When shipping your car overseas you can become overburdened with many things to do to get ready for the shipment, but you can help solve this by just following 5 easy steps through the process of getting your car prepared for its overseas journey.
1. Make sure that the battery is fully charged
Making sure that the battery is fully charged is a good place to start when getting your vehicle ready for the shipment, as the vehicle needs to be able to start and then be driven on and off of the carrier at both ports, this step is even more important when your vehicle is going to have a transit time of a week or longer.
2. Remove personal belongings
There are several reasons when shipping your vehicle overseas not to keep personal belongings within the vehicle:
- If the items within your vehicle are heavy or large, it can put your vehicle and car carrier over the weight limit, which can result in fines and delays for your shipment.
- Since your vehicle must be unlocked at all times for security issues you do run the risk of your items being stolen from your car while it is on the carrier.
- It is also against DOT regulations to keep items within your vehicle when it is being shipped via carrier.
3. Wash your car
While you may think that washing your car before it heads off for a journey abroad is a waste of time, but washing your car prior to it being shipped off is a way to make it easier for you to be able see clearly whether there are any scratches/dings or dents which will allow you to easily counter any disputes about damage that happened on the delivery. Also make sure that if you do have any scratches/dings or dents on your vehicle before shipping to make a documentation of them and take photo evidence so you can hand them over to your driver.
4. Remove any add-ons
Remove any aftermarket add-ons such as specialised spoilers, undercarriage lighting, antennas or fog lights you need to remove these items to safeguard yourself, against any possible damage during the transport of your car
5. Make sure your gas tank isn’t full
And finally don’t fill up your gas tank. A full tank of gas will add a good bit more weight onto the vehicle, and this can cause a lot of issues, if your car is overweight when it reaches your port of departure it can cause delays and then added charges for you, and this is something that nobody wants when shipping their car, we always suggest that anyone who is shipping their car try and keep the amount of gas in the car from around 1/4 to 1/8 full.
If you happen to want to know any more information about how to ship your car then we recommend that you come visit the First Base Freight Ltd website where you can find a whole heap of information about shipping your car overseas or you can contact us directly and speak with one of our very helpful members of staff.
For all your Car Shipping needs look no further than
First Base Freight Ltd.