RV on a ship

winnietrey wrote:
Quite a number of cargo ships run between Seattle and Alaska. And they do ship cars and RV's. I could not say for sure, but it does seem plausible that you may be able to find a line that would allow you put it on the deck, and allow you to live in it.

Going to be cheaper southbound than northbound, as less demand from AK to Sea than the reverse

There are two scheduled ships that run twice a week between the Seattle area and Anchorage. TOTE (Totem Ocean Trailer Express) is a RORO shop - roll the trailers on and roll them back off. They do ship cars, but they they're below decks so that waves can't wash them off of the ship and while the below decks are high enough for tractor trailers, they won't let you live in your RV down there.

The second carrier is Horizon Lines who bought out the former SeaLand and Maersk lines to Anchorage. They're a container ship taking 20' to 53' boxes on board. I don't believe they'd take an RV and certainly wouldn't let you stay in it.

Both ships run twice a week to Anch. Each leg, up or down is about three days and they don't stop anywhere in between.

Then there are several barge lines. There's AML (Alaska Marine Lines) which is part of the Lynden Transport companies. They'd transport your RV, but it would be lashed down up on top of the containers. You couldn't travel in them. Also the barges take about 14 days to make it from the States to Anchorage because they stop in all of the various ports to load and unload cargo. If you were to ship an RV to Alaska on a barge, don't do it in the winter. They'd have barges snap loose from the tugs in Gulf of Alaska during winter storms. They loose containers off of the barges every winter and they can secure them a whole lot better than they could an RV sitting way up there in the wind.

The Alaska Rail Road bought out the Crawley Maritime barge service to Alaska a number of years ago. These were double stacked barges whereas the railcars were loaded on the lower deck and trailers or other oversized loads were loaded on the top deck. They'd probably take RVs on the top deck, but they wouldn't allow you to stay in them. They dock in Whittier and road the trailers to Anchorage through the railroad tunnel. About a 14 day sailing time. I think the barge originates in southern Canada, but I may be thinking about the old AHT - Alaska Hydro Train, or maybe that was just the name Crawley used for their Alaska service because they also ran barges from the west coast to Hawaii and had a barge service in the Caribbean.

Then I believe North Land Services combined their barge operation with someone else, but I could be wrong on that. Basically the same as AML's operation.

I don't know of anyone except the Alaska Marine Highway ferry system that will let you stay on board the same ship as your RV, but they won't let you stay in it.

Some of my info may be slightly out of date since I've been out of the freight game for a couple of years.

And freight is cheaper going southbound because almost all of the containers and trailers are empty, but all of those empty trailers and containers still have to go south to be filled up again. If your RV doesn't fit inside of one of them, there might not be much of a savings.

Bill