What Is The Roll-on Roll-off Method Of Container Shipping?

The freight is simply brought onto the ship and taken off again on wheels, requiring no cranes at all. Specially designed "ro-ro" ships have a large door in the bow or stern through which vehicles can be driven. Ramps or hydraulic lifts get them to the level assigned, where they are driven to the final location.

The interior of the ship is thus much like a seagoing parking garage. About fifty of these truck-trailer combinations fit on one such ship, or eighty of the forty-foot (12-meter) trailers alone. Hence, the truck, or "tractor," may remain with the trailer containers, or one tractor may tow several such containers onto the ship, which later dispenses them to waiting tractors at the port of destination.

In northern Europe and Scandinavia, where sea gulfs separate land areas, truck-trailer transport on ships was adopted over fifteen years ago. The advantage, of course, is that when the goods are once loaded into the trailer, they do not have to be moved again. The whole container moves on its own wheels right to the destination. In this way refrigerated trucks carry meat from Finland to as far away as Italy.