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Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery

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#1 · (Edited)
Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To

Here are some useful sites for tracking the shipment of your custom-ordered or overseas-delivered Volvo. I had a good time over the summer figuring all this out while I waited for delivery of my V50, hopefully some of you will have fun too. Enjoy!

These instructions are mostly oriented toward Volvos built in Belgium, that is, the S40, V50, C30 and S60. However, the same voyages often start in Gothenburg, so in theory much of this will apply to the Sweden-built Volvos too. It should be pretty obvious how to apply it. I've added a couple of helpful links for that below.

The quick version of this is:
The first and last steps require human interaction.


First, you need your VIN. You have to ask your salesperson for it. When the factory build is committed, it appears in his/her system. One good reason to have it is so your insurance agent can get the paperwork under way.

BTW here are the states I believe a Volvo order goes through:
PPF - Pre Production Status
FPF - Fixed for Production
COL - Car on Line
FC - Factory Assembly Completed/Going Through Quality Control
VCMP - Vehicle Configured for Marine Processing (prepared for loading on vessel)
LOVE - Loaded on Vessel
ARRI - Vessel Arrived at Port of Entry
LFPR - Landed First Point Rest, in the process of being unloaded and is awaiting port processing
PORT - Going through Port processing
PPC - Going though certification
MONR - Monroney window sticker being prepared for the vehicle
COFT - Called on Final Transportation (Car On Truck)
DPOE - Departed Port Of Entry
ARRD - Arrived at Dealer
DELC - Delivered to Customer

Your dealer's paperwork may list the following Order Types:
S - "Stock" Car is not allocated to retailer in pool of cars waiting to be allocated
P - "Preferred" Car is allocated to a retailer (although not 100% safe from the unscrupulous retailer)
R - "Retail" Order cannot be touched by anyone and gets priority "processing" when delays occur

Your salesperson will generally tell you when two of the status changes happen, FPF is when the "change date" is passed and a VIN is assigned, and "ARRD" is when it shows up on the lot. But you can see the car by other means from VCMP through DPOE, as it enters and leaves port.

With the VIN, go to Wilhelm Wallenius auto tracking and enter it as the "Cargo ID". Sometimes it takes a few extra days, but the vehicle will show up either waiting in port or on a vessel of some kind. This will give you the basic information on port arrival, which may be enough for you.

If it's not
, you can track it more accurately along the way. I am not responsible for any ill effects such tracking may cause you.


First site of interest is the Port of Zeebrugge site, where you can see "ships in harbor", "ships sailed", etc. using the links on the left side. You can even see a map of the quais, or try Google Maps' version. Sorry, I couldn't find real-time satellite imagery.
[but see Southampton paragraph below!] The thing you're looking for is the call sign of your ship, which you can find in the detail page of each voyage. You may have to go back in time a bit to find it, or wait until it appears if you're early. Also you can see a much more detailed log of the times the ships actually come and go. Click the little "EN" at top right to see this in English.

There are similar sites for the port of Goteborg where Sweden-built Volvos originate. The port map can be found from there, look for the "roll-on/roll-off" terminal. A Google Maps image is here, (it's the rectangle just left of the center). Note, ships from Goteborg often go to Zeebrugge or other sites, so tracking them follows the same process.

And, here's the image of the Volvo Ghent factory (website), it's roughly in the center of the photo.

Armed with the ship name or call sign, you can track many ships at sea by the weather reports they give. Most of the W-W fleet does this, however there are some which don't. Also, they only do it when they're truly at sea. As they enter and leave port, and ply the coasts, they stop issuing these reports. There may be a way to track them but I don't know it.

For the North Atlantic, these reports are tabulated and displayed nicely at the SailWX site. If you can't find your ship's call sign from the port, they have a lookup function here, but it's fairly general. Also, many ships have similar names. Mine was the "Carmen" - something like 20 ships came up with that. So the Zeebrugge information is best.

The tracking information shows the position graphically, and dumps out the last few reports as well, so you can get a feeling for the direction and speed of the vessel. "SOA" in these data is the "speed of advance" which is a nautical term for the effective speed of the vessel. Also these distances are nautical miles, etc. You can use these data to estimate when it will reach port, by calculating along the rhumb line. They generally report 4 times a day. You can dump detailed logs of historical data, kind of interesting.

