Oceanex - bumper to bumper

 A shortage of cars in Newfoundland, particularly rental cars, may be alleviated somewhat by a mid-week call by the Oceanex Sanderling today, July 4. The ship arrived and sailed from Autoport, taking no containers or truck trailers - just cars (although the deck seemed to be bumper to bumper mostly with pickup trucks). 

It is unusual to see the ship sailing with its deck loaded with cars instead of being piled high with containers.

For the last six months while Oceanex Sanderling was in Amsterdam for refit Oceanex was only able to provide alternate week RoRo service from Halifax and from Montreal. This may be one reason for the dearth of cars in Newfoundland, but the entire Atlantic region is short of rental cars too, so Oceanex cannot be entirely to blame.

The Oceanex Sanderling only returned from the Netherlands last week, see Shipfax June 29, but now that it has been "reconditioned", it will be able to make two trips a week between Halifax and StJohn's if necessary to make up a backlog. It has done so in the past, and in fact it also used to serve CