An interesting aspect of the international car shipping industry is that there is a lack of available space on the West Coast of the US for roll-on-roll-off shipping. The larger ports like to major on container shipping and there is a shortage of space at those ports for RORO facilities. That might explain why Chrysler opted to use the secondary port of Grays Harbor, WA for exporting to the Pacific.
Mahindra, the newest member of the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers; the US importers trade group, may have some problems offloading their new trucks and SUVs into the West Coast and may wind up looking at East Coast ports as an alternative. Charleston, who lost a BMW contract to Baltimore recently, might be a viable alternative for the new kid on the block to be shipping cars and trucks into.
Even if there is a shortage of places to store cars on-site at major ports, there isn’t a shortage of RORO vessels; a number of new ships will be added to the fleet in the next few years. Long-tern contracts that are the norm in the car-shipping business has shielded the ROROs from the lousy shipping market of 2008 and 2009; new contracts might not be as lucrative if there is an excess of ships available.
In the future, firms might also look at container-shipping cars rather than the traditional RORO approach. There is an increasing numbers of container autoracks that can go from train to ship, and if the lion-share of port space is becoming devoted to containerized shipping, the auto industry might want to join the container party.
Sources: http://www.joc.com/node/416467
http://www.canadiandriver.com/2010/02/03/i...association.htm
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