From Zeebrugge, most vessels go to Southampton England to pick up Minis. The same shipper carries BMW and Mini, plus other manufacturers. Many of these ships also pass through Bremerhaven, and you can pick them up there via Eurogate.

As they pass through Southampton, user cmy4x4 discovered this Southampton radar site which shows imagery from the port, updated every 10 minutes. You can watch your ship arriving and departing from this port!

From Southampton they head into open ocean. But I've seen vessels rearrange their ports and also their route. Mine skipped Zeebrugge for Southampton, then doubled back. Then on the ocean it headed south and rounded the Azores to avoid a northern Atlantic storm. Let me tell you, it was very frustrating to see my car heading for Portugal, then the Bermuda Triangle, when its itinerary said "Newark New Jersey"
. Atlantic weather can be seen at this ocean weather site.

After clicking them about 19 times each day
, you'll get a feeling for what to expect. The ship will stop sending data a day or so before it approaches its first port. You'll have to make an educated guess when it will arrive, or use another method. They don't spend a lot of time in port, the cars are unloaded in a matter of hours, but then there's a processing stage and of course customs to go through.

Another tracking alternative found by user Freeworld is available for those ships owned by Atlantic Container Line. As of this writing, these vessels are ATLANTIC CARTIER, ATLANTIC COMPANION, ATLANTIC COMPASS, ATLANTIC CONCERT and ATLANTIC CONVEYOR. If your ship is one of these, you can use the ACL tracking site, which is quite a nice source. It is possible that other carriers or vessels share this kind of information, if any are found please let me know!

... and another site for marine tracking, with very extensive tracking and data on ships: Marine Traffic, and also check out Digital Seas which is really something but requires registration for full info.

A day or two after arriving in port, the W-W site will probably show "Discharged". This means it has left their custody and is in all likelihood on a car carrier. You'll be back to biting your nails and calling the dealer.


In my experience, it takes 2 to 4 days in port, and a few more days en route to the dealer. I believe Volvo allocates about 10 days in their schedule estimates, probably varies depending on port and distance/method from port to dealer. Mine came into New Jersey (W-W calls this "New York") and shipped to Massachusetts, so pretty close. In other words, you can work backwards from your dealer's date to the ship arrival to make some guesses even if you don't know what ship you're on. But, once the car is on the ship, the dealer's date is pretty close.

Other ports used by W-W for Volvos in North America are Halifax, Nova Scotia, Baltimore, Maryland, Brunswick, Georgia and Port Hueneme, California. Depending on the destination and other logistics, different ports may be used.

To the Far East/Asia and the Middle East, user slrising found some additional sources. The vessels ASIAN SUN, ASIAN KING, ASIAN PARADE, ASIAN CHORUS, TORRENS and MORNING COMPOSER (All currently on lease from WWL to EUKOR) are used. You can track these via the following:
o NMT Shipping (RoRo Freight forwarder for EUKOR) for schedule of vessels listed above but not all inclusive so you may have to go to eurogate or some other website link and try to find your arrival port schedule there.

o Eukor (Tracking your shipment via last six of your VIN once loaded on the vessel). Registration is free here but you won't find much if any helpful info here until your car is loaded. If you need position updates everyday or many time per day as I do, then just search for AIS data on your ship name via google.
New York/New Jersey shipping departures (not arrivals) for a 4-day period can be seen at NY Maritime Departures.

Here's a site for the port of Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada, good arrival information there and an early indication of the ship reaching North America too: Halifax daily status

Another site for shipping schedules, giving good information on ships between two known ports: JOC Sailings. Thanks to Swedespeed user ES-V50T5 for this and the Halifax links!

General view of W-W shipping to North America:

There's a lot more information to be had, pictures of the ports, ships, etc., probably a lot more ways to find it all. Feel free to add!

Tom.

