Whether you are a heavy equipment manufacturer, trader, or buyer, you need to understand the importance of shipping your heavy equipment. In this article, you will learn all the detail about your heavy equipment shipping, including the features, shipping cost, process, and more.
Let’s dive right in.
What is Heavy Equipment Shipping？
Heavy equipment refers to large-scale machinery typically weighing over 10 tons and standing 5 meters or more in height, designed for demanding applications across industries such as construction, agriculture, mining, and metal processing.
These machines are built for strength, precision, and continuous operation under harsh conditions.
Common examples include cranes, bulldozers, excavators, lifts, compost turner, and industrial furnaces such as aluminum furnaces, which play a critical role in metal casting and thermal processing.
Heavy equipment shipping is the shipping service that specializes in shipping heavy equipment, including land, sea, and air transport. It needs a professional shipping company, and you need to prepare related documents like a trade contract, product manual, pro forma invoice, commercial invoice, packing list, certificate of origin, shipper’s instruction letter, bill of lading, letter of credit, and pre-inspection report.
Due to the particularity of the equipment, heavy equipment shipping needs advanced planning. It is more likely a well-planned project compared with ordinary transportation.
Features of Heavy Equipment Shipping
Heavy equipment causes a large amount of work: Heavy equipment all have large volumes, heavy weights, and most of it is not permitted to be disassembled. Some special heavy equipment has a length and width outside of standard, and its shape is not regular. These features of heavy equipment result in a large amount of work.
Heavy equipment has high value: It takes a lot of technologies to make heavy equipment, including mechanical engineering technology, electronic information technology, and material technology, so it has high R&D and manufacturing costs. We pay special attention to protection during shipping.
The cost of heavy equipment is high: Except the cost of shipping itself, expertised loading and unloading personnel and engineers ensure the safety of equipment during loading and unloading. Road planning avoids road restrictions and airspace restrictions, at the same time ensuring a relatively short and safe route.
It operates with high risk: The large size and weight of the equipment cause stress to the transport facilities, which can cause damage to the transport facilities themselves. Also, weather and road environment make sense. Bad weather, like rainy days, heavy snow, hail, thunderstorms, high temperatures, low temperatures, and strong winds, may slow down the process.
Road environment is complex, different from smooth elevated expressways; national highways and provincial highways have more intricate roads, and tunnels, weight-restricted bridges, mountain and plateau roads also need experienced drivers.
Shipping Methods of Heavy Equipment
Sea shipping
RoRo shipping
RoRo shipping is Roll-on/Roll-off shipping, using horizontal unloading. It is most suitable for transporting irregular cargoes with wheels, such as cars, trucks, construction machinery, etc. Open the gangway from the stern or side and connect the gangway to the shore, so the cargo can drive in and out one after another continuously, forming a mobile operation.
This pipeline method saves time and helps you reduce labor costs, improving loading and unloading speed and efficiency. Since this method does not require a crane, it helps you save the cost of using a crane, and it is also friendly to overweight cargo that can not be lifted by a crane.
Break Bulk Shipping
Contrary to RoRo shipping, Break Bulk shipping uses vertical unloading. It often uses a large quay crane vertically to lift cargo and place cargo on the dock.It is suitable for heavy cargo that needs to remain intact or cannot be disassembled, like mining equipment, turbines, industrial boilers, large cranes, wind turbine blades, and heavy production machinery.
For example, before we transport wind turbine blades, workers pre-weld the bracket on the ship to carry the wind turbine blades. Then, workers use a crane to transport them to the ship. There are two frames at the top and tail of the wind blade, which package the blade into a container.
Vertical suspension allows your cargo to be stacked safely and securely, avoiding contacting with the hull or dock facilities. The crane lifts and lowers the cargo steadily, avoiding damage to your cargo caused by friction during loading and unloading.
However, there is a little gap between the bottom plate of the bulk carrier and the large-volume heavy cargo, which leads the ships easily to slide when encountering strong turbulence at sea. Due to the large weight of heavy cargo, if it is loaded and transported without engineers’ calculations, it is easy for heavy cargo to cause damage to the hull when encountering wind and waves at sea.
This method usually needs an extra processing fee and insurance fee, so we suggest you cooperate with an experienced freight forwarding company to lower costs and risk.
Container Shipping
It is a shipping method dependent on containers. Most of the time we use standard pallets and standard containers, which ensures containers can be easily loaded and unloaded in various countries, without worrying cost of dispatching machines to suit non-standard sized containers.
The global unified size of containers is 20 feet and 40 feet. The internal volume of a 20-foot container is 5.69 meters x 2.13 meters x 2.18 meters, the gross weight of it is generally 17.5 tons, and the volume is 24-26 cubic meters. The internal volume of a 40-foot container is 11.8 meters x 2.13 meters x 2.18 meters, the gross weight of it is generally 22 tons, and the volume is 54 cubic meters. We also offer a 40-foot high cabinet and a 45-foot high cabinet to satisfy your special needs.
Flat Rack Shipping Method
Flat rack is a container without top and sides, so it can load and unload cargoes from multiple angles, like the container side and top.
It mainly serves for overweight cargoes like large excavators and cranes. This method is also suitable for bare cargoes that do not require external packaging, such as steel, pig iron, mechanical equipment, and transportation vehicles. Direct loading of steel products can help you save 25% of transportation costs.
For example, the excavator needs to be placed in the center of the container to ensure its center of gravity is in the center of the container. We use a wire rope or a chain with a hook to secure the excavator body and arm, and the hook should be hooked on the end of the excavator arm. On this basis, we lash and secure it with fixing belts and cover it with waterproof cloth to prevent the equipment from getting wet.
If the equipment can be disassembled to satisfy standard container dimensions, we recommend that you choose container shipping. Since there is no shelter around or above it, it is not suitable for transporting equipment that is sensitive to water.
Road shipping
Road shipping is suitable for transporting heavy cargo that is relatively close to the destination or can be transported to the destination according to the land network. Of course, the weight and height of heavy cargo should comply with the specified range of road transport.
We use a modular transport vehicle made of multiple modules for super-large kiloton equipment, which is completely disassembled. If you need to transport thousands of tons of cargo, we can disassemble it and slice multiple modules to adapt to its new form. The price of road shipping is between air freight and sea freight, depending on the weight of the cargo and the distance.
Air shipping
Air shipping spends less time but costs more. It transports relatively small machines or large equipment with large value, like sensitive mechanical parts, electronic components, and precision instruments.
How Does It Cost for Heavy Equipment Shipping
General cost calculation：
The road shipping settlement method of heavy equipment shipping includes Bulk freight calculation and container freight calculation, depending on tons, price per ton, and mileage.
The sea shipping costs include basic ocean freight and surcharges. The basic ocean freight is calculated by tons. The surcharges include fuel, exchange rates, and peak season. When holiday comes, our shipping prices will increase by 30% – 50%.
The following expenses are calculated separately：
- Normally, our packing materials use moisture-proof protective material and pressure-resistant buffer material. If you have a specific packaging requirement, the additional packaging costs are at your expense.
- If this heavy cargo can cause hazards, we will communicate with you in advance about the dangers of the equipment and the possible losses, and then discuss the cost.
- If your cargoes need priority loading or delivery, you need to pay more.
- Insuring high-value goods.
Heavy Equipment International Shipping Process
- Before loading, the equipment needs to be tested. If your equipment needs air shipping, we will have the equipment tested by an IATA-approved testing agency according to DGR to ensure that it meets air transport safety standards. If your equipment needs sea shipping, the equipment needs to be inspected by an IMO-approved testing agency in accordance with the requirements of the IMDG Code before shipping to ensure that it meets the maritime transportation safety standards.
- During loading, our workers set up a cordon in the work area, then prepare cranes and rolling equipment to load cargoes. The entire process is directed by engineers and supervised by security personnel.
- We transport equipment according to the agreed route plan, ensuring safety and speed. Our shipping route is international and can reach many countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
- After the equipment arrives, there is a customs clearance process. Our workers will unload it in clear weather with no wind or rain and high visibility. They will operate cranes and forklifts to transfer the heavy equipment from the hold to the port.
Important Tips You Need to Know for Heavy Equipment
- Insurance:
Insurance is important, especially when transshipping through multiple ports or vessels.
- Keep equipment clean:
You should take care of keeping the equipment clean because many countries have strict hygiene requirements for inbound cargoes to prevent the invasion of foreign viruses and organisms. If the equipment is not cleaned thoroughly, refusal of entry may occur, and the shipping will delay.
- Components:
All the components should not be missed to avoid not being sent.
- Packaging:
Choose high-strength packaging material to avoid equipment being damaged. Such materials are wooden boxes, iron boxes, iron-wood combination, steel frames, and its internal part needs to be filled with filling and cushioning materials to absorb vibration and shock.
(For equipment that can be disassembled, we use a sealed box to store the disassembled small parts and annotate information on the box. The protruding parts of the device body are wrapped in bubbles, preventing collision and deformation. Finally, we use an iron frame, screws and wire rope to fix the equipment.)
- Loading:
Experienced workers and specialized crews can arrange goods neatly, which can save space and reduce the risk of cargo damage due to road bumps.
- Anti-rust and moisture-proof measures:
We also use customized anti-rust bags to protect the equipment sensitive to water and rust. To identify easily through transport and handling, we indicate on the package the name, model, weight, dimensions, and destination of the equipment.
To be on the safe side, we prepare an appropriate amount of desiccant to prevent oxygen and moisture from corroding your equipment.
FAQ
1.How to choose a professional company for your heavy equipment shipping?
The official website information. On this website, you can learn how professional the company is, what kind of equipment they use, how many professional workers, how many years they have been shipping, and what routes are there.
Online reviews: What is the customer feedback of this company? How many times have shipping accidents occurred?
Telephone communication: You can telephone the company’s consultants and see whether their attitude is humble and whether the problem is solved professionally.
2.What if something goes wrong during shipping?
One advantage of Bansar is that we pay attention to regulatory requirements. There are built-in cameras in the cabin, and you can load pictures anytime you need to check whether the goods are safe. We have a container loading supervision service in any city in China.
3.Installment payment or cash on delivery？
It depends on the cargo owner. If the cargo owner is a large or reputable enterprise, cash on delivery is acceptable.
Most cargo owners are installment. They pay 30-50% in advance to cover the logistics company’s shipping expenses, and pay the final payment after the equipment is safely delivered.
4.Do I need to go to the port to pick up the goods or have them delivered to my door?
Bansar offers door-to-door service.
5.How to compensate for cargo damage during transportation?
We have videos during the entire process of transportation and loading, and unloading. If there are damaged packages, we will check videos and find the causes, and take the report issued by an independent third-party inspection agency (such as SGS, BV, etc.) to the insurance company for processing.
