Shipping a Car by Air to Hawaii

I just shipped my 2003 Ferrari 360 Spider from the east coast, using Intercity Lines to get it to LA, and flying it from LA to Honolulu on Pacific Air Cargo. Previously, I had never really considered shipping a car to Hawaii by air, and I thought this might be of interest to others.

If you are shipping a car to Hawaii, I can’t really recommend air cargo — there are too many individual considerations that one must weigh. But I can say that you should at least consider it as an option. In this case, I was pleased with my decision.

First, the price. It is obviously more expensive. Shipping by sea, the way I would have wanted to do it, would have cost me about $5,000. Shipping by air cost me about $7,000. Yes, I know you can ship a car from the east coast to Hawaii for $2,100 or so. And if you are shipping a Honda Accord, that is probably the way you should do it. For the reasons I will discuss, it was worth the extra money to me to go with Pacific Air Cargo, in this instance. That does not mean I would necessarily do it that way in the future, but I would certainly consider it.

This was not my first rodeo. At this point, I have shipped four exotic cars to and from Hawaii.

The first time I used Matson Lines. With Matson, cars sit in the open before being put on the ship, they are in the open for the ocean voyage (semi-sheltered, as I recall — I could be wrong about that), and they sit in the open at the dock when they arrive in Honolulu. When I shipped my Porsche 911 on Matson, they dropped a wrench or something heavy through the back window. The car arrived open to the elements, with a plastic sheet where the back window should have been. I was lucky, really. If the wrench had fallen a foot or two further up the car, it would have damaged the roof instead. Glass can be replaced easily; Porsche factory paint can be matched but rarely duplicated.

The next two times, for a ’62 Jag E-type and a ’53 Bentley, I used Pasha. I was reasonably well pleased. They insisted on working with Intercity Lines, and handled the process from end to end. The cars travel enclosed over the sea, but as I recall are stored outside at the docks. Still, the process went smoothly enough.

But this time, Pasha seems to have changed its business model: they would no longer work with Intercity, although I could make separate arrangements if I cared to do so. And this time Pasha made clear that they accepted no responsibility for the car. If I wanted insurance, they would sell me insurance at significant expense, with the cost proportionate to the value of the car. (I’m not sure I understand that business model — Intercity accepts full responsibility for all the cars they transport, I don’t know why Pasha is so adamant that they accept no responsibility for the cars they ship now.) Your comprehensive insurance may, or may not, cover transport of your car. But I was left feeling uncomfortable about the whole thing. And shipping with them and Intercity, including Pasha’s insurance, was roughly $5,000 for my car.

So, I called Pacific Air Cargo. My hope was that they would take better care of the car. And sure enough, when I went to pick it up, it was in an enclosed warehouse, sitting off by itself surrounded by orange safety cones. Just the sort of white glove treatment I had hoped for, and was willing to pay for.

You can check prices for Pacific Air Cargo on the Internet, but it is much better to telephone them and talk to the folks in California (not Hawaii) who schedule auto shipping. In my case, I told them they could ship the car at any time in a five day window — I didn’t really care. So, they gave me a better deal for that. And apparently I was shipping at a time when they thought they would likely have extra capacity, so they gave me a break on the price for that, too. This could be particularly significant if you are shipping a car from Hawaii to the mainland: I think we ship a lot more stuff into Hawaii than we ship back to the mainland, so the cost of shipping a car by air back to the mainland could be even less. On the other hand, if you want to ship around Christmas, when the plane is probably full, be prepared to pay top dollar for the privilege. Anyway, it is worth asking.

As I said, the real reason I wanted to ship with them was to make sure the car was well taken care of. And I felt like it was. For example, whenever I called, they knew immediately about my car and its status. It was not one among thousands, it was the Ferrari they were shipping that week and they knew it by name. That’s what I was paying for!

Suppose you ship by sea and, as happened to me, a wrench gets dropped on your car. What insurance will cover that damage? Will any paint job ever match the original factory paint? How will that repair look in several years when you want to sell the car? What would you be willing to pay to minimize the risk of that occurrence? I can’t answer any of those questions for you, but asking myself those questions, in this case, was why I decided to ship by air.

As you may recall, I flew to Virginia to see the car and to get it loaded on the truck by Intercity. I planned in a week or so to then fly home to pick it up. As it turned out, Pacific Air Cargo put the car on their 747 the day after they got it, and it arrived at the airport two days before I did! So, when I landed at HNL, I took a taxi around the airport on Lagoon Drive to Pacific Air Cargo, picked up the Ferrari, and drove it home for the first time (swinging by Toledo Scales on the way home to get it weighed, as you may recall from my post on registering the car).

The car is with Velocity now, for annual maintenance. I am looking forward to getting it back, when all is done, and actually trying to learn how to drive the thing! So far I have only made it from the airport to home, and then to Velocity. I think it is going to be an interesting car to learn to drive.

In summary — if you are shipping an exotic to or from Hawaii, at least consider air freight. You may or may not decide to use it, but it is worth a quick call to get a quote, at the least.

 

That's interesting! One reason -- which I am sure you will understand better than I do -- is that a car is apparently a Hazardous Material, which I didn't think FedEx would ship.

With Pacific Air Cargo, I was required to have a Hazardous Material form filled out. Not wanting to mess that up myself, I paid an expert firm about $150 to do that for me. Pacific Air Cargo made all the arrangements for that for me.

Again, you probably know a lot more about that sort of thing than I do.

 

Thanks James, that's a very interesting story! I wonder what shipping a car by air across the Atlantic would be?

I gather the air freight cost of a car, to or from Honolulu, can vary a lot depending upon the load they are experiencing at the time.

 

Yep. I heard a price even less than that, for exactly the reason you mention. But I didn't explore that yet. I'm hoping to keep the 360 Spider for a little while, before I need to figure that out! (The guy I bought it from in Virginia wants it back when I am done . . . so I may need to sort that out someday.)

 

If I were shipping to the West Coast, I think Pasha would probably be fine. And when, in the past, they would work with Intercity to pick the car up and move it to the East Coast, that worked fine for me, too. But this time around I had two problems with Pasha: (1) they wanted to use their own trucks on the mainland, and I had no record of how well that new system was working, and (2) they had a strict disclaimer of basically any liability unless I bought their insurance. Once I priced in their insurance, it was just about as cheap to fly the cars over.

So, I'm glad you had a good experience with them. I might reconsider depending upon where I was sending a car. In this case, I'm happy I shipped by air.

 

Hey Sam, we will look forward to having you and your car here in Hawaii. We have a new and active Ferrari Club chapter here, and I hope you will join us.

I also posted a thread on the mechanics of getting a mainland Ferrari registered here in Hawaii, which you might find helpful. It is a little trickier than with a Porsche, because Ferraris are unusual enough that the government here won't have weights and the like. All easily solved, but extra steps you may not have had to mess with before. It can be done!

Aloha!
Bob