Shipping your car with your household goods from Hong Kong

When a family moves from Hong Kong, two shipments are usually on the go at once. The household goods, booked with a removals company, and the car. It’s natural to wonder whether they can travel together, and whether the car’s empty boot is a free bit of extra space.

Both are fair questions. The answers are a little more nuanced than yes or no, so this guide walks through the options and what each one means for you at the UK end.

Two ways to ship the car

There are really only two routes.

The first is to ship the car with us and send your belongings with your removals company. The car goes in a container with other cars, or a dedicated 20ft container if you’d prefer, and your household goods travel separately. This is what most of our Hong Kong customers do.

The second is to put the car in the removals container with your furniture. Some removals companies will do this, especially on a full 40ft move where there is room to spare.

	Car with us	Car with your removals
Collection	From your address in Hong Kong	Loaded by the removals crew
Container	Cars only, loaded by a car handling team	Shared with your furniture
Marine insurance	Arranged by us for the car	Check the removals policy covers a vehicle
UK arrival	Unloaded at our own facility	Unloaded at the removals depot
Customs, test, registration	Handled by us, in-house	Still needed; we can collect and take over

Shipping the car with us

Let’s talk about why this tends to be the simpler route.

A car container is loaded by people who load cars all day. Each car is secured on its own, with nothing stacked against it, and we arrange marine insurance to cover the car in a total loss or significant damage scenario.

At this end, the container comes straight to our private facility at Castle Donington rather than sitting at a port warehouse. We’re fully authorised HMRC CDS customs agents, so the customs entry is ready before the car lands. Cars under ten years old take an IVA test, which we carry out in-house, and we register the car through our dealer-level DVLA account. Then we deliver it to your new address, or keep it in storage, charged and on the key, until you’ve got somewhere to put it.

It means the car and the furniture can each move on their own timetable. If the removals company collects in week one and we collect the car in week three, that’s fine.

Putting the car in the removals container

If your removals company is happy to load the car, it can work. A few things are worth knowing before you agree to it.

The removals company will tell you how they want the car prepared, and it’s worth asking how they secure it. A car sharing a container with boxes and furniture needs to be strapped down properly, with nothing able to shift against it at sea.

Check that their insurance covers the vehicle. Household removals policies are written for furniture and boxes, and a car is a very different thing to insure. If it isn’t covered, ask what it would cost to add.

Most importantly, the car still has to be imported once it lands. The removals company will clear your household goods, but the car needs its own customs entry, a NOVA notification to HMRC, the right test and DVLA registration before it can go on the road. None of that happens automatically.

That’s where we can help. If the car arrives with your removals, we can collect it from their depot and take it through customs clearance, testing and registration, exactly as we would for a car we had shipped ourselves. Our already in the UK page covers how that works. Tell us early, ideally before the container sails, so the customs side is lined up and the car isn’t left waiting.

Packing things inside the car

This is the question we’re asked most, and our answer is always the same: ask us first.

There are good reasons for it. Everything in a container has to be declared to customs, so belongings packed inside a car complicate the paperwork. Some things cannot travel at all, such as fuel cans, aerosols, spare lithium batteries, alcohol and food. And marine insurance is there to protect the car itself, not what’s inside it.

In most cases it’s simpler, and safer, to send belongings with your household move. Leave the car clean and empty apart from the things that belong to it, like the spare wheel, the tools and the charging cable on an electric car. If there’s something you’d really like to send in the car, mention it when you get your quote and we’ll tell you honestly whether it’s possible.

One Transfer of Residence application covers both

If you’re moving your main home to the UK, Transfer of Residence relief can remove the import duty and VAT on your car and your belongings. You don’t need separate applications. One ToR1 covers the lot.

The car goes on the application with its full details: year, make, model, VIN or chassis number, registration number and purchase date. Your belongings go on the item list, where GOV.UK lets you group and estimate things rather than listing every plate and book.

The conditions are the same for both, broadly:

• you’ve lived outside the UK for at least 12 consecutive months
• you’ve owned and had the goods for at least 6 months before you move
• the goods are imported within 12 months of you coming to live in the UK
• you don’t sell, lend, hire out or pledge them for 12 months after the move

GOV.UK also allows the goods to arrive in more than one consignment. That’s what makes two separate shipments work. The car and the furniture can land weeks apart and both still come in under the same approval.

Our ToR checker runs through the criteria in a couple of minutes. HMRC makes the final decision, so treat it as a guide.

Fitting it around the move

The car is typically 3 to 6 weeks at sea, and the whole job takes about 12 to 14 weeks from the first paperwork to UK plates. Most families plan for a couple of months without the car once they land.

A sensible order is to apply for ToR1 first, listing both the car and the belongings, then book the removals and the car collection once it’s approved. Remember the TD184 as well. Your Hong Kong registration needs cancelling within 15 days of the car being shipped out, whichever container it goes in.

Our moving-date planner works backwards from your flight date so you can see when each step needs to start.

Next steps

If the car is coming with you, get a quote and tell us how your household goods are travelling. We’ll fit the car around your removals and your move date, whichever route you choose. We’d be more than happy to talk it through should you need it.