Edit 1/4/05 to add Northeast auto terminal URL.
Edit 7/12/05 to add Google Maps link to Zeebrugge quais.
Edit 7/13/05 to add Goteborg port and maps.
Edit 8/17/05 to fix old Google Maps Zeebrugge link
Edit 8/18/05 to add satellite image of Volvo Ghent factory site
Edit 10/17/05 to tune up ship tracking URL
Edit 9/12/06 to include Southampton radar site
Edit 9/21/07 to fix some links and tune up text.
Edit 4/4/08 to improve Google Maps image links
Edit 5/3/08 to add Atlantic Container Line tracking info
Edit 5/21/09 to add Asian delivery info
Edit 11/17/09 to add marinetraffic tracking site
Edit 11/29/2009 to add Halifax and JOCsailing links
Edit 11/30/2009 for a couple more tracking sites
Edit 6/28/2010 for new forum software and formatting, added Volvo Gent link.
Edit 5/17/2011 to correct link for maps of Zeebrugge quais
Edit 3/1/2013 to add vehicle order type codes
 
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#27 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (tmtalpey)

If anyone has had any recent issues with any of the links in this post, I'd be interested to hear them... thanks.

Tom.
 
#29 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (tmtalpey)

Quote, originally posted by tmtalpey »
If anyone has had any recent issues with any of the links in this post, I'd be interested to hear them... thanks.

Tom.

Yes, possibly as this one apears tempermental:
"Find the ship it's on: Wilhelm Wallenius auto tracking " (http://schedule.2wglobal.com/AppTracking/searchCargo.do?trackType=Auto) But it seems like a problem on there end.

Here's a couple more good links for tracking:

Car's coming to Canada (eastern side) probably all land in Halifax:
http://www.portofhalifax.ca/Ab...ang=1
(you can sign up for do daily e-mail reports as well!)

This is another ship tracking site:
http://www.aislive.com (you need to register, it's free but with the free version there's not search function so it's manual labour trying to find your ship, I'm strill searching for the 'Tancred' somewhere between Zeeburgge and Southamptom)

LTA
 
#30 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (LTA)

The W-W site sometimes acts up, especially in the evenings North America time because of night-time maintenance European time.

Good find on the alternate tracker. As for finding yours between Zeebrugge and Southampton, it's not yet in the open ocean so probably not being tracked. They're efficient in port though, so expect it to move on pretty quickly.

Tom.
 
#31 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (tmtalpey)

Quote, originally posted by tmtalpey »

Good find on the alternate tracker. As for finding yours between Zeebrugge and Southampton, it's not yet in the open ocean so probably not being tracked. They're efficient in port though, so expect it to move on pretty quickly.
Tom.

It's not showing up yet at sailwx.com and can't find it on that site I found either. It left Zeebrugge on Feb 13th, how long should it take to get to Southampton?

ps. Here' s pic of the Tancred http://www.schiffsphoto.de/HTM/Car/Tancred.htm

LTA
 
#32 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (LTA)

Here's another place to try to find your ship (if it's sending voluntary weather reports, that is).

http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/ship_obs.php

This is a graphical view of the same (or similar) data:
http://www.oceanweather.com/data/index.html

Evidently my ship ("Tancred" LALX4) is not sending any weather reports, last I heard of it was in Southampton on Feb 14th.

LTA
 
#34 ·
Re: (TFS)

It can take some time for W&W to take the bill of lading into their system, but once it does the VIN should resolve. And it shouldn't matter what the destination port or inland transportation is after arrival. Are you certain you received an accurate VIN, and did you enter it un upper case without spaces, etc? Be sure you use the "Auto Cargo" or "RoRo Cargo" (Roll-On-Roll-Off) links and enter the VIN as "Cargo ID".

Tom.
 
#35 ·
Re: (tmtalpey)

Quote, originally posted by tmtalpey »
It can take some time for W&W to take the bill of lading into their system, but once it does the VIN should resolve. And it shouldn't matter what the destination port or inland transportation is after arrival. Are you certain you received an accurate VIN, and did you enter it un upper case without spaces, etc? Be sure you use the "Auto Cargo" or "RoRo Cargo" (Roll-On-Roll-Off) links and enter the VIN as "Cargo ID".

Tom.

Well I repeated the VIN back to the salesman so unless he gave me an incorrect VIN it should be right. Also, I tried lower and upper case and I also tried (from your above post ) picking RoRo cargo but got nothing.

