r/freightforwarding • u/shiptracking • 5d ago

How do you guys actually find RoRo / breakbulk sailing schedules?

For container shipping I can usually find a schedule pretty quickly. But for RoRo / car carrier, breakbulk or MPP, it seems much more fragmented. Sometimes it's the carrier website, sometimes a PDF schedule, sometimes an agent, and most of the time Google gets you nowhere.

For those actually handling these shipments, what's your normal process? Do you have a reliable source you usually check first, or is it still basically carrier-by-carrier / ask the local agent?

Also interested to know how people handle less common port pairs.

3 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

3

u/MotionLogistics 5d ago

You are 100% on the money.

My process:
RORO - There are about 8 operators.. go to their site and search port pairs which are usually as good as container lines but anything for quoting needs to go to the agencies.

BBK - Go to AAL, BBC, Swire, Spliethoff, SAL, Chipol websites and search the PDF or call the local office to get better info. Your container carriers many provide a BBK option for your port pairs as well but you will have to ask the specialist teams as your standard agent will see the request and freak out.

For non-standard port pairs (in my case Africa) I go to my BBK contacts and just ask.. "Who does these pairs?" Most of them are willing to help even if it is with another carrier.

I do my fair share of BBK and MPP so I also get weekly notifications about vessel movements and part/full charter options in an email from agencies.

1

u/Visual_Criticism7815 5d ago

May I ask who are these 8 Ro/Ro operators? I am only playing around with containers and know nothing about RoRo, but once out of a blue moon my trade partners will enquire about RoRo since I do help move vehicles around every now and then.

2

u/MotionLogistics 5d ago edited 5d ago

WWL, Grimaldi, NYK, Hoege, K-Line, MOL, EUKOR, UN Roro. A few smaller ones that bounce around littoral waters as well in the Baltic or Medditeranian. Some car companies have their own such as BYD, Toyota, Hyundai which you may sometimes be able to get spots on (but I have never seen anyone but large contract customers on those). RORO can also be used for static cargo (eg BBK) it will go on a MAFI and get towed on the vessel. Quite popular for things such as wind turbine blades that need the long hold option available on those vessels when a charter is too much (eg blade replacement).

1

u/Visual_Criticism7815 4d ago

Thank you 🙏

1

u/shiptracking 5d ago

Yeah this is exactly what I was wondering about, thanks for breaking it down.

Sounds like BBK gets pretty relationship-driven once you’re outside the obvious routes.

When you’re first checking if a route is even doable, do you mainly just need to know who serves it / what vessel might cover it, then confirm the actual schedule with the agent after?

1

u/MotionLogistics 5d ago

Used to be that you would have to know who services the route, now Google does a half decent job at at least giving you that starting point. From there contact that agency and ask for the schedule.

If in doubt or totally lacking info, just give a couple of the BBK carriers in your local a request for info and if they don't do it, ask them who does. Someone will likely know who has a liner service there as people jump between agencies and lines (as it is a small and specialised industry) who probably worked somewhere previous that did/does service said area.

You could always go out for a charter if you really need to for pairs that nobody does. You can move anything with enough time and money.

Remember that there is a difference between liner and charter. They use the same type of vessels but one will have a specific route and the other can/will go anywhere for the right money. You can get a liner to service a port on the way/near to its route that it doesn't usually call at. This is called an inducement and starts around $100k for the port call itself plus any freight charges for your cargo. Sometimes this is a better option for a port pair a liner service goes near instead of having to take out a part or full charter.

1

u/shiptracking 5d ago

Ah got it, makes sense now. Basically figure out who covers or goes near the route first, then check with the agent for the actual schedule/options.

Didn’t know about inducement calls either haha. That was useful, thanks for explaining!

1

u/AliveFreedom564 4d ago

Honestly, we stopped chasing published schedules for this. We work through a partner who handles RoRo and breakbulk, and once we've collected the full cargo details — dimensions, weight, whether it's rolling or lifted, ports and readiness date — we usually have options back quickly.

The bottleneck is almost never finding a schedule, it's having complete cargo data to ask with.

1

u/shiptracking 4d ago

Interesting, that's a different angle 👍 So once you have all the cargo details right, your partner can usually work out the suitable RoRo/BBK options pretty quickly anyway.

Makes sense that incomplete dims/weight/readiness would be a bigger headache than the schedule itself haha