0:00

Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of I

0:02

Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome

0:09

to the show, friends and neighbors.

0:11

Thank you so much for tuning in.

0:14

I am one of your host to

0:16

date, and people call me Ben Bowling

0:18

because that is in fact my name, and people

0:21

also call me by my name, which is Kurt

0:23

Garin. That's right, Kurt. You and I

0:25

have had this topic circling

0:28

around in our heads for a few weeks now,

0:30

and it's something that longtime car Stuff

0:32

listeners may be familiar

0:35

with. We know that cars are sold

0:38

around the world, right and in

0:40

some countries like here in the United

0:42

States. We're lucky enough to have

0:45

car manufacturing facilities

0:47

here in our own country, so

0:49

it's pretty easy to ship

0:52

a car from a factory to a

0:55

consumer here in the States.

0:57

But how did these cars get all over the world?

1:02

After all, cars exist in every country,

1:05

but not every country has its

1:07

own car company or car

1:09

manufacturing ability. So

1:12

how do they get from point A to point B? I

1:14

would say, by C and

1:16

that is not the letter C. That is by

1:18

shipping, Yes, yes, sir. Every

1:21

year, millions of cars or shipped from one

1:23

place to the next via truck,

1:26

rail, air, even and as

1:28

you said cargo ships, car

1:32

go ships.

1:35

Sorry, swinging a miss. That

1:42

is the worst pun. I'm going to acknowledge

1:44

it, but we're not going to speak of it again today,

1:47

Kurt, you and I are focusing

1:50

on the ships. And I don't know if I ever told you, but

1:52

you know it was. It's been a longstanding,

1:55

uh goal of mine. Dare I say a

1:57

dream to travel via cargo ship?

2:00

Yeah, it's a thing you can do. You just have to

2:05

You just have to be flexible with your schedule.

2:08

You usually need to book several months

2:10

in advance. But you can go across the Pacific,

2:12

you can go across the world, and

2:15

you can do round trips. You can do a one

2:17

way slow boat to China kind

2:19

of thing. You just have to be under

2:22

like seventy seven. So

2:24

I think we've got time, That's what I'm saying.

2:27

But if you and I did that, we would

2:29

They wouldn't put us to work swab in the deck or anything,

2:32

but we would very much just be ancillary

2:35

passengers. Because cargo ships

2:38

are this enormous industry. They

2:40

move billions of dollars

2:42

worth of goods and they ship

2:45

anything from you know, like a

2:47

million beanie babies to just like

2:49

imagine a random thing, fidget spinners,

2:52

it doesn't matter. And every

2:54

single day

2:57

cargo vessels are criss crossing these

3:00

sans of hours shipping automobiles,

3:03

shipping cars, and they're

3:05

they're specialized vehicles,

3:07

these vessels that ship these cars. Some

3:10

of them can hold up to what eight

3:13

thousand vehicles, between four

3:15

thousand, eight thousand five vehicles,

3:18

I believe. Yeah, they're enormous. They're like giant

3:20

parking garages. And some of

3:22

the levels can even raise and lower

3:24

in height to accommodate taller and

3:27

shorter vehicles, so they're flexible in that way

3:29

as well. It's very very cool

3:32

vehicles. They're just giant parking lots

3:34

basically, that's yeah, they're floating

3:37

parking lots and they look weird. Could

3:39

see some fascinating videos

3:42

of loading and unloading the trucks, which

3:44

we can explore a little bit. These

3:46

ships move cars

3:48

and trucks to the US.

3:51

They go to different

3:53

ports on the East and West coast, and

3:55

then once they hit the coast here they're

3:58

unloaded and the cars are transported

4:00

either to a dealer or to

4:03

a individual person who

4:05

has purchased a car from abroad or is having

4:07

it shipped and then it just gets

4:09

on a truck where he gets on a rail and

4:12

off to the races. That's right, in fact, just

4:14

down the road in Brunswick, Georgia. I believe

4:17

it's the second busiest port.

4:19

First would be Baltimore. Brunswick

4:22

apparently handles about forty ships

4:25

a month. I didn't

4:27

know that. I wouldn't have even thought that because Brunswick isn't

4:29

really um like Baltimore yet sure

4:31

giant, that makes sense. I would have thought Savannah.

4:34

Savannah handles some of the traffic, but um,

4:37

but Brunswick gets most of the row

4:39

row Oh okay,

4:42

this is the first time we've used this term today.

