Last year someone commented on seeing a picture of the vessel carrying his car that it looked a bit of a “rust bucket”. I agreed that the exterior did not look particularly appealing but I explained there was a very good reason for that.
The explanation blends nicely into a long overdue post about the loading of cars onto RoRo’s. This is actually a huge and crucially important subject and so for this post I will confine myself to the cars and how they are loaded.
Prior to loading the car decks will have been cleaned by a sweeping machine, the fire detectors and alarms will have been tested. Lashings will have been inspected and be neatly arranged ready for use. A meeting with the stevedores prior to loading will have established the loading pattern to be adopted for various parts of the deck. There are generally 3 standard patterns: Clockwise for RHD vehicles, anticlockwise for LHD and nose-out for confined areas of the ship. The last vehicle to be loaded in each pattern is the ‘key’ vehicle and is marked as such with a marker board. The key vehicle of each pattern will be the first vehicle in that pattern to be unloaded and is allocated extra space to allow driver access. Clearly all the vehicles in a pattern have to be going to the same destination. (Cars are often parked in similar patterns on the dockside to save space)
The loading is performed by stevedores who do nothing else but drive cars (and trucks, buses, cranes, etc ) on and off ships and at dedicated car handling terminals like Zeebrugge and Shanghai they really are experts. There are strict rules that are to be followed and before each session the stevedores are briefed:
No smoking
No operation of the car’s entertainment system
Customer cars are not to be used for ferrying.
Keys are to be left in ashtray (normally) after loading onboard.
Handbrake is to be applied and manual cars left in a low gear.
Wheels are to be aligned straight ahead and lights are to be off.
All windows to up after parking.
Driver’s door to be left unlocked
Speed limit onboard - usually 20kph.
In addition the stevedoring company itself will have it’s own rules on clothing: Usually a clean, one piece overall often with integral Hi-Viz elements without a belt or exposed buttons that can snag or damage seats and clean soft boots with disposable plastic overshoes. No jewellery. Use of gloves may be required. No smoking, eating, chewing gum etc. There will be strict rules on speeding. Usually the driver's window must be down during the loading process. Drivers will have been trained in the visual signals from marshallers and the audible signals (whistles). There will be a company routine to be followed when parking onboard eg driver gets out and hands keys to marshaller who places the keys in the ashtray and who is responsible for finally shutting the door. Stevedores will be prohibited from leaning on cars, placing elbows on or otherwise unnecessarily touching the cars. The stevedores usually operate in small teams of about 6-10 and have their own minibus shuttle that follows them onboard and then returns them directly to the dock to collect the next bunch of cars. Clearly the more teams that are put on the job the quicker the load or unload will be. It is not a job for casual labour and it will become immediately apparent to the ship’s crew if casual labour is being used. This will inevitably lead to the Master lodging a Letter of Protest against the stevedoring company. Letters of Protest can be lodged for all sorts of reasons: speeding onboard being the most common (Overspeeding is the phrase!), poor parking, improper lashing, etc.
During loading, the ship’s crew will observe for and note any damage prior to loading, whether the cars are covered in dust etc. They will ensure the cars are parked in accordance to the loading plan, and that lashings are being correctly applied. There are strict rules on how close a car can be to fire hoses and water fog nozzles and foam applicators and the ship's crew will ensure that these distances are not encroached.
There are
videos on YouTube which show loading/unloading operations taking place and some of them with scenes that are reminiscent of the car chases in the Italian Job! It looks easy and almost carelessly fast but actually it’s just a well planned procedure conducted by well-drilled and disciplined stevedores. As far as Teslas are concerned, the car will be in “transport mode” when it leaves the factory until such time as it is accepted by the Tesla rep at its destination.
So how does this make the ship a rust bucket?
As can be seen, the care of the valuable cargo is uppermost in everybody’s mind. Normally the routine husbandry of a ship dictates that when alongside two or three crew members are allocated the task of repainting or touching-up areas of the ship that require it. New cars and fresh paint are an accident waiting to happen and so ships are normally prohibited from painting when alongside a car dock. Hence the visual appearance of RoRo’s can deteriorate fairly rapidly in comparison to a cruise ship! I got there in the end!