Like I said, it wasn't supposed to be here for another month and a 1/2 but they are telling me now that it should be here before the end of the month so maybe I missed all the shipping stuff already. I would think that it should still be captured though even if it's long off the ship but who knows. Guess I just have to wait till the salesman calls me.
 
#36 ·
Re: (TFS)

TFS - are you clicking on the link to "Track by Auto"? http://schedule.2wglobal.com/A...AutoI think they keep records for a LONG time since I punch in the VIN for my 2002 S60 and found it. I'll IM you that VIN so you can try it since I KNOW it works.

LTA
 
#38 ·
Re: (LTA)

Quote, originally posted by LTA »
TFS - are you clicking on the link to "Track by Auto"? http://schedule.2wglobal.com/A...AutoI think they keep records for a LONG time since I punch in the VIN for my 2002 S60 and found it. I'll IM you that VIN so you can try it since I KNOW it works.

LTA

Hi thanks, got your PM and tried it and it works for me so something is obviously wrong with the VIN, will have to verify it tomorrow. I have chicken scratch writing so perhaps I messed something up.

As for the dealer "playing me for a sucker" that doesn't even make sense. Why would the dealer intentionally give me the wrong VIN and tell me it's coming early for no reason?

Thanks for all this info Tom, can't wait to get it working, i'll let you know if I have any issues (apart from operator error
)
 
#40 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (tmtalpey)

Updated the leading message to include cmy4x4's Southampton radar site find: http://www.southamptonvts.co.uk/radcap.asp "This is a live radar shot of Southampton. It updates approx every 10 minutes. You can watch your ship arriving and departing!" Thanks!

Tom.
 
#41 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (tmtalpey)

Hi guys,

Sorry to revive this year-old thread but I am currently awaiting (eagerly) the arrival of an 07R that I placed a deposit on a couple weeks ago. Using the WW shipping site, it says:

Status - Received at Terminal / Port - Zeebrugge / Time 31/01/2007

Status - Booked / Port - Stockholm / Time - 31/01/2007

My dealer is telling me the car is still in "FC" status. Is this correct or is his information old; the WW information seems to suggest to me that the ship has already sailed. FWIW, the dealer told me the car is scheduled to be delivered to them on or around March 8th. Does this seem reasonable given the status report from the WW webpage?

Thanks!!!
 
#42 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (yelloboy)

Sorry, it's been a while since I tracked our OSD V50, but as I recall the Received status means the car is at the port and the Booked status is essentially the same as UPS' "billing info received" status. Thus I think that your car is at the port and waiting to be loaded on the ship.

Using the links in the first post of this thread, have you determined the ship your car will be on? That's really the key to following your car on it's voyage home! Once you know the ship you can track it's progress to and from Zeebrugge.

I was surprised how quickly our car, dropped in Brussles and shipped through Zeebrugge, showed up in Denver after it arrived at Port Huenueme. I wouldn't think that March 8th is out of the question.
 
#43 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (jackf)

Yep, I was able to check out the ship ("Tortugas") schedule (via WW's site), it is scheduled to arrive at Port Hueneme on March 5th...
Looks like the 8th, give or take a few days, will be a good estimate!

It seems there was a few days delay in getting all of the information together...

Looked for it's exact location (just left the UK on the 12th) via call sign search, but nothing yet. Next stop is Panama on Feb 24th.

The waiting begins.........March seems sooo far away......
 
#44 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (yelloboy)

The "received at" status meant it was lined up at the port, but not yet loaded onto the carrier. Cars can wait for quite a while for their ship, a week or two sometimes! Sounds like it's all moving along now...

Don't forget that arriving into Port Hueneme doesn't mean it's on its way. Customs and pre-delivery processing can take a while. Then it goes onto a truck. Fun, eh?

Tom.
 
#45 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (tmtalpey)

ordered my s40t5awd week of 2/20,through ww web site found out the ship will arrive in ny(newark) on 03/23.my dealer gave me an"at dealer date" of 04/06. cant wait.car arriving on the "asian cargo"thought of going to the port to try and spot it coming of the ship
 
#46 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (drpie)

Quote, originally posted by drpie »
thought of going to the port to try and spot it coming of the ship

Hah that is a great idea! If Port Hueneme wasn't so far from me (~4-5 hours) I might have done that myself. Of course if I saw some dock worker taking her for a spin........


