In June 2018, the shipping vessel YM (Yang Ming) Efficiency was making its way from Kaohsiung in Taiwan south to Port Botany near Sydney, Australia. Unfortunately, the ship was ravaged by a storm and some of the ship’s lashings came loose allowing 80+ shipping containers to fall overboard. Located in two of those containers were brand new Chevy Silverados valued at nearly $95K each! Over the past 22 months, several operations have been conducted to locate and recover the containers. Recently the MUA (@MaritimeUnionAU) posted some amazing photos of the recovery on their Twitter account. You can read more about the recovery and stories related to the incident here on foxnews.com and here on thedrive.com. Take a look at some of the remarkable photos of this recovery below.
Here is a photo of the ship with some of the remaining cargo containers although some have tipped over and are highly damaged. There were a total of 83 containers that fell off the ship in approximately 120 meters of water 30 kilometers from the Central Coast. Not only were the new Chevy trucks lost but other items included electric scissor lifts, commercial laundry machines, industrial vacuum cleaners, and stacks of mountain bikes.
Here is one of the cargo containers surfacing after recovery. While it doesn’t look too large in this photo, this container is huge and weighs thousands of pounds.
There was also a container containing hundreds of tires recovered. As you can see, most of them were performance tires and this container alone was probably worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The two Silverados were going to Australia to be converted to right-hand-drive. Obviously they are beyond repair now, but at least they have been recovered.
Many people don’t know, but at any given time, there are as many as 15,000 shipping containers adrift in the world’s oceans. It’s highly probably that a container that is not structurally damaged will float for many months. It’s a big ocean, so good luck in hunting down these treasure chests.
And back in the day when I was sailing across those oceans in a 44 foot plastic sailboat, those semi-submerged containers loomed large in my mind as we sailed on through the night…….never knowing if we were approaching a floating steel box @ 15 knots…..
More than one accomplished sailor mysteriously disappeared at sea; containers were always a prime suspect…
Wow!
That’s scary.
I have heard of containers going overboard, but not that many, and never knew they could float! A few years ago I heard a ship that was carrying new and highly anticipated model trains over from China lost the container in the drink.
On another occasion, a ship carrying an actual newly built, full size, live steam locomotive went down in a harbour somewhere along its route. They (China) had to build a new one to replace it. It runs today still on the Susquehanna RR. in possibly Binghamton, NY.
PJH, a train buff, I can tell – old trains, cars, ships – it’s all a fascinating world. We’ll have to trade train stories one day.
I can just hear the Claxton horn blaring, “sir, I know we’re not suppose to bother you, but we have a problem off the port bow”,,,I used to haul containers out of Chicago for years, so I know full well what goes in and comes out of those containers. ( loaded some doozies myself) Amazing really, that each one of those containers represents some factory overseas, cranking out the goods ( that WE used to make) someone drags it to the harbor, it gets floated across the ocean, gets put on a train, and ultimately, someone like me, picked it up at the rail, and took it to the customer, a half a world away. And there are HUNDREDS of these ships. Pretty amazing. While I’ve never seen a stack fall over, something like this is bound to happen on the high seas. I suppose disasters like these keeps people working.
Interesting note Howard. Maybe some of you have been to, or have driven by, a major shipping port. The number of these containers being unloaded and loaded is staggering.
For illustration, if you are bored, do a Google Earth of the LaPorte/Seabrook area east-southeast of Houston (TX 146 & Port Rd.) and find the unloading port, and try to count the number of containers. Further, I did a little Googling and learned a single ship can carry hundreds, to even a thousand, containers (depending on ship and container size). There sure is a bunch of ‘stuff’ going around the world.
normal containerships take ca. 14,000.. 20 foot containers. the biggest up to 24,000 pcs..
@JBP
They are referred to as TEU’s (twenty foot equivalent units). Nobody uses that size container anymore, it’s just a unit of measurement. Not sure where you came up with the 24,000 TEU capacity, but the OOCL Hong Kong (2017) has a capacity of 21,413 TEU, Average size box boat is ~19,000 TEU’s.
@Dave
They aren’t bashful about shipping nukes.
https://youtu.be/p7ZIsK6WFho
Yes, the number of containers going by on the train is amazing.
Guess which one the nuclear device is in?
The tires are probably OK, but anything recovered from the ocean floor is junk!
I haven’t heard if anything substantial from the El Faro has ever been found, besides the bridge audio recorder.
Nothing has ever been recovered from the El Faro except the Voyage Digital Recorder (VDR), not even the bodies that remain entombed. She sits on the sea floor at over 15,000 feet, which is about 3,500 feet deeper than the Titanic.
The 1.3 million square foot warehouse where I work is on the railhead. It is getting containers by rail 24 hours a day. When I started he 25 years ago, we would sell approximately 50 percent domestic products and 50 percent imported products. In today’s throwaway world it is 10 percent domestic and 90 percent imported. We even had to build another 1.5 million square foot warehouse on another railhead to receive all of the made in China products.
