How car shipping out of the USA works, what sets the bill, and why nothing sails inside 72 hours

The four ways international car shipping crosses an ocean

RoRo is published from $900, a sole-use container from $3,000, and the gap between them buys space for belongings. Four methods carry a car across an ocean, and the choice is made for you more often than not: a car that does not run cannot use the cheapest of them, and a car with household goods inside cannot use it either.

Roll-on/roll-off works the way its name says: the car is driven up a ramp onto a vessel deck built for wheels, lashed down and driven off at the other end. RoRo sailings are frequent on established trades, loading is quick, and the price reflects that the car occupies deck space rather than a box.

Container shipping puts the same car inside a steel box, either alone or with two to four other vehicles sharing the space. A shared container splits the cost of the box across those cars and adds waiting time, because the container leaves when it is full or when the consolidator decides it leaves. A sole-use container leaves when you say so and takes whatever legally fits around the vehicle.

Vendor bands for a container or a RoRo booking are published ranges, not paid medians. Every figure in the table above comes from vendor pages that ranked for these queries when SeaRates read them on 07/26/2026, and not one of those pages states which shipments its range describes. Treat the table as the shape of the market, then get a written quote for your car and your ports. The published span runs 6.1 times from the RoRo floor to the sole-use ceiling for one and the same service, and 27 of 47 pages in this corpus compare the methods without dating a single band.

The published bands behind that table, and what sits outside every one of them, are broken down in what RoRo shipping actually costs and what the band leaves out.

The destination country moves the bill more than the method does

International car shipping quotes drift by hundreds of dollars between methods and by thousands between countries, and the second number is the one that decides whether the move is worth making. Twelve of the 18 pages that quote a price never name a destination country at all.

These four things change the moment a destination is named:

• Import duty and taxes. Charged on a customs value the destination country sets, not on what you paid.
• Age and emissions limits. Some countries refuse vehicles above a stated model age outright; others tax them heavily.
• Drive-side rules. Left-hand-drive cars are barred from some markets and right-hand-drive from others.
• Service availability. Not every port has RoRo calls, and where it does not, the container price is the price.

Only 10 of 47 pages in this corpus tie price to the destination country in any way. The rest publish a national average for a service whose cost is set abroad, which is how a reader ends up with a number that cannot be wrong because it was never about anywhere.

Destination-side charges — terminal handling, documentation and the local agent — are published at $500 to $1,500 on top of the ocean freight, and duty sits outside even that. Country-level admissibility rules, duty and port charges belong on corridor pages SeaRates has not published yet, and saying otherwise would point you at a page that does not exist. What the destination adds on top of the ocean rate is itemised line by line under duty, port charges and the rest of the delivered total.

Marine cover, and the General Average bill nobody expects

International car shipping prices cover separately from freight, as a percentage of what you declare the car is worth: all-risk runs about 1.75% of declared value, and General Average can bill an undamaged car. The three products sold under the insurance heading differ enormously in what they actually do.

A deductible around $500 is standard on all-risk cover for a shipped vehicle, and one source in this corpus gives a wider band of 1.5% to 2.5%. Declared value is what the payout is calculated against, so a car declared below market to save premium is a car underpaid after a loss.

General Average spreads one casualty across every cargo owner aboard. When a ship is grounded, catches fire or jettisons cargo to survive, maritime law lets the carrier declare General Average and require every shipper on that voyage to contribute proportionally to the loss — including the owner of an untouched car in a container three decks down. Release of the cargo can be conditioned on a bond or a cash deposit against that contribution, and the case can take years to settle.

Marine cover for a shipped car is mentioned by 14 of 47 pages in this corpus, and 5 name a rate as a percentage. General Average appears in two of the AI answers generated for these queries and almost nowhere in the organic results, which is a strange gap for the one mechanism that can produce a bill without anything happening to your car.

How long it takes, and why nothing sails inside 72 hours

Ten of 47 pages quote a vehicle transit time in days, and none says where the number came from. The floor under every schedule is regulatory rather than nautical: the 72-hour filing sets the earliest legal sailing, and vessel schedules add to that floor without ever subtracting from it.

A realistic timeline for a car stacks four intervals. Paperwork collection takes as long as the slowest third party — a lienholder release can take a week. The 72-hour federal window starts only when the filing is complete and the car is available for presentation. Sailing frequency then decides how long the car waits at the terminal, and that varies from a few days on a busy Atlantic trade to a month on a thin one. Ocean transit and destination clearance close the chain.

