Cars on the way to Vietnam

A blue Kodiaq drives up onto the metal floor of a railway wagon. The car stops, the driver gets out, putting chocks against the car’s wheels and checking the whole car one last time. Moments later, the train carrying dozens of cars sets off. The Škoda cars’ journey to Vietnam has begun.

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Vietnam is a new destination for Škoda cars – the Czech carmaker is just entering the market and is currently importing Kodiaq and Karoq models from the Czech Republic. These are produced at the Kvasiny factory. Vietnam is roughly 12,000 kilometres away from here as the crow flies.

“The key transport challenge in our Vietnam project is coordinating the shipping chain involving a combination of road, rail and sea transport, with the emphasis on quality, costs and transport times,” says Lubor Šrámek, who is responsible for logistics of manufactured cars at Škoda.

The journey begins, with cars driven onto a train.

In Kvasiny, the cars are prepared for the long journey. “The cars are fitted with special protective wraps and are secured to prevent damage during shipping,” Šrámek explains.

The cars are given protective wrapping before the journey.

Once furnished with transport protection, the cars head to the expedition point, a building which double-decker railway wagons roll through. The cars are driven onto the wagons, with the building’s design allowing the cars to fill both wagon decks at the same time.

The train loaded with new models heads for the German port.

After loading, the train heads from Kvasiny to the German port of Bremerhaven. “Next, the cars are dispatched by ocean-going Ro-Ro ship to the transshipment point in Singapore. From there, they travel by a smaller Ro-Ro ship to their final destinations in Vietnam – the ports of Ho Chi Minh City or Haiphong,” Lubor Šrámek explains.

Ocean-going Ro-Ro ships can hold thousands of cars.

Ro-Ro is short for Roll-on and Roll-off and refers to ships designed to carry cars and other means of transport that enter the ship’s bowels under their own steam. They also leave the ship in the same way when unloading. These ships have several levels of cargo decks and can normally hold over five thousand cars.

Škoda cars in the ship’s hold.

The standard size of a single shipment from Kvasiny to Vietnam amounts to several dozen cars. The cars are parked in one of the car parks or multi-storey garages in the German port while waiting to be loaded. They then board the ship together with other cars heading to the same destination, and are then positioned in a block on one of the ship’s decks. This allows the cars to leave the ship together again when transhipping or unloading. Naturally, it’s crucial to have a system that allows you to keep track of the cars awaiting loading, because the giant Bremerhaven logistics hub temporarily hosts over 75,000 cars on their way to their future owners.

Unloading cars from the ship at night

After disembarking at one of the two Vietnamese ports, the Kodiaqs and Karoqs are collected by a local transport firm for delivery to dealerships, where the long journey that began in the East Bohemian town of Kvasiny finally ends.

The destination: the Škoda showroom in Hanoi