Commercial Vehicle Shipping

Commercial Vehicle Shipping is the door-to-port movement of a vehicle from the United Kingdom to an overseas destination, handled by a licensed BIFA freight forwarder using either RoRo (Roll-on Roll-off) or container shipping. For a standard saloon to a major worldwide port, expect to pay between £950 and £1,800 all-in, a sea transit of three to six weeks, and a full door-to-collection timeline of six to nine weeks. The customer is responsible for the original V5C logbook and consignee details; the forwarder handles HMRC export entry, port handling, ocean booking, the Bill of Lading and optional Marine All-Risks insurance.

If you only read one paragraph on this page, read that one — it answers the question 95% of new customers ask first. The rest of this guide unpacks each stage in operational detail so you can book commercial vehicle shipping with the same confidence as a fleet exporter who does this every week.

We built our commercial vehicle shipping service around six customer profiles, and the operational playbook is slightly different for each. Identifying which one you are at the quote stage means we route your shipment through the right desk on day one and you avoid the cross-team handoffs that cause delay elsewhere.

• Private buyers shipping a single family car, SUV or pickup
• Expats and returning residents relocating with one or two vehicles
• UK car dealers exporting between three and fifty units a month
• Classic, prestige and collector-car owners moving high-value vehicles
• Trade buyers moving fleets of 4x4s, vans and commercial pickups
• Charities, NGOs and aid organisations shipping project vehicles

Our commercial vehicle shipping service is built around fixed-price written quotes, a single senior operator per shipment, and a clean Bill of Lading on every sailing. From the moment you accept a quote to the day your vehicle is released at the destination port, one person owns your file — no call-centre handoffs and no information lost between teams.

Every booking includes UK customs export entry through HMRC, port handling at the loading terminal, ocean freight on a named carrier with a confirmed sailing date, Bill of Lading issued on the day the vessel sails, and Marine All-Risks insurance offered as a standard option (not a hidden upsell). For most customers we also arrange UK collection from the door and introduce a vetted clearing agent at the destination port if one is not already appointed.

• Fixed written quote with every cost line itemised
• Senior operator from quote to clearance — direct phone line
• UK collection from your address (optional)
• HMRC export entry and DVLA notification
• Booking onto the next available sailing with a named carrier
• Bill of Lading issued on day of sailing
• Marine All-Risks insurance at 1.5% of declared value
• Destination clearing agent introduction at every major port

Every commercial vehicle shipping shipment we book runs through six clean stages: quote, deposit and booking, UK collection or port drop-off, loading window, ocean voyage, and destination clearance. The customer-facing parts are stages one, two and six — everything in the middle is handled by the freight team, the port, the shipping line and the clearing agent on the other end.

You can choose between RoRo (Roll-on Roll-off) and container shipping. RoRo is faster and cheaper for running vehicles. Containers cost more but accept non-runners, low-slung classics, modified vehicles and personal effects packed alongside the car. We quote both and recommend the right one for your specific vehicle and destination.

• Day 0 — Request quote with vehicle, location and destination
• Day 1 — Receive fixed written quote with named carrier and sailing
• Day 2-3 — Pay deposit, send original V5C, confirm collection
• Day 4-10 — UK collection or self-deliver to loading port
• Day 10-14 — Vessel loading window and BoL issuance
• Day 14-50 — Ocean voyage on named carrier
• Day 50-65 — Destination clearance, duty payment, release

Choosing between RoRo and container is the single most consequential decision at the quote stage. RoRo (Roll-on Roll-off) means your vehicle is driven onto a specialist car-carrier vessel, secured below decks, and driven off at the other end. It is the cheapest, fastest method for any running, road-legal vehicle and accounts for roughly 70% of the bookings we handle.

Container shipping puts the vehicle inside a 20ft or 40ft steel container, either as a sole-use booking or shared with another customer. It costs more — typically £400 to £900 above an equivalent RoRo slot — but it accepts non-runners, salvage cars, prestige vehicles, modified or low-slung classics, and personal effects packed alongside the car. Containers also offer better protection against weather and incidental handling damage, which is why almost every collector and prestige owner chooses container regardless of price.

• RoRo — cheapest, fastest, running road-legal vehicles only
• Shared 40ft container — best value for non-runners and standard cars
• Sole-use 20ft — one classic, prestige or modified vehicle with spares
• Sole-use 40ft — two cars, or one 4x4 with bikes, parts or household effects
• Flat-rack — oversized vehicles exceeding container internal dimensions

Pricing depends on the vehicle, the destination, the shipping method and the time of year. As a benchmark for 2026, a standard family-sized car shipped RoRo from the UK to a major overseas port lands between £950 and £1,800 all-in. Shared 40ft container slots start around £1,450 per car. Sole-use 20ft and 40ft containers range from £2,400 to £3,500 depending on lane and season.