4:44

What is r row? It's a

4:46

ship used to carry cars are actually

4:49

just vehicles, even semi trucks

4:51

or other heavy machinery. And

4:54

row row stands for roll on roll off, which

4:56

is the way that the vehicles get

4:58

on the ship, so they're not lifted by a crane like

5:01

you're talking about LOLO. There's

5:03

the road road and the LOWLO. I feel

5:05

like a nine year old saying that, but those are accurate

5:08

terms. LOLO is where

5:10

you use a crane to load and unload

5:12

cargo. And a row road is

5:15

cutting out the middleman of the crane. You're able

5:17

to physically move the vehicle on

5:19

its wheels into the vessel. Yeah,

5:22

they just drive them on. What's weird about

5:24

this is that we don't really

5:26

think about the amazing journey

5:28

a lot of these vehicles take before they end up

5:30

in the dealership or double

5:33

parked in front of your favorite grocery

5:35

store. Car Carrier ships are

5:37

these industrial workhorses.

5:40

Some can haul up to eight thousand

5:42

five vehicles, which is

5:44

the highest number I had found. And

5:47

and there was one particular case that really

5:49

stood out to me because I think there's a good,

5:52

uh specific example that we can

5:54

look at to get a snapshot of the industry

5:56

overall, and that is a

5:59

boat called the Andromeda Leader.

6:02

Pretty cool name for a boat, right, Definitely,

6:04

it sounds like a spaceship or something that

6:06

does, and it looks kind of like a spaceship. The

6:08

scale is just enormous. It's

6:11

huge. It has a cargo capacity

6:13

of twenty one, four hundred and

6:15

forty three tons. That

6:17

makes it bigger than some of the largest cruise

6:19

ships on Earth. This one specifically

6:22

is carried of five thousand,

6:24

five hundred vehicles, which is right in that range

6:26

you described earlier. And

6:29

it's built to Panamax

6:32

standards. Yeah, the ship is a thirty

6:34

two meters or one hundred and five ft wide.

6:37

Panamax is the

6:40

dimensions of or it's the requirements

6:43

to go through the Panama Canal,

6:45

and I believe that

6:47

that is a round about the largest that

6:49

could fit through the Panama can

6:51

Hour, at least the old standards. They did update

6:54

these, I believe in two thousand six.

6:57

It's a bit wider. I think a few of the locks

6:59

are now a little wider, but still

7:01

you'd want to you want to fit through any

7:03

of them. Check over

7:05

Panamax and so for

7:07

a while, that was a hard limit on

7:09

even the biggest ships making that kind

7:12

of route. The Andromeda

7:14

Leader, despite sounding like a spaceship,

7:16

as a cargo ship, it moves Toyota,

7:19

Lexus, Scions and so on across

7:21

the Pacific and it gets them to the US.

7:24

So here's the thing. Some

7:26

of us listening may be familiar with

7:28

the former football player

7:30

Joe Montana. The

7:32

name is at least from Joe Montana,

7:35

at least from what I can remember, was

7:38

kind of well known for throwing ugly

7:40

passes that get the job done. In

7:44

the Andromeda Leader and these car

7:47

carrier ships, they're kind of like a Joe

7:49

Montana pass because they

7:51

look ugly as sin. Their

7:54

performance is not you know,

7:56

they're not gonna win a beauty contest. The

7:59

nuts and bolts of the ship and

8:01

its propulsion are I

8:04

guess impressive in the scale, but

8:06

not not as impressive as you might think

8:09

because this is a transport

8:11

craft. It is only supposed

8:13

to move cars without

8:16

wrecking them or sinking itself

8:19

in the process. And if you see it on

8:21

the on the water, it looks goofy because

8:23

it looks like it's standing too

8:25

far out from the water, you

8:27

know what I mean. They're very very

8:29

tall ships. They're like nine or ten stories

8:31

tall, and they're just they're giant

8:34

boxes, so they

8:36

look like, I mean, very few windows.

8:38

Some of them do carry passengers like you alluded

8:41

to earlier, but the ones that are built purely

8:43

for rolling cargo, they

8:45

are just giant boxes purpose

8:48

built to get from point A to

8:50

point B. Yeah, only about fift of

8:52

the hull on the Andromeda Leader is

8:54

actually submerged when it's in the water, and

8:57

the captain to tell you a fund is

8:59

fine. The captain describes the ship as

9:02

a quote floating coconut. It

9:04

sails at seventeen to nineteen

9:07

knots and its journey

9:09

takes it twenty eight days. It leaves

9:11

from a port near Nagoya, Japan,

9:14

where there's an awesome Toyota museum, to

9:17

Jacksonville, Florida, and

9:19

then these cars are unloaded in Jacksonville.

