Shipping a Grader to Kenya from Australia

Shipping a grader to Kenya is the job where the sea leg is the easy part.

A motor grader is long, articulated and heavy, and the expensive surprises on this cargo almost all happen before it reaches the wharf. The photograph at the top of this page is one of ours, and the two things worth noticing in it are the OVERSIZE sign on the cab and the blade assembly sitting on the ground in front of the machine.

Both of those are the article.

Shipping a grader to Kenya: the container question answers itself

On a backhoe the container-versus-RoRo decision is real, and we have shipped plant both ways. On a grader it mostly is not.

A motor grader is around nine metres long before you add a ripper at the back, and it articulates in the middle, which means it does not shorten usefully by turning the wheels. A twenty-foot container is roughly six metres inside and a forty-foot is about twelve — and length is only the first problem. Height over the cab and weight on the floor are the next two.

So for a grader the realistic modes are:

Note what the RoRo row assumes. Roll-on roll-off means the machine has to start, steer and hold brake pressure. A grader bought as a non-runner cannot be driven up a ramp — and it then travels as static cargo on a MAFI roll trailer, which is a different quote and a tighter set of limits.

The numbers are worth having in front of you, because on a grader they are close. NYK's published RoRo guideline allows a self-drivable machine up to 12.5 x 4 x 4.8 metres and 75 tonnes; a 60-foot roll trailer takes up to 18.3 x 4 x 3.8 metres and 50 tonnes. It is a guideline rather than a promise — NYK assesses feasibility per application — and another carrier will differ.

Look at the width. It is 4 metres in every category, self-drivable or not. Length and height move when you change mode; width does not. That is the dimension you solve in the yard with a spanner, and on a grader it is the blade assembly that decides it — which is exactly what the photograph above shows being dealt with.

The mouldboard comes off, and that is normal

In the photograph the blade, the circle and the drawbar assembly have been removed and are sitting in front of the machine.

That is not a machine being repaired. That is a machine being prepared. Taking the blade assembly off does three things at once:

• Reduces the width you are being charged for and measured against
• Removes the most vulnerable thing on the machine from harm's way during a six-week voyage
• Makes the road leg simpler, because width is what triggers the strictest escort conditions

The ripper or scarifier at the rear comes off for the same reason, and it is the piece that most often gets left on because nobody counted it in the length.

Everything that comes off travels with the machine, labelled and secured. Circle bolts and drawbar pins are not items you want to be sourcing in Mombasa.

The oversize road leg is a real cost and it is nearly always forgotten

That sign on the cab is not decoration. Moving a grader by road in Australia to reach the port is an oversize movement, and depending on the dimensions and the route it can involve permits, notified routes, travel-time restrictions and pilot or escort vehicles.

Price the road leg before you commit to the sea leg. We have seen this land badly more than once: somebody negotiates hard on the freight rate, then discovers the inland movement from a regional yard to the wharf is a significant number in its own right — occasionally a larger number than they were arguing about.

Two things follow from that.

Where the machine sits matters as much as what it is. A grader already near a capital city port is a different proposition from one on a regional site several hundred kilometres inland.

Tell us the location early. It changes the shape of the quote, not just a line in it.

Cleaning, which holds machines that paperwork would have passed

A grader has spent its working life moving dirt, and both the Australian export side and the Kenyan import side care about soil and plant material on used machinery.

The places that catch people:

• The circle and the mouldboard mounting, where material packs in hard
• Tyre treads, which on a grader are deep and hold a surprising amount
• The ripper shanks and their housings
• The undercarriage and the articulation joint
• Inside the cab, under the mat, where seed collects

Wash it properly at home. At the port the alternative is a cleaning bill, a re-inspection and a missed sailing — and given how much less frequent RoRo sailings are, a missed one on this cargo can cost weeks rather than days.

What we do, and where our part stops

We handle the loading or the lift, the sea freight from Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane or Fremantle to Mombasa, and the export documentation.

We do not clear cargo. In Kenya an entry is lodged by a licensed clearing and forwarding agent, whoever you ship with. Appoint your own, or ask us to appoint one — quoted separately, and never folded quietly into the freight number.

We will not tell you whether your grader may be imported or registered in Kenya. We can move it. Whether it may be admitted is decided by KEBS and by the revenue authority, not by a freight company, and on plant we would rather send you to them than sound confident.

And no duty figures. Kenya assesses against its own reference value for the machine rather than against what you paid, and every calculator ranking for that search is a third party's, built on a schedule that changes annually.

Transit: RoRo is a different clock from the car lane, and it is longer

This is the correction most worth having on this page, because the number quoted for cars does not apply to plant and using it would leave you weeks short.

Our measured container transits are about 42 days from Brisbane and 48 from Melbourne, which is where our six-to-eight-weeks quote for cars comes from.

RoRo is not that. NYK's own indication on the Australia-to-Mombasa RoRo lane is 70 to 85 days, with transhipment at Laem Chabang or Singapore at the carrier's option, and NYK states it as an indication without guarantee. On top of that:

• Sailings run one to two a month, not weekly. The wait for a suitable vessel is frequently

longer than any part of the voyage.

• Feeder connection at the transhipment port is quoted at one to fourteen days, again with no

guarantee.

So for machinery moving on RoRo we quote ten to twelve weeks on the water, not six to eight. That is the range we can beat rather than the one we would have to hit, and it is the honest number for this mode.

If the machine is containerised instead, it follows the container lane — six to eight weeks from the east coast, four to six from Fremantle. That schedule difference is often a better reason to containerise than anything to do with the machine itself.

Ask about the sailing schedule at the same time as the rate. On plant it is usually the schedule, not the sea, that decides when the machine actually arrives.

What to send us for a quote

• Make, model and year.
• Does it run, drive and steer? This decides whether RoRo is available at all.
• Operating weight, from the plate rather than the listing.
• Length, width and height, measured, and tell us what is coming off.
• Exactly where it is in Australia — this drives the oversize road leg, which is frequently the

larger half of the cost.

• Whether the blade and ripper are being removed, and by whom.
• Whether you want us to appoint a clearing agent.

We quote in writing, itemised, with our lines separated from the ones that are not ours to set. The wider picture on plant — modes, carrier inner-cargo rules and what we will not tell you — is in shipping machinery from Australia to Kenya.

This is guidance, not a ruling. Anything here about eligibility is an assessment against KRA’s published conditions, and may vary with your circumstances and with the regulations in force at the time you import. KRA decides. We do not calculate duty - where a figure is involved we link KRA, who publish the rates.