Beware any quote that looks dramatically below market. The vessel slot itself costs the same for every reputable forwarder, so a deeply discounted headline almost always means a hidden cost will appear later — destination handling, BAF or documentation fees that were not declared up front. Our quotes list every cost line in writing.

• RoRo small car: from £950 all-in to port
• RoRo SUV / 4x4: from £1,250 all-in to port
• Shared 40ft container (per car): from £1,450
• Sole-use 20ft container: from £2,400
• Sole-use 40ft container: from £3,200
• Marine All-Risks insurance: 1.5% of declared value

We collect vehicles for commercial vehicle shipping from every region of the UK and mainland Britain. Our network of vetted transporter partners covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with daily runs into the major loading ports. Collection from a residential address is included as standard on most quotes and is rarely a meaningful cost driver — the freight is the freight, the inland leg is small change against the ocean rate.

Typical UK origin regions we handle weekly include London and the Home Counties, the South East and South West, the Midlands (Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham), the North West (Manchester, Liverpool, Preston), the North East (Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough), Yorkshire (Leeds, Sheffield, Hull), Scotland (Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen) and Wales (Cardiff, Swansea). Northern Ireland collections route through Belfast onto a short ferry to mainland loading ports.

Our commercial vehicle shipping service covers every major commercial port worldwide. We book weekly RoRo and container sailings into the Middle East (Jebel Ali, Hamad, Dammam, Jeddah, Sohar), East and West Africa (Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, Lagos, Tema, Walvis Bay, Durban), Asia (Karachi, Colombo, Mumbai, Singapore, Yokohama), Oceania (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Fremantle, Auckland), the Americas (New York, Halifax, Vancouver, Santos, Kingston) and across Europe (Rotterdam, Antwerp, Piraeus, Limassol).

If your destination is not on the headline list, ask anyway — we book on the same major carriers (Wallenius Wilhelmsen, Grimaldi, Hoegh Autoliners, NYK, K-Line) that call at almost every commercial port in the world. Transit times vary from three weeks to a major Middle East port to eight or nine weeks to remote Oceania destinations.

Every commercial vehicle shipping job needs a clean set of paperwork before the vessel sails. The single biggest cause of delay on any UK export lane is missing or incorrect documents. We process the UK customs export entry on your behalf, notify DVLA of permanent export, and issue the Bill of Lading on the day the vessel sails — that document unlocks the vehicle at the destination port.

Destination paperwork varies by country. Some markets require a Certificate of Conformity, some require pre-shipment inspection (PSI), and some impose age limits that block older vehicles entirely. We will not let a customer book a sailing for a vehicle that cannot legally be cleared at the other end. If your destination is unfamiliar to you, we will share a country brief alongside the freight quote so you understand the full landed cost including import duty, VAT, port handling and clearing agent fees.

• Original V5C logbook (yellow slip retained by DVLA for export)
• Photo ID for the named exporter
• Proof of purchase or commercial invoice
• Bill of Lading (issued by us on day of sailing)
• Country-specific certificates where required (CoC, PSI, SONCAP)

Marine All-Risks insurance is the single best-value line item on any commercial vehicle shipping quote. For roughly 1.5% of declared vehicle value you are covered against total loss, partial loss, handling damage and general average from the moment the vehicle leaves your driveway to the moment it is released at destination. We strongly recommend it on every booking regardless of vehicle value, and we will not knowingly let a high-value classic or prestige car sail uninsured.

If you decline cover your only recourse for loss or damage is the shipping line's Bill of Lading liability, which is capped at a low per-package figure under the Hague-Visby Rules and will not come close to replacing a modern vehicle. The premium is small, the protection is total — there is no rational reason to skip it on a vehicle worth more than a few thousand pounds.

The mistakes we see most often on commercial vehicle shipping bookings are surprisingly consistent — and every one of them is avoidable with five minutes of due diligence at the quote stage.

• Booking with a forwarder who is not a BIFA member
• Paying a large deposit before the V5C has been processed
• Skipping Marine Insurance to save a small premium
• Leaving personal items in the car on a RoRo sailing
• Not checking destination age and emissions rules in advance
• Accepting a quote that does not name the carrier or the sailing date
• Failing to appoint a destination clearing agent before vessel arrival

We have built TheShipCars on three commitments: a fixed written quote with every cost line listed, a single senior operator from quote to clearance, and a clean Bill of Lading on every sailing. For twelve years that has held a 98% on-time delivery rate across more than 10,000 vehicles. We are a BIFA member with full UK customs export authority, our quotes include destination handling and BAF as standard, and we offer Marine All-Risks insurance as a properly priced option on every booking.

Our customers are private buyers shipping a single family car, dealers exporting six to ten cars a month, collectors moving prestige and classic vehicles, expats relocating internationally, and trade buyers moving fleets of pickups and 4x4s. We treat every shipment the same: a written quote, a real person, a clean BoL.