9:21

They're generally meant for the

9:23

Southeast if they're unloaded there, and

9:26

then it goes to Newark where

9:28

it unloads some stuff. And then on its

9:30

return leg as it's as it's

9:32

sailing back home, it stops in Puerto

9:35

Rico to drop off a few more cars,

9:37

and then it goes to Japan

9:40

empty. And I would assume it travels

9:42

a little bit faster without all that weight.

9:44

So that's an example of a specific

9:48

vehicle. But how does the rubber

9:50

hit the road here? How

9:52

how do they get these cars into

9:56

these vessels? There's a science to

9:58

it, arguably all so an

10:00

art. We'll answer that after a

10:02

word from our sponsor, and

10:21

we're back. And as you can imagine, maximizing

10:23

the number of cars the ship can carry while minimizing

10:26

the damage of those cars can be complex,

10:29

which is why they switched to a

10:31

vessel that you can roll the

10:34

cars on and off of. Until of

10:36

the nineteen sixties, they were

10:38

generally using cranes to

10:41

transfer cars off one or two

10:43

at a time. The introduction of car carrier ships

10:45

changed that. Before that, there were amphibious

10:48

vehicles and ships that would transport vehicles

10:50

to shorelines and various

10:53

other places, and ramps would load

10:55

the vehicles on and off of land. So rolloffs

10:58

kind of started long before they

11:00

were introduced in kind of like a commercial sense.

11:02

So the ramps are also incorporated

11:05

on the ships of today. On the

11:07

large rorow ships, they have a one

11:09

giant ramp. It's usually towards the back

11:11

of the ship, the stern, I guess that is what they

11:13

would call that, and cars

11:16

are driven on one by one very

11:19

quickly, though very efficiently. If you've ever

11:21

seen this done, it's a ballet of

11:23

sorts. Yeah, it's fascinating, especially

11:25

because it feels like it's

11:28

like watching a circus performance

11:30

or watching those uh stunts where

11:32

motorcycle motorcycles

11:35

drive in sphere you're

11:37

talking about. Because I keeping the game of

11:39

inches, yeah, it seems

11:42

I keep expecting something

11:44

to wreck you know what I mean. Even the Semis

11:46

when they load them on, they're driving them up the ramps

11:48

that are just wide enough

11:51

to fit these vehicles, so there's

11:53

very little margin of air. They need about

11:55

ten centimeters or about four inches

11:57

of overhead clearance. UM. So

11:59

the high determines which deck they're parked on. Like

12:02

I said before, some of the decks can lower

12:04

and raise. On the Andromeda

12:07

specifically, the shortest deck

12:09

is too short for suv certain

12:11

SUVs, but like you said, two

12:14

of those decks on the Andromeda

12:16

specifically can be raised to a

12:18

pretty big height. It's like sixteen

12:20

feet right, and so, and spacing

12:23

between the cars is just as critical.

12:25

They allow for about thirty centimeters

12:27

or about a foot that separate the front and

12:30

rear bumpers of the car. There's a gap

12:32

of some six inches from side

12:34

to side. If you've ever seen some of the

12:36

catastrophes where the cars of either

12:38

they were not secured correct or

12:41

they had come loose during shipment, as

12:43

you can imagine complete disaster

12:45

for everything around them. So I guess

12:47

parking them close to each other limits that damage

12:49

a little bit. If one car comes loose,

12:51

there's not a lot of room for it to travel, but those

12:54

types of things are rare, but they do happen. So that

12:56

said, the mirrors are folded in to

12:58

make for more room to

13:01

park, and according to a

13:03

guy named Bill Barrett, a national

13:05

logistics manager for Toyota,

13:08

consistent spacing is the key

13:10

here and says, you don't want scratches on bumpers,

13:12

you don't want dense scrape ups and

13:14

so on, so parking

13:17

them this closely doesn't do the

13:19

job by itself. They also lashed

13:22

the vehicles down, and at

13:24

least in the case of Andromeda, they specifically

13:27

use a minimum of four

13:29

nylon straps that are looped

13:32

through these removable hooks

13:34

at the bumpers or on the frame, And

13:36

of course large vehicles need more straps,

13:39

and those parked perpendicular to the

13:41

keel needs more straps,

13:43

and the clasp on the other

13:45

end of the straps are attached to holes

13:48

or rings on the floor and these

13:50

things are super taught.

