Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic there has been an ongoing worldwide shipping crisis whereby RORO shipping has become difficult to secure space, and subsequently expensive with ocean freight prices approaching double what they were at the beginning of January 2020.
The main cause and trigger that led to this unfortunate situation is thought to be container shipping.
Once COVID-19 became a pandemic, container shipping from China and nearby regions continued but return shipments all but ceased.
This led to a great buildup of empty containers in Europe and North America, but more importantly a shortage of containers to ship cargo from Asia.
In turn, container ocean freight gradually increased to prices 10 times what they were in January 2020.
Due to these prohibitively high prices used car importers all over the world were forced to switch to RORO only, thus the high prices and lack of space for RORO shipments.
Get Cars Japan is in a fortunate direct relationship with Hoegh Autoliners and other shipping companies and we have had moderate success at avoiding shipping delays compared to most exporters.
We have also been sympathetic to customers waiting times and
the increased freight prices and have heavily compensated much of the yard storage fees until now.
Some shipping yards have as little as 30 days free storage before they start charging a daily rate.
Longer free storage times are 45 days, and the longest is 60 days.
Because we have compensated storage for over 2 years now without any immediate sign of shipping space freeing up, it has become necessary to implement a policy for customers to pay for yard storage fees.
Customers can rest assured that Get Cars Japan will aim to ship all vehicles as quickly as possible, and compensate storage fees in the case a delay was avoidable.
However, from September 1st 2022 we would like all customers to budget for an extra 10,000 JPY to 15,000 JPY in their bids, to cover any storage fees for unavoidable delays that result in storage fees charged by the shipping yards.
Please note that these yards are independent of Get Cars Japan and we have zero sway when it comes to requesting discount or leniency on these storage fees, nor do we add any extra costs to theirs.
We see our dealings with you as a partnership and therefore have the same interests.
It is our greatest hope for 2022 that this crisis will end and shipping costs and space will somewhat normalize.
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