Shipping a Car to St. Croix, USVI

Have you ever shipped a car? Anywhere? No, you say? Yeah, me neither. Stewart and I went back and forth about this one. Ship a car – don’t ship a car. Buy a car on island. Don’t buy a car on island. Buy a car from Miami and ship it. Sell all cars and just ride a @#$!# bike everywhere! UGH!

We have been a two-car family since we got married. I know, livin’ the dream! However, one of our goals with this big change was to be debt free. As you can read above, we had quite a few different options. We began by thinking we would just get rid of both our cars and buy a car when we got to St. Croix. We figured we could get one for under $10K that would be sufficient for our family and handle the roads there. We had heard/read that the roads are horrible. After Stewart visited the island in January, we decided that we could be just fine with our Kia Forte. I began getting quotes to ship our car and secure insurance. Well, in order to ship a car (that you have a lien on) you must get permission from the lien holder. ALSO – if your car happens to be made in a foreign country (you know….say…Korea) you will also get to pay a 3% excise tax to get it through customs. Yep…that’s right. St. Croix is a U.S. territory but it is also considered “foreign” so you get to deal with customs.

One week prior to our shipping of our household goods, lightning struck our brains. Actually Stewart’s “SUPER-WISE” father suggested we ship the AMERICAN-made (duh…no excise tax!!!) car that we OWN (duh…no lien-holder) to St. Croix. Talk about a forehead slap! I called up John – our shipping broker (sounds so fancy) and asked him to get me a quote pronto. He was on it in a flash. We had the carrier booked and scheduled within the week.

The Wednesday after I shipped off our household goods, our yellow car hauler showed up to take our car to Florida and thence onto St. Croix. I shouted to my 9-year-old, who was out playing at lunch recess, to come and check out the car hauler because we were obviously the coolest kids on the block with our car on a car hauler! Within moments, the driver, Alan, had driven our car up onto the hauler above the cab. It was finished. The car was on its way.

Now we just wait until it is delivered to St. Croix. Once it lands, we have a company that will get it registered and then go park it at the airport so when Stewart arrives he can just walk out and drive it away. (Stay tuned for that story!) AMAZING!