Congrats on the new S40! http://********************/smile/emthup.gif
 
#47 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (yelloboy)

Seeing the photo of the WW ship "Tancred" above made me realize that I just saw a identical-looking WW auto-carrier ship berthed at the Port of Richmond (across SF bay from San Francisco). It has the same orange/red hull and appearance as the Tancred.

I work nearby to the port, and sometimes take my lunch to eat there, just because I like watching the ships and/or private boats going in and out. It's a much smaller port than Oakland, but there's still room for maybe 4 decent-size cargo ships, and they have a steady flow of auto-carriers. It's my belief that all CA Volvos come in at Port Hueneme (near Oxnard, CA), though, so the WW ship I saw must have been carrying other cars (I think). Out of curiosity I checked out the Port Hueneme web site, and it seems to be a smaller port than Richmond. But apparently it is the only deep-water port between the LA area and the Bay Area.
 
#48 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (reschleicher)

Quote, originally posted by reschleicher »
It's my belief that all CA Volvos come in at Port Hueneme (near Oxnard, CA), though, so the WW ship I saw must have been carrying other cars (I think). Out of curiosity I checked out the Port Hueneme web site, and it seems to be a smaller port than Richmond. But apparently it is the only deep-water port between the LA area and the Bay Area.

I think this is the case as well - my R, destined for the bay area, came in through Hueneme, though obviously Oakland/Richmond/Bay Area would have been much closer. I wonder why this is....
 
#49 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery - How To (yelloboy)

Because it's a lot more than driving the car off the boat and onto a carrier. The car is prepped, stickered, updated (if necessary), cleaned, etc. There is a specialty company that performs this for Volvo and there are only a few sites that do it. Other sites exist for other brands, which is one reason why the ships go to so many ports.

Sometimes, the car can be shipped out in an incompletely assembled state. If certain parts aren't available on the assembly line, it can make more sense to push the car toward the destination and finish the job there. This is really easy if the part is a software update, for example. Just an example of how specialized the processing can be.

Tom.
 
#51 ·
Re: Tracking Volvo shipment and delivery (my journey)

After taking over 5 1/2 weeks to get from Denmark to Sweden
, and less than 2 weeks to sail across the Atlantic, my ship should be in the port of Baltimore, this Sunday, May 27th, 2007


Long story to hopefully help others:
After three weeks and not seeing my car ship by VIN number on the Wilhelm site, I had called Volvo OSD Customer Care at:
1-800-631-1667
and they were wonderful at calling me with daily updates until my car arrived in Goteborg and was booked on a ship. And I used my Order Number and VIN number to communicate with them.

We had dropped off our OSD car at the Denmark dropoff center, and it took almost 6 weeks to get to Goteborg
and aboard a ship

Once it was booked on a ship, I was then able to use the Wilhelm Wallenius auto tracking by VIN number to track the status of my car:
http://schedule.2wglobal.com/A...=Auto

then I was able to use the SailWX site to track my ship across the Atlantic:
http://www.sailwx.info/shiptra...arch
first by searching by the Ship's name: UNDINE and then after eliminating all the non cargo ships with the same name, by using the Callsign: SHJC

After watching it for a week and a 1/2 sail across the Atlantic I then checked the:
http://www.firstnynj.com
site to see when it was arriving/departing from the port of NJ. Arriving on May 25th, departing the 26th.

And lastly I just called the port of Baltimore at:
410-342-6610
and asked when the UNDINE was schedule to arrive and I found out that the UNDINE is scheduled to arrive on Sunday the 27th - YEAH!!!

so now the eternal wait to see how long it takes to get thru customs...


So any time I get the call from the dealer in June I will be so very happy and ready to celebrate. http://********************/smile/emcocktl.gif
__________________
'07 XC70, Silver/Graphite, Premium, Convenience and Climate Packages (OSD) *with* Rear Seat Entertainment - picked up in Gothenburg March 2007
 
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