SeaRates has not measured a median transit for vehicle corridors, so no transit promise is repeated on this page. Vendors publish confident day counts for routes they serve, and those counts may well be accurate; without a sample and a date attached, there is no way for a reader to tell an operating average from a marketing one.

Booking a vehicle around the constraint is straightforward once the constraint is visible. File early rather than fast, treat the sailing date as the output of the paperwork rather than the input to it, and ask which specific vessel and voyage the booking is against — a booking without a vessel name is a place in a queue.

The same four intervals, and what each one actually depends on:

The table deliberately carries no day counts of its own. A transit figure without a sample and a date behind it is a marketing number, and this page does not have the sample.

Broker, forwarder, NVOCC, vessel operator: who owes you what

International car shipping brings four distinct parties into one transaction, and 43 of 47 pages name companies without explaining which party is which. The difference between the roles is not marketing — it decides who is liable when the car is damaged, delayed or held.

An NVOCC issues its own bill of lading and takes carrier liability with it, which is why the entity on that document matters more than the brand on the website. A USDOT number covers the truck leg inside the USA and says nothing about the ocean leg; a company can hold a perfectly valid credential for a service it is not performing.

The $75,000 NVOCC bond is a shared pool across all claimants, not insurance on one car. When an operator fails owing money to forty customers at once, that pool divides among them, and the arithmetic gets unpleasant quickly. Vessel operators calling US ports on the car trades — Wallenius Wilhelmsen, Höegh Autoliners, Grimaldi and Atlantic Container Line, Sallaum Lines — sell space to intermediaries rather than to individuals, which is why almost every retail booking runs through one of the first three roles in the table.

Comparing the intermediaries themselves is a separate exercise from understanding the roles: who ships vehicles from the USA and what they charge is where that comparison lives.

Two separate 72-hour duties, and the paperwork each one wants

One filing goes to Census through AES, the other puts the title and the car in front of CBP. Five of 47 pages mention the export filing at all, nine mention the title requirement, and not one page in this corpus separates the two obligations — which matters, because they are owed to different agencies and satisfied by different acts.

Census requires EEI through AES 72 hours before export for all used self-propelled vehicles regardless of destination, value or condition. First-time and one-time exporters are not excused; a gift, a project car and a total loss headed for parts are all covered by the same sentence.

CBP separately requires the documents and, for a vessel export, the car itself to be presented at the port of exportation at least 72 hours before it leaves. Land border exports differ: documents go in 72 hours ahead, and the vehicle is presented at the time of exportation. Port Directors set where and when presentation happens.

The document set for a vehicle is specific. The owner presents the original certificate of title, or a certified copy, plus two complete copies of whichever is used. Where a lien or a lease exists, the lienholder or lessor must supply a separate signed letter on its own letterhead carrying a full description of the car, the VIN, contact numbers and a date. Foreign-titled cars need the original proof of ownership with an English translation and two complete copies. CBP treats the title as the core requirement regardless of the car's value, physical condition or whether it runs.

Self-propelled vehicle covers far more than the word "car": automobiles, trucks, tractors, buses, motorcycles, motor homes, self-propelled agricultural machinery, construction equipment and special-use equipment — anything running on land except rail. Motorcycles, ATVs and snowmobiles fall under the same 72-hour regime.

In-bond, carnet and Temporary Importation Bond entries are exempt from both the filing and the presentation, along with a non-resident's one-year personal exemption. Everything else is inside the rule, and a shipment that misses the window does not sail — the vessel leaves, the car stays, and the storage clock starts.

Sources

• U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Exporting Used Self-Propelled Vehicles — EEI through AES 72 hours before export for all used self-propelled vehicles regardless of destination, value or condition; references 78 FR 16366, 15 CFR 30.2(a)(1)(iv)(H) and 15 CFR 30.4(b)(5). Page last modified 01/07/2026, read 07/26/2026.
• U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Exporting a Motor Vehicle — Interpretation and Application of 19 CFR Part 192 — definitions, ownership documentation, 72-hour presentation for vessel and air exports. Page last modified 12/03/2024, read 07/26/2026.
• Federal Maritime Commission, OTI search application — 3,273 licensed ocean freight forwarder records and 9,030 NVOCC records. Read 07/26/2026.
• Published vendor ranges for RoRo, shared container, sole-use container and air freight, collected from the AI answers and organic results generated for these 21 queries. Read 07/25-26/2026.
• SeaRates measurement of 47 pages across 21 cluster queries, 07/26/2026. Full-text sweep, 120-word minimum; a price counts as dated only where the text ties it to a period explicitly, and a bare four-digit year beside a price is not counted because it is usually a model year.

Corrections to any figure on this page: [email protected].