Today, if you look for the Roro vessels for sale, you cannot find many similarities with their age – old design. These vessels have gone through a significant transformation. But their origins can be traced back more than a hundred years even to the days of the steam train.
In fact, during those days, ships were specially designed to carry trains across rivers that were excessively wide to build bridges. The ships were equipped with rail tracks and the trains could easily roll on to the ships. Firth of Forth ferry in Scotland is an ideal example of this.
It’s only during the Second World War, the idea of implementing the ro-ro principle of road transport come into practice. The construction of tank landing craft became popular these days.
Design of Ro-Ro Vessel
RoRo (Roll-on / Roll-off) ships are designed to carry various wheeled cargo, like trucks, cars, trailers, railroad cars, and semi-trailer trucks. The cargo can directly drive on and off the ship with the help of a platform vehicle.
This is contrary to the LoLo (Lift-on / Lift-off) vessels, that use a separate crane for loading and unloading the cargo.
Ro-Ro vessels are nowadays available in different sizes ( from the smallest one of a few hundreds lane meters to the largest one of nearly 8000 lane meters ).
Operation of Ro-Ro Vessel
Conventional Ro-Ro vessels are generally used for loading trailers and containers. These are loaded on flatbeds.
Most of the Ro-Ro vessels are used for overnight services between a few ports, but there are also Ro-Ro vessels employed in worldwide services, e.g., ‘deep sea’ Ro-Ro vessels.
Wondering the reason behind such huge demand of these vessels? Because, for a shipper, the Ro-Ro ship offers various advantages over a traditional ship, especially speed and convenience. As we mentioned earlier, lorries and cars can drive straight on to the ship at one port and off at another within a few minutes.
Various Types of Ro-Ro Ships
Pure Car Carrier
It has a box – like framework. Its superstructure feature covers the entire hull’s length and breadth, thereby entirely insulating and enclosing the cargo. Pure Car Carrier or PCC carries only cars but PCTC or Pure Car Truck Carrier can transport a wide variety of four – wheeled vehicles like trucks, cars, and more.
Unlike other Ro-Ro ships, such carriers are wider in size and thereby, quite discernible. These are mainly used for delivering various automobiles to their exporting locations.
ConRo
Such a ship is basically a combination of a Ro-Ro and a container ship. ConRo ship has both top and bottom decks. The top deck area is used for stacking freight or goods. On the other hand, the bottom deck area is utilised for storing vehicles. Its interior framework is designed in an innovative way so as to keep the loads stabilized and equally distributed.
RoPax
RoPax vessels for sale don’t only transport cargo but passengers as well. Ro stands for Roll-on and Pax suggests the passenger or people aboard.
Roll-on/Lift-off (RoLo)
This is a hybrid vessel. Here the ramps serve as the vehicle decks and a crane is also used for an added accessibility.
Conclusion :
To learn more about various types of medium and high speed vessels for sale, or to buy one, it’s important to contact a reputed ship broker like Norwegian Ship Sales AS. Call +47 6754 1925 / +47 9177 6183 or drop a mail at o.jebsen@norshipsale.no / info@norshipsale.no.
