore concerned us all along and kept us from making flight arrangements from the US to South Africa until after that transfer had actually occurred, only about two weeks before we had intended to fly. There were three main reasons for our concern. First is that, as described on both our 2015 and 2017 shipping pages, we had learned not to rely on our vehicle always arriving when it was supposed to; the schedule is fine, but cannot be taken as gospel. Secondly, we knew that the ship from Singapore to Durban only happened once a month so if our truck missed its connection it would make a big difference. Thirdly our agent had told us about two other vehicles he was handling on this route that had indeed recently missed the connection and been held in Singapore. As always in this shipping thing, we simply made what we thought were the best decisions possible and crossed our fingers.
We knew all along that we'd be happy to be able to use the same agent in Melbourne who had taken such good care of us when we arrived in June 2017. But in order to do our normal due diligence, we contacted a few other agents and ended up getting several quotes for comparison. We weren’t just comparing costs, but also looking for shipping date options that would best coincide with our visa expiration date of June 9. For a long time we were also trying hard to find some way around the whole Singapore thing. Details on the agents we dealt with are below in the Contact Information section.
By May 5th (35 days before our visas would expire) we were still in contact with three agents on three continents; we had no shipping date set, didn’t know when it would happen or what it would cost and couldn’t make any flight arrangements. That first week in May was pretty intense, with emails flying in all directions several times a day. We felt we would need to go with whichever agent could pull it all together for us with a good, solid shipping date at a competitive cost. Suddenly on May 7th we got what we were waiting for from our Melbourne agent and locked it in immediately. None of this was delaying on the part of the agents, they simply could not get anything firm from the shipping companies. We had three messages from the agent on the 7th and 8th, ranging from, ‘They tell me we should have confirmed sailing dates by tonight’, to, ‘Now they say it won’t happen because of something in China’, and finally on the morning of May 8th, ‘OK, I got a response, get back to me quick as I’ve made a tentative booking’. I’m sharing these details only to show that this can be how it works; lots of nothing and then it all happens at once.
There was some variation in the cost quotations, but nothing significant enough to make a big difference. We learned early on that this would be our most expensive shipping to date as our three quotes ranged between about $6,500 to $7,300 USD. These all included ocean freight and port costs in Melbourne. Port costs in Durban had to be added and they were the highest we’ve seen yet; totalling over $1,600 USD. As it all turned out, we would be shipping on K-Line once again (our third time) and we were happy with this.
When discussing shipping quotes it is always necessary to discuss the size of the vehicle being shipped. With RO/RO shipping, the main component of the cost is based on the volume of the vehicle. Our tiger measures 6.7 meters long, 2.9 meters tall with the vent covers removed, and 2.2 meters wide with mirrors folded in. Thus the volume is 42.75 cubic meters; weight of our loaded Tiger is about 4,600kgs or 10,200lbs.
The Shipping:
Our shipping date was for June 8, the day before expiration of our visas, and the earliest we could drop off the Tiger was on Monday the 4th. We had hoped to be able to fly out on June 1st, but could not make that happen. As we had needed to go ahead and make doctors’ appointments at least two months ahead of time, our first appointments were for the 8th, giving us a quicker turn around on arrival back home than we would have liked.
Our wonderful agent in Melbourne, Frank Todero, met us at the docks on the 4th, drove our Tiger into the secured area and handled everything for us there; and then drove us to the airport, which is a good two hour drive in Melbourne. On both ends of our journey, both arriving and then departing from Melbourne, Frank was a jewel and we recommend him highly to anyone shipping to Oz.
Leaving on the 8th, the ship our vehicle would be on from Melbourne to Singapore only had a three day window to meet up with the second ship in Singapore and naturally this gave us some concern. Then, as such things always do, a container ship nearly capsized in a storm off Australia’s east coast and dumped 80 containers into the sea where they created an enormous hazard to marine traffic. This sort of thing cannot be planned for but the result was that our first ship ended up leaving Melbourne four days late. All of this occurred after we were already back in the US, not that we could have done anything about it. So, no, we weren’t worried that our truck would miss its connection, we were sure that it would. To our amazement, however, the ship was able to make up the lost time and we were very much surprised when everything happened according to plan and our Tiger did indeed make the Singapore connection and did arrive in Durban on schedule on July 11th.
Overall length of the Tiger’s voyage was only thirty days. Adding in delays in dropping off and picking back up our vehicle, we were without it a total of seven weeks.
The Arrival:
We were somewhat in shock when we were told our vehicle had made the turnaround, as we didn’t learn of the successful sailing from Singapore until July 26th, barely two weeks before it would arrive in Durban. We’d been watching flights of course and knew what flight we wanted to make. We’d also been working with the agent we were using in Durban about how long after the ship’s arrival we’d be able to get the truck from them. They estimated 5-7 days for this and were also very helpful in agreeing to hold the truck for us after they picked it up so we could have a little more flexibility in making our flight arrangements. As a result, we were able to get the flight arrangements we wanted the week following actual arrival of our vehicle. We cannot stress enough the value of having good agents working for you on both ends of your shipping experience.
Costs: (In US dollars)
We were helped some on the cost front by a strengthening US dollar, but of course this is continually variable.
- $ 790 Port costs in Melbourne including terminal fee, documents, agency fee, delivery of the vehicle
- $5,270 Ocean freight
- $1,670 Port costs in Durban including terminal fee, documents, agency fee, cartage from port to their warehouse
- $7,730 Total
One thing I have not mentioned before is this. Credit cards cannot be used for shipping; extra fees and also too easy for someone to cancel payment I suppose. This means that having a bank that charges reasonable fees for international money transfers would be very useful. The other alternative is to pay in cash. You usually must pay the ocean freight and the port costs at the departing port before the vehicle will be accepted for shipping. The port costs at the receiving port are paid there. At both ends, payment will need to be in local currency.
Contact Information:
Our wonderful agent in Melbourne: Frank Todero of Dominion Freight
Our also wonderful agents in Durban: Junita Cicalese and Cornel Voshol at Cargo Compass JNB
Other helpful agents we worked with in attempting to make our arrangements:
Martin McGowan of International Shipping Services
Lorraine and Daniela at Seabrook Forwarding and Handling
Shipping Lines:
K-Line has a useful website at www.kline.com. I find their Route Maps helpful in initial planning. One of thier sales agents in the US is daniel.happoldt@us.kline.com; who was helpful in recommending shipping agents in the area we wanted to ship from.
Another major shipping line often used by travelers is Wallenius Wilhelmsen and their website is www.2wglobal.com.