13:53

They want the cars to barely be able

13:55

to budge at all, because if

13:57

evil one comes loose when they're part that

14:00

closely, it can kind of minimize

14:02

damage to an area. Depend on how rough

14:05

the seas are, how bad the bumps are. But

14:07

on the other hand, if the boat takes a big

14:09

enough knock and there's a loose car, that

14:11

thing could cran everywhere. It could

14:13

be like a ricochet effect. Enough enough

14:16

cars get dislodged. Obviously, cargo

14:18

shifting in a boat like that it's

14:21

not a good thing. So if massive amounts of

14:23

these things are not secured properly,

14:25

it could spell disaster for the ship itself.

14:28

When you were a kid, did you ever do those relay

14:30

things where you have to like run with

14:32

an egg and a spoon, but you can't drop

14:35

the egg. This is to me, this is

14:37

like that if every

14:39

every moment that you ran with the spoon was

14:41

worth millions of dollars, and

14:44

if you drop the egg, uh,

14:48

if you drop the egg, people could die their

14:50

lives on the line. And that

14:52

leads us to something else that

14:54

we we wanted to hit when we talk about

14:56

the amazing journey that your cars

14:59

take a across the world to meet

15:01

you, and that is that this

15:04

kind of endeavor, in this kind

15:06

of trip, not only is it complicated,

15:09

not only is there a lot on the line, but it

15:11

can also be dangerous. We'll tell

15:13

you why afterward. From our sponsor,

15:29

and we are back, Kurt.

15:32

This is something you and I talked about a

15:34

little bit off air, and I think maybe

15:36

we alluded to it in the episode

15:38

already. But there have been a lot of accidents

15:41

with roll on and roll off vessels.

15:44

I see. It turns out that there are quite a few

15:47

row Row vessels that have taken on

15:49

water and capsized or

15:51

actually sank due

15:53

to one problem or another. Problems

15:55

with the loading doors, pretty common problems

15:58

with vehicle decks and other

16:00

things that could happen to any vessel. Yeah,

16:02

I would imagine that when one of these begins

16:05

to take on water, it fills

16:07

those giant cavities fairly quickly,

16:09

and I guess that's why they're so disastrous when

16:11

and if they do have issues where they

16:14

start to leak. Probably one

16:16

of the worst disasters

16:18

in terms of human life was

16:20

the MS Estonia in nineteen

16:23

four. And of course some of

16:25

these are passenger ships as

16:27

well, because I would imagine that a

16:29

lot of the pure car only

16:31

our vehicle only row rows wouldn't

16:33

have too many people on them. That's true, you

16:36

want to minimize the amount of people you

16:38

need on board. But yeah, the Estonia

16:40

was a row row, but it was it

16:43

was a faery, so it had

16:45

a lot of passengers on it. And

16:47

in the sinking of

16:50

the Estonian eight

16:52

hundred and fifty two people lost

16:55

their lives because she listed

16:57

different rowroad accidents. Now, not

16:59

all of these are huge disasters,

17:02

but they do continue to happen. For instance,

17:04

consider the story of the m V Golden

17:07

Bay which capsized on September

17:09

nine, nineteen, and

17:11

that's a that's a car carrier through and through.

17:14

Here's how things went down. It was at

17:16

the port of Brunswick Harbor after

17:19

it unbirthed and was heading towards the Port

17:21

of Baltimore. It had some serious

17:23

listing and they immediately

17:26

closed the port. The United States Coast

17:28

Guards sent a rescue mission to

17:30

find four of the twenty three crew

17:33

members that went missing. They were all

17:35

eventually rescued. They appeared to be

17:37

in okay health and as far as

17:39

they could guess, the incident was probably

17:41

caused by a sudden loss of

17:43

stability. Maybe they had stowed

17:46

the cargoing correctly, or maybe

17:48

the water ballast was miscalculated.

17:51

They were carrying Kia and Hondai cars

17:54

that were meant to be delivered

17:56

in the Middle East Hondai

17:58

executive said, well, there was some

18:01

kind of internal fire and it couldn't be controlled.

18:03

Then it capsized, So people

18:05

still weren't completely

18:07

in agreement on what happened. And can

18:10

you imagine if we were loading those

18:12

cars ourselves, we definitely wouldn't want

18:14

people to say something was wrong with the way

18:16

it was stacked in, you know. And

18:18

although there were no lives

18:21

lost in this accident, obviously

18:23

there's an environmental impact to

18:25

the general or to the surrounding area

18:27

where the accident happens, as well as damage

18:30

to the cargo. You know, all those all

18:32

those cars, and they have a lot of redundant

18:34

safety measures in place. It's

18:37

just that you can't plan for everything,

18:40

you know what I mean. And the weird thing is

18:42

that these sea going pure

18:45

car carriers row row car ferries

18:47

have a reputation on the seas for

18:49

being what's called high risk design.

