Does anyone know what happens the minute the cars come off the assembly line? Are the test driven? How long do they sit in japan and on the ship? What about transport across the US?

And how are they protected?

Thanks for your help!

 

I don't know the process for cars from Asia, but I did spend 2 months on a ship delivering BMW's, RangeRovers, and Mercedes from Europe to the USEC, and I imagine the process is similar.

Cars are delivered to the ports from the factories, generally on rail, but possibly by truck. BMW uses a wax coating over the entire car (except small scraped off area on windsheild to see) for protection and if even the wax gets scratched we had to fill out a damage report. Mercedes and Range Rover used static adhesive plastic covering major body panels. Interiors were generally pretty well covered with plastic.

Local Stevedores drive the cars off the trains and into very large parking lots, and then later onto the ships. They drive extremely fast and as a crewmember on the ship, it was our job to direct traffic to make sure they didn't have an accident. They park the cars then get picked up in trucks to go back to the parking lot and bring more cars. The crewmembers onboard the ship then attach straps to the tow-points on the cars so they don't move around durring the voyage. We also checked every single strap at least once a day for the entire ocean crossing. The paperwork that has to be filled out if any damage occurs really sucks so the crew members are pretty interested in not letting a car get loose, but that certainly didn't stop them from getting in the cars and revving the M5's to redline. The atlantic crossing took about 14 days, and I believe a Pacific crossing takes about 20. LA/Longbeach is by far the biggest terminal on the USWC so I imagine almost all the cars go there, except some local cars for the Pacific Northwest.

Local Stevedores then drive the cars off the ship after the crew untie the cars and the process is reveresed. They inevitably then are put on trains and shipped to several other central locations. Trucks then distribute to local dealers.

I don't know specifics for Hondas, but this is the general process for overseas shipments. In some cases cars are put in containers and shipped that way, but it is more expensive and generally used for small production runs. This may be the case for the somewhat limited S2000, but I doubt it.

 

haven't you seen star trek? they put it in the teleportal thing and up and away they go...

 

Wow, awesome 1st day post, ibsailin! Never really knew how cars were shipped overseas. . .

 

 

Energize!

 

Well, beam me up! I got some other stuff I need to teleport too....

No really, thanks for the reply, that really helps clarify the process. I didn't realize that there was so much process involved in checking the cars on transit. Too bad they sometimes rev the engines, but nothing we can do about it.

That was a great post, if you know any more I'd love to hear it....

 

Yeah, I am sure reving the engine wasn't too good for it, but damb did those M5's sound great. Mercedes had a system to deter this in that for their cars with rear mounted batteries, they had a shutoff switch in the trunk. I imagine this was to ensure that the car wouldn't arrive with a dead battery, but the extra hasle did keep the guys from listeining to music and starting the engines. They still got in and looked around, but not for as long.

It was certainly interesting fun to learn about that side of the auto industry. It wasn't what I was there for (supposed to be learning about the marine industry), but in reality, it was more interesting to see the cars.

As a hint to any who ever think of shipping their cars overseas, I would highly suggest ensuring that solid toe-points are installed (required for all foreign built cars, but rarely found on US cars) as otherwise we were forced to strap to the wheels or frame. Strapping to the wheels wasn't too bad, but did sometimes scuff the wheel a bit and on some cars (Army personal vehicles being sent to germany usually) where we had to strap to the frames, the strapping would be pressing up against the bumper causing minor damage. We did our best to minimize damage, but given the choice of some minor scuffing or having a car break loose, we chose to put straps as securely as possible and screw the wheel or bumper.

We did have a BMW rear end come free a bit. We found it quickly durring cargo check and lifted the two matching beamers appart. Luckily, because the cars were identical and the drivers are very good at parking very uniformly, the two fenders mated perfectly and the only damage was some scratched protective wax coating. Still, it took 4 of us about 3 hours to take all the photos, write up the reports, and then meet with the BMW rep at the port to explain the situation.

Some of you may have heard about the car carrier that sank in the English Channel a year or so ago. There were some good pictures on CNN.com showing the Home Depot orange ship floating just below the surface. That was the sistership to the boat I was on.

Anyway, glad I can help educate you all on some of the finer points of Marine transportation.