FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What is roro ship?
Roro ship is a vessel which is designed to carry selfpropelled or towable units like cars, trucks, trailers and construction machines. Ro-ro (roll-on / roll-out) type cargo can be loaded and discharged with the built-in roro ramp. Vessel can have more that one ramp at bow, stern or sides for flexibility at different berthing conditions.

What is roro cargo ?
Below are described as roro cargo:

  1. Selfpropelled vehicles and machinery
    Wheeled or crawler. Excavators, loaders, trucks, buses, cars, tractors and harvesters.

  2. Towable vehicles and machines
    Trailers, mobile concrete plants, mobile asphalt plants, boat or yacht on a trailer…etc can be loaded on a roro vessel by a tractor.

  3. Static cargo on roll (mafi) trailer
    Although it is not new, result of reducing car sales after the global economical crisis roro carriers had more interest in the static cargo to utilize the available space and increased the roll ( mafi ) trailer usage in their fleet. Today, many roro and carcarrier operators offer mafi service for shipping the static cargo. Mafi trailer is a better alternative for a flatrack container. Mafi trailers have types with different lenght and weight capacity. Mafi trailers can carry OOG (Our of Gauge) and overweighted cargo like boats, yachts, transformers, locomotives and rail cars. Heavy static units are loaded on the roll trailers at the terminal, after the L/S/D (Lashing-Securing-Dunneging) application a special designed tractor tow the roll trailer inside the ship over the roro ramp and technicians tie the unit to the fixing rings which are available at the floor of the ship’s hold.

What are the advantages of roro shipping?

  • Low damage risk during loading and discharging
    Most of the cargo damages happen during loading and discharging by crane. This risk is avoided simply by not using cranes at roro shipping.
  • Low loading and discharging costs
    Crane cost is the major part of the loading and discharge charges. The amount changes from one port to another. At many cases the charges are not clear and customers face unexpected costs especially for the heavy units.
  • No need to disconnect batteries or empty the fuel tank
    Roro vessels are equipped with advanced fire prevention systems.
  • Fast load and discharge times
  • Fast, easy and low costed lashing and securing
  • Cargo handling by crew with roro expertise

What are the types of roro vessels?

  1. Ropax (Roll on / roll off passanger) vessel:
    Ropax is a ship which passangers can travel with their vehicles. Mostly used at short sea shipping in Europe and at other places with island connection.
  2. Conro (Container Roro) vessel:
    It is a vessel which can carry containers and roro cargo. General practice is loading containers to the celluar slots available on the weather deck and loading the roro cargo into the hold via roro ramp.
  3. Rolo (Roll on / lift off) vessel:
    Both roro and static cargo can be loaded by the roro ramp and crane onto rolo vessels.
  4. Carcarrier vessel:
    Carcarrier vessels look like floating autoparks and designed to carry big quantities (4000 – 8000 CEU) of new cars on a single sailing between the continents. As a result of globalisation automotive producers needed a low costed solution to ship cars to global markets and the first carcarrier was builded in 1973. PCC (Pure Car Carrier), PCTC (Pure Car Truck Carrier) and LCTC (Large Car Truck Carrier) are the types of car carrier vessels.

How to calculate seafreight for a roro cargo?

Roro shipping companies use different methods to calculate roro seafreight.

  1. W/M (Weight or measurement)
    Density of the cargo is considered in this method. The cargo volume in CBM and the cargo weight in metric ton is compared. W/M unit price is multiplied with the highest value.

    Example:
    Seafreight : USD 35 / WM

    Cargo volume / weight : 70 CBM / 8 MTS
    Total sefreight : 70 X 35 = USD 2450

    Cargo volume / weight : 10 CBM / 12 MTS
    Total seafreight : 12 X 35 = USD 420

    Above mentioned W/M ratio is only for seafreight. Different W/M ratios are used for land and airfreight.

    Although we calculate the W/M seafreight like above, almost all roro cargo have low density and cargo volume in CBM determine the total freight cost. The reason behind is that cargo volume is calculated with maximal length, width and height values. This practice leaves large spaces over and under the vehicle or machine which are included in the total volume.

  2. L/M (Lane meter)
    This method is specific for calculating roro seafreight. 1 LM is the area with 2 meters width and 1 meter length (2 square meters). Considering that base cargo of a roro vessel are the vehicles (car, pick-up, minibus..etc) with width not more than 2 meters and those vehicles are stored at the terminal or in the ship’s hold in lanes, LM calculation method may be the easiest and righteous way to calculate seafreight for those standard cargo. In this method, total seafreight is calculated by simply multiplying the LM rate with total length of the cargo.

    As exceptional case, some shortsea operators use LM method for trailers or other roro cargo with width more than 2 meters.

  3. Volume (CBM):
    Seafreight is calculated over volume in cubic meter.
  4. Area (sqm):
    Seafreight is calculated over the area occupied in squaremeters.
  5. Lumpsum:
    Seafreight is offered as 1 lumpsum rate over the total or unit cargo.

What are the terminal and agent charges at roro shipments?

Basic shipping:

  • Documentation
  • Bill of lading fee for exports, Delivery Order fee of imports
  • Loading and discharging costs (included in the seafreight at FAS/FAS shipment)
  • Port storage

Multicarrier shipment with transshipment:
When cargo is transshipped to another company’s vessel at same terminal:

  • Delivery order fee for arriving vessel
  • Discharging cost
  • Transshipment port terminal charges and storage
  • Connecting vessel loading cost
  • Connecting vessel bill of lading fee
  • Transit expenses

Below additional charges are applicable when cargo is transshipped to another company’s vessel which departures from another terminal:

  • Delivery cost from arriving terminal to departuring terminal
  • Departure terminal entry fee
  • Departure terminal charges and storage

Value added services:

  • L/S/D (Lashing/Securing/Dunneging) on roll (mafi) trailer
  • Supervision at loading and discharging
  • Taking photos and sending to customer real time