Car shipping to Australia from the UK

One company at both ends of the world

We collect the car in the UK on our own enclosed trailer — one car aboard, one crew, no depot in between. We carry it to the departure port ourselves. We arrange and manage the sea freight; the vessel belongs to the shipping line, not to us, and we will not pretend otherwise. While the car is at sea we hold the file. Then we travel out and handle the delivery at the Australian end personally: receiving the car, seeing it through release, and completing the final road leg to the address you have given us.

The usual structure on this route is a chain. A haulier hands to a freight forwarder, who hands to an agent, who hands to a local delivery firm you will never speak to. Every link is a place where accountability thins out. When a sailing moves or an inspection throws up a query, you find yourself chasing four companies for one answer, and each of them can point at the next.

Here you speak to the person who strapped the car down in Britain, and to the same person who unstraps it in Australia. Every one of our worldwide movements is built that way, because it is the only structure that lets one person answer for the whole journey.

The UK leg: collected from a door, not a compound

Your car is collected from wherever it currently sits — home, showroom, storage unit, auction house or workshop. Never a terminal, never a marshalling yard where a stranger drives it up a ramp.

It travels in a Brian James Race Transporter 7 enclosed tri-axle trailer behind a Porsche Cayenne. The bed tilts electrically and the rear door is powered, so the approach angle stays shallow and long splitters clear it without a plank under each corner. A synthetic-rope winch takes anything that will not or should not be driven. Restraint is by sleeves over the tyres — the straps never touch a wishbone, a sill or a painted surface, and the suspension stays loaded as the manufacturer intended. A daylight roof panel means the car is inspected in natural light rather than by torch.

Before the ramp goes down we complete a signed photographic condition report, and the same report is repeated at handover. That document is the spine of the whole movement, because it travels with the car and is the reference point at the far end.

This is our standard enclosed car transport work, run as door-to-door delivery — the difference on an Australian booking is simply that the door at the far end is on another continent.

The sea leg, and what happens while the car is on it

Cars of the kind we move normally cross in a container rather than loose on a vehicle deck, secured at wheel level and sealed for the voyage. Which vessel and which service applies to your booking depends on sailing schedules and the departure port we use. Transit is measured in weeks rather than days, and the honest figure is the one on your booking rather than an average lifted off a competitor's page.

Before it goes in, the car is prepared: fuel run down, alarms and trackers dealt with so nothing drains a battery mid-ocean, and the cabin and boot emptied. Loose personal effects are generally not carried inside a vehicle on this route, and what may travel with it is confirmed on your booking rather than assumed.

Through all of it there is one file, held by us. You are not forwarded to a shipping desk that has never seen your car.

Biosecurity: Australia expects a car that is clean underneath

Australia's border controls on imported vehicles are among the strictest anywhere, and the reason is agricultural rather than automotive. The concern is soil, seed, plant matter, insect casings and animal residue arriving on the underside of a vehicle. A car that presents dirty is not waved through; it is held for cleaning and re-inspection, at your cost and, more painfully, at the cost of weeks.

Presenting a car properly means far more than a wash. The areas that fail inspection are the ones nobody sees:

• Chassis rails, subframes, suspension arms and the inner faces of wheel arches
• Tyre treads, wheel wells and the spare wheel tub
• Engine bay, bulkhead and radiator matrix, where seeds collect
• Boot carpet, underfelt, roof rails and any roof box or fitted luggage

Classics are the ones that catch owners out. Forty years of underseal, road film and a slight oil weep will hold organic matter that a jet wash simply glazes over. The car needs steam or pressure cleaning to bare, dry surfaces — and then it must stay clean, which means it should not be driven on a wet road afterwards. We load it onto the trailer clean and it does not touch the ground again until it is in the container. Our guide to moving a classic covers the mechanical preparation that sits alongside this.

Import approval and the paperwork that travels with the car

An import approval must be in place before the vehicle arrives in Australia — not applied for once it is on the water. There are several routes to one, and which applies depends on the car and on your circumstances: a personal import connected to a relocation sits in a different category from an older or collectible vehicle, and the evidence each requires differs. That is a matter for you or your customs agent.

On the British side there is an export declaration, the bill of lading raised against the booking, the V5C and clear proof of ownership. Where the car is going out temporarily — to an event, a concours or a historic race meeting, and coming home afterwards — a carnet is the document commonly used for that kind of temporary movement, and it changes what happens at both borders. Evidence of the biosecurity clean is worth keeping to hand as well.

We do not quote duty rates, tax percentages or eligibility outcomes on a web page, because they turn on the specific car and the specific importer and getting that wrong costs you money. What we do is carry the car and the documents that travel with it.

Arrival: we come out and finish the job ourselves

This is the part that separates a managed movement from a booked freight slot. When the car lands, we are there.

We travel out to receive it — through inspection and release at the port, then the final road leg to the delivery address, whether that is a house in the Melbourne suburbs, a collection in Perth or a workshop outside Sydney. The vehicle used for that last stage is arranged under our direction and specified on your booking before departure.

At handover the condition report is repeated in full, photographed and signed — by us, and by whoever takes the keys. It is compared against the report taken on your driveway weeks earlier. If anything has moved between the two, the person who signed both is standing in front of you rather than at the end of an email chain in a different hemisphere.

That is the whole argument for doing it this way. One firm holds the car, the paperwork, the sea booking and the delivery. There is a single number to ring — +44 7308 614008 — and the person answering it has seen your car with their own eyes. No broker chain, no being passed sideways, no discovering at the port that the local agent's remit ended at the gate.

Relocations, classics and the cars that make this trip

Two situations account for most of this work. The first is a permanent move: a family relocating to Australia who will not sell a car they have owned for fifteen years and cannot replace at any sensible price out there. The second is a collector's car going to a new owner, a collection or an event — the sort of vehicle where the shipping cost is a rounding error against the value and the only thing that matters is that it arrives exactly as it left.

Both reward the same approach: enclosed from the door, one crew, and somebody accountable at the far end. A car that has been sitting in a garage for a decade needs different handling from one driven daily, which is why the winch and the tilt bed matter more here than on a domestic run — nothing has to be started, revved or coaxed up a steep ramp to get it aboard. The same care we apply to classic car transport in Britain applies to the whole journey.

Rates for Australia are quoted per booking rather than off a table, because port, sailing, vehicle and season all move the number. The estimate calculator on our homepage covers UK and European road movements only. For Australia, send us the car, the collection address and the destination, and we will price the whole thing properly.