18:52

They're considered notoriously tough to keep stable,

18:55

and they've actually been referred to before

18:57

as roll on rollovers.

19:02

Yeah, kind of like when Jeep gets

19:04

a hard time, you know, And we know

19:06

that any improperly secured loading

19:08

door can cause the ship to start

19:11

to take on water and sink that

19:13

happened in eight seven with the Herald of

19:15

Free Enterprise. It can also

19:18

this is so weird, but water sloshing

19:21

on the deck can

19:23

make something called the free

19:25

surface effect, and this makes the ship unstable

19:28

and it makes it capsize. Free

19:30

surface water on a deck was

19:34

the likely cause of the nineteen eight

19:36

capsizing of the TV Wahin.

19:39

But you might ask, why would people do this

19:41

if it were so risky? Right, the

19:43

sheer volume that you can ship

19:46

in this manner would justify the

19:48

risk involved. Really, how

19:50

else are you going to get the massive amount

19:52

of vehicles from Japan to

19:54

the United States or from the United States

19:57

to other countries around the world.

19:59

This's just see sames like, it's the most

20:01

cost effective and safe estoption,

20:04

even with the accidents that can happen.

20:06

Yeah, and people are still working on

20:09

and refining the row row idea.

20:11

And there are a couple of different variations of row

20:13

row that you may have heard of.

20:16

One is the l m s

20:19

R Large Medium speed roll

20:21

on roll off, which refers

20:23

to some military craft

20:26

and these are the things that are purposely

20:28

built to carry you know, armored vehicles

20:31

other military cargo. Then there's

20:33

the con row. The con row

20:35

is a hybrid of the row road and container

20:38

ship. Conrow ships

20:40

are pretty cool because they can carry a

20:43

you guessed it, combination of containers

20:45

along with heavy equipment, oversized

20:47

cargo, and cars so well,

20:50

plenty of cars are shipped in containers

20:52

as well. It's a very common way for individuals.

20:54

The ship we even talk about that, Yeah, lay

20:57

it on me. Usually when you would want to ship

20:59

a car over these most people

21:01

probably think of enlisting the services

21:03

of a company that would use just a

21:06

giant shipping container to haul

21:08

the car in and put it on just your standard

21:11

container ship. And normally they can get one or

21:13

two vehicles depending on the size of the car into

21:15

these containers. They build wooden ramps

21:18

and whatnot to elevate

21:20

one car over the other if the size is right.

21:22

Um, but it's a fairly fairly safe,

21:25

tried and true way to ship a car. It's just

21:27

a little bit more invasive. There's a little bit if

21:29

you're concerned about your vehicle getting scratched

21:32

because there's a lot of handling when you're shipping in

21:34

a cargo container. It's a lot

21:36

less if you're rolling the car on and off

21:38

the ship a lot less can happen to the car

21:41

that way. When you ship in a container. If they're

21:43

going to stack the cars, they would have to go around

21:45

your car and build a Basically,

21:48

it's a wooden structure around your

21:50

car to elevate the other car

21:52

above it. So obviously things can happen

21:54

there, but it was a pretty neat option

21:57

to explore though. If you're looking to ship your

21:59

car, and you can find plenty of people

22:02

and outfits online that

22:04

have pretty good reps

22:06

that will give you a quote, I suggest

22:09

shopping around if you're read

22:11

reviews. Of course, always read

22:13

the reviews, and then if you're

22:15

able to see what kind of shipping

22:19

vessel they're going to use, let

22:21

me know. If they've got some extra extra

22:24

seats. Maybe this would be the time

22:26

I can ride along with your

22:28

car across the high seas.

22:31

So this concludes today's episode,

22:34

but not our show. Have you ever

22:36

worked on a cargo ship? Have you ever shipped

22:38

a car across the planet?

22:41

If so, let us know. You can find us

22:43

on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter where

22:45

we are Car Stuff HSW

22:47

on Facebook and Twitter, and The Car

22:50

Stuff Show dot Com is where

22:52

you can find us on the worldwide Web. With

22:54

every single episode that we have ever

22:57

ever done. Kurt Scott and

22:59

I just going back, oh

23:02

gosh, going back further than I would

23:04

like to admit. As always,

23:06

folks, thank you so much for tuning

23:08

in and we look forward to hearing from you.

23:11

Tune in for our next episode.

23:13

Thanks to everyone. Car

23:16

Stuff is a production of I Heeart Radio's How Stuff

23:18

Works. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,

23:21

visit the i heart Radio app, Apple

23:23

Podcasts, or wherever you

23:25

listen to your favorite shows.