Booking is simple. Send us the vehicle registration, current UK location, and the consignee details at the destination. Within one working day you will receive a fixed written quote that lists every cost line — UK collection (if needed), export documentation, ocean freight, Bill of Lading and Marine Insurance. Pay the deposit to confirm the sailing, send us the original V5C, and we handle every stage from your driveway to the deck of the vessel.

Once the vessel sails you receive the Bill of Lading by email the same day. We share live tracking on the carrier's vessel system, brief your destination clearing agent before vessel arrival, and stay on call until the vehicle is physically released at the destination port. Most customers tell us afterwards that the hardest part of the process was deciding which forwarder to use — the shipment itself, with the right partner, runs quietly in the background.

Within the wider world of UK vehicle export, commercial vehicle shipping sits in the vehicle type category and has its own operational rhythm. Customers reach this page because they need commercial vehicle shipping specifically — not a generic "international shipping" pitch — so the rest of this section is written to that intent. We have shaped the commercial vehicle shipping desk around the exact paperwork, vessel types, packing rules and destination-side handling that this service demands, which is why the lead times, pricing and risk profile differ from a standard saloon RoRo booking handled by a general forwarder.

The single biggest reason customers come back to us for commercial vehicle shipping is operational continuity. The same senior operator who quotes the job books the vessel, files the customs entry, issues the Bill of Lading and briefs the clearing agent at destination. There is no internal handoff, no "let me check with another team", and no risk of a missed cut-off because two people each assumed the other had done it. For a service like commercial vehicle shipping, where the details vary materially between one shipment and the next, that continuity is worth more than a £50 difference in headline price.

If you are comparing quotes for commercial vehicle shipping, the right questions to ask any forwarder are: who is the named operator on my file, which carrier and sailing am I booked onto, what is included in the headline price line by line, and what happens if the vessel rolls. A reputable BIFA-member forwarder will answer all four in writing within a working day. If a quote you are reading does not, treat the gap itself as the answer.

Preparation is the part of commercial vehicle shipping that customers control directly, and getting it right shaves days off the timeline and pounds off the bill. A clean, well-presented vehicle moves through the port faster, clears destination customs more cleanly, and arrives in the condition the receiver expects. We send every customer a written prep checklist with their booking confirmation; the headline items are the same for every commercial vehicle shipping job regardless of destination.

• Wash the vehicle inside and out — destination biosecurity (especially Australia, New Zealand) rejects vehicles with soil, seeds or insect contamination
• Run fuel down to roughly a quarter tank — carriers refuse vehicles with more
• Disable aftermarket alarms and immobilisers, leave one set of keys with the operator
• Retract aerials, fold in mirrors, secure any spoilers or loose trim
• Photograph the vehicle from every angle on collection day — this is your evidence baseline for any insurance claim
• Remove all personal items for RoRo; for container, prepare a packing list of every item travelling inside
• Confirm the vehicle starts, drives forward and reverse, and brakes under its own power (RoRo only)

The freight quote takes the vehicle to the destination port. From there, the receiver pays import duty, VAT, port handling and clearing agent fees to release the car. For commercial vehicle shipping, those landed costs vary widely by country — a vehicle into Jebel Ali clears for a fraction of the duty payable on the same car into Nairobi or Lagos. We share a written landed-cost estimate for your destination alongside the freight quote so there are no surprises after the vessel sails.

Duty is usually calculated on the CIF value of the vehicle (cost + insurance + freight), with the percentage set by the destination customs authority. Some markets add VAT on top of duty, some apply environmental or excise levies on engine size, and a handful operate age-based bans that prohibit older vehicles entirely. For commercial vehicle shipping we maintain an internal country matrix that flags every one of these rules before you book, because a vehicle that cannot legally clear at the destination is a vehicle that should never have sailed.

If you do not already have a clearing agent at the destination port, we introduce one from our vetted network — agents we have used for years, who release vehicles cleanly and bill transparently. Using an unvetted agent is the single most common cause of destination-side problems on commercial vehicle shipping bookings; using one of ours typically turns a five-to-seven-day clearance into a three-day one.

Once your commercial vehicle shipping booking is confirmed, you get the senior operator's direct mobile number and an email thread that stays open from quote to clearance. We send proactive updates at each milestone — vessel loaded, vessel sailed (with BoL attached), vessel arrived, customs cleared, vehicle released — so you never have to chase. For trade customers shipping multiple units a month, we provide a weekly status summary by spreadsheet covering every active file.

After delivery, the file stays open for thirty days for any post-clearance queries, damage claims or paperwork copies. Marine All-Risks claims are handled by us end-to-end: you send photographs and a written description, we lodge the claim with the underwriter and chase to settlement. The premium is small but the after-care is the reason we recommend cover on every standard commercial vehicle shipping shipment we book.