RORO Row Your Boat, Roll-on Roll-off introduction

One of the tools of shipping that doesn’t get much press is roll-on-roll-off, or RORO for short. We’re now used to seeing container ships, where the “box” part of the back of a semi gets taken from the truck to the ship and visa versa, or to-and-from a train and a ship. Such shots of container ships getting loaded and unloaded are a stock part of most news pieces on international trade.

However, not every port has the capability to handle container ships; the capital requirements for having those big container cranes are too big for a lot of ports. So, if you’re looking to get goods offloaded in such smaller or more primitive ports, you need to bring your own wheels, putting either a wheeled trailer or even a tractor-trailer combination (if you don’t have a tractor waiting for you at the other end) on the ship.

Or, the goods might not lend themselves to a container. In that case, a wide or over-tall load might need a specialized trailer to get the job done; the trailer might need to be shipped along with the cargo proper.

That’s roll-on, roll-off. You’re using the ship as a very long distance ferry. Momentum Transport is very well versed in RORO and can arrange get your cargo onto a RORO ship and have a tractor waiting for it at the other end of the voyage.

Not every customer is right next to a huge seaport; RORO allows you more flexibility in how you ship stuff overseas.