Worldwide car shipping, managed end to end from the UK

How a worldwide movement is actually structured

Every international move splits into road legs and a freight leg. SKORTA drives the road legs. The car is collected from wherever it sits — a house, a showroom, a storage unit, an auction hall — loaded into the enclosed trailer, and carried to the departure port or airport. Nothing about that part changes because the car is leaving the country.

The crossing itself is operated by a shipping line or an airline. A trailer cannot be driven across an ocean, and SKORTA owns no ships and no aircraft. What SKORTA owns is the responsibility for the whole movement: the freight leg is booked, arranged and managed by us — space, loading, seals, documentation, and the schedule the rest of the plan hangs on.

Then the part most companies quietly hand to a stranger. We travel out to the destination, receive the car at the port or airport, check it against the photographic condition report signed in Britain, and complete the final delivery to the address ourselves. One company from the door here to the door there. No broker chain, no agent you have never spoken to holding your keys six thousand miles away, no gap where accountability goes missing. The same enclosed transport standard applies at both ends, and the same person answers the phone throughout.

Europe is different: we drive the whole way

Anywhere reachable by road has no freight leg at all, and that is worth saying plainly before we discuss containers and aircraft. For Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany or Spain, the Cayenne and the trailer board the Channel crossing with your car inside and roll off the other side still loaded.

The trailer that leaves your drive is the trailer that arrives. There is no depot in Kent, no transhipment onto a European sub-contractor's multi-car deck, no compound where the car sits for four days waiting for a load to fill. The crew that strapped it down is the crew that unstraps it, in a village outside Geneva or a paddock at Le Mans.

That matters more than it sounds. Handling is where the risk sits, not the driving — every extra loading and unloading is another chance for a strap in the wrong place or a low splitter on a steep ramp. Removing the hand-offs removes most of the risk. It also removes the phone calls where nobody can tell you exactly where your car is.

If your destination is in Europe, read the European car transport page rather than this one. The structure is simpler, and so is the price.

Sea freight: a dedicated container, not RoRo

Most cars leaving the continent go by sea, and the first decision is the one that matters most.

RoRo — roll-on, roll-off — means the car is driven aboard a vessel built like a floating multi-storey car park and parked among hundreds of others. It is the cheapest way to move a car across water, and for a robust daily driver going out with a relocation it is a reasonable trade. It also means shared open decks, port staff driving a car they have never met, salt air, and no control over what parks beside it. For anything with value, history or a paint finish you would notice, it is the wrong answer.

A dedicated container is the alternative. The car goes into a sealed 20ft or 40ft container on its own, secured over the tyres rather than by anything touching the chassis — the same principle we use on the trailer — and chocked low. Nothing else travels in that box. It is opened at the far end with us standing there. Shared, or groupage, containers cost less but mean waiting for the container to fill and sharing it with cars strapped down by someone else.

Sailing frequency and passage time vary enormously by lane. A run to the United States keeps a very different clock from one to Singapore, and season affects both.

Air freight, and when it earns the money

Air is quicker and considerably more expensive. It earns that money when the date is the whole point: a concours lawn on a fixed Sunday, a race weekend that will not be rescheduled, an auction consignment deadline, or an owner who has just moved abroad and wants the car in the garage this week rather than next season.

Cars fly in the hold of a freighter, loaded low onto a pallet, strapped, shrouded and netted. Vehicles are treated as dangerous goods in air freight because of the fuel and the battery, so there are firm rules about how much fuel stays in the tank and how the battery is isolated. Electric and hybrid cars carry their own state-of-charge conditions. Those requirements are set by the carrier, not by us, and are confirmed for your car before anything is booked.

The second argument for air is exposure. Days in transit are days out of your control, and air cuts them to a fraction of a sailing. Gulf moves are where owners weigh this most often; the numbers for Dubai and Abu Dhabi can make air look reasonable against a container that spends weeks at sea. Rates move with fuel, route and aircraft availability, so figures are quoted live rather than from a table.

The paperwork, in plain terms

International movements run on documents, and the useful thing to know is which ones and why, not the legal detail.

For road movements between countries a CMR consignment note travels with the vehicle: it records who handed it over, what was handed over and who received it. Leaving the UK requires an export declaration; arriving anywhere requires an import entry made by a customs agent in that country. Temporary movements — a car going out to an event and coming home again — commonly use a carnet, so the car is treated as a visitor rather than a permanent import.

What you will normally be asked for:

• the V5C or equivalent title document, and proof you own the car
• the purchase invoice or a valuation, depending on the destination
• photographs of the VIN and the car as loaded
• identity documents for the exporter and the consignee
• keys, and any immobiliser or tracker details the handling crew will need

Duty, tax and eligibility rules differ by country and by the age and specification of the car — Japan and Canada do not treat the same vehicle the same way. Which rules apply to your car and route is a matter for you or your customs agent.

What does not change, wherever the car is going

Destinations change. The method does not.

One car per journey on the road legs. Not one car among six on a transporter deck, waiting while five other collections are made. One crew, from the moment your car is loaded in Britain to the moment it is handed over abroad — the same person at both ends, which is the entire reason a worldwide move with us feels different from a broker's.

A signed photographic condition report at collection and again at delivery. On a domestic job that is good practice. On an international one it does real work: it brackets the freight leg with dated, agreed evidence of exactly how the car looked before it left your hands and how it looked when it came back into them.

Collection from a door, never a terminal. You do not drive your own car to a compound in Southampton and give the keys to a stranger behind a hatch. And loading is done properly — electric tilt bed, powered rear door, synthetic-rope winch for anything that will not start, wheel-sleeve straps over the tyres only, low-profile chocks, and a daylight roof so the work happens in light rather than by torch. Whether the car is going to Berkshire or Brisbane, the first ten minutes look identical.

Who moves cars this way

Four kinds of owner, mostly.

Collectors relocating. A move abroad rarely involves one car, and it never involves a car the owner is relaxed about. These movements are planned months out, often staged, and the value of a single point of contact rises with every additional car.

Buyers importing. Something bought at auction in Europe, found through a specialist dealer, or tracked down after a long search. The purchase was the difficult part; the owner does not want the delivery to become a second project. Exporters have the mirror problem — a car sold to a buyer in Melbourne or Osaka who will judge you on how it arrives, which is why Australia and Japan feature so often.

Event and concours cars. Fixed dates, no tolerance for a missed sailing, and usually a return leg to plan at the same time.

And owners who have simply had a bad experience. A car that arrived with marks nobody would own, or a movement where four companies were involved and none of them was answering. If that is you, the question worth asking any international carrier is a short one: who, by name, will be standing at the destination when the container is opened? Ours has an answer. Call +44 7308 614008 or write to info@skorta.co.uk and we will structure the movement properly before you commit to anything.