Dang.. High Country Duramax.. Nice truck.
It WAS a nice truck. Now it is scrap metal. NOTHING else on those vehicles has any worth…..Sad…
Not a fan of big modern trucks (primarily due to how they’re mostly used) but you hate to see this happen. Ouch.
This is not really a barn find. It’s (Davy Jones) locker find!
A truck that I will never be able to afford. Well, maybe that one.
Ninety five thousand dollars for a new Chevy truck? I don’t even know what to say about that.
I wondered about that too. Then I thought it might be this situation:
Several years ago I worked with a guy from Norway who was on a three-year assignment in the US. When he got here he fell in love with Mustangs, and bought one. When his assignment was done he wanted to ship the Mustang home, or possibly buy a new one and ship it there. Turns out that after fees and tariffs and shipping the car would end up costing almost twice what it would have been in the US.
Your co-worker’s estimate was on the positive side – after reading your post I did a quick run through one of the import calculators. A base ’20 V8 Mustang GT – no options added delivered to Florida MSRP $36.500 – would set him back $114.285 (car+fees) in today’s currency to legally put it on Norwegian roads
Perhaps Australian Dollars? 95k AUD is about 60.5k USD, which sounds about right.
They are $140K plus here
King Ranch/Platinum F-150s can run 60-70k and super duty trucks can run close to or a little over six figures.
Good luck with everything on that one.
Back in 79 our new Honda Accord went down with an entire ship of cars and what not. Had to wait another 6 months to get another.
Did they ever fish it out? Or is it still at the bottom of the ocean somewhere?
Sounds like a project to me! I’d give them a salvage price for one to see if it could be ressurected.
The cost of recovery must be staggering. The value of cargo/cost of recovery seems like a lost cause to me. What will become of recovered items. Insurance sale? Pennies on the dollar? No wonder insurance costs so much. Then again there is the environmental impact side of the equation. With oil spills, forest fires and other such disasters our oceans are dying. Someone has to pay the bill, likely be us taxpayers.
God bless America
I’m sure Chevrolet had insurance on these and has already been paid.
It’s highly doubtful they were owned by Chevrolet. Likely they were purchased by an individual or an importer in OZ.
GM junk rusts just sitting in the driveway. Imagine this salt damage.
Yeah, and Ford or Dodge would be any better or different?
At least the GM product made it to the port.
I’ll take GM engineering anytime!
“I’ll take GM engineering anytime!”
LOL, yeah right. Even most Chevy boyz know better.
I grew up in a ford family and now own nothing but GM. A good friend of mine grew up in a Chevy family and now owns nothing but Fords. But he’s one of a half dozen guys I know with the same story. “I had a GM half ton. Put 10k lbs in it and it broke. Now I drive a F350 power stroke. It can haul way more than my GM ever did.” Um, yeah. Duh. I tell the same guys that all those ford guys drive 350’s. All the GM guys drive 2500’s. You know why? Because they can handle the same load. The dodge guys aren’t allowed in the room.
Let’s be honest, most polished up bro dozers rarely see more than a 30 pack of TP from Costco in the bed.
Yeah I will take GM engineering too. Have to have something for my bailout money I paid.
Easy there shmeg dingaling or whatever you call yourself. I’m a contractor and my guys run 4 express 2500’s every day as well as a 6.0 2500 and a duramax 2500 pickups. And today my Denali was loaded with all the shrubs that the boss, (wife), had me rip out and haul to the farm for the fire once the burn ban is lifted mid may. TP. Sheesh. I’d only be using that to wipe your face. Haha
I bet the sound of the salt water working on those trucks was deafening. hope they had enough insurance.
Stay safe
cheers
GPC
They used to say the Chevy Vega was starting to decompose on the show room floors, nothing much has changed
Wow! Fish finds! 95K for a pickup! Really? That’s what they sell ’em for here in Florida! New trucks here have always been
expensive here and it’s not gonna get any better. That’s why
I’m keeping my ’91 F-250.
Google fukushima harley to see one that came from a shipping container that made it 4000 miles from Japan to British Columbia.
What a lot of people don’t know is that a ship in heavy weather can move in seven different directions simultaneously. Quite surprising that more containers aren’t lost.
What’s the name of that insurance co.? I’m sure my 1920 Rolls was on that ship. Or was it my 63 vette?
Depends what value you placed on them. Maybe you really don’t want to know because it’s most likely GA (General Average).
http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/G/GeneralAverage.aspx
And the Mona Lisa was in the trunk as well as 2 salamis.
Converting a brand new truck to right hand drive does not sound like easy, fun or cheap
The Dodge Ram trucks we get in OZ are all LHD and converted when they get here prior to being sold new by the dealer.
And the same company, HSV, shortly to be GMSV, converted those Rams and would have converted these. They also convert Camaros, in what is a very involved and careful process that involves stripping everything off the vehicle from the B pillar forward, adjusting, adapting, and refitting. So the importer of these into Australia is actually part of GM itself.
Should have left them at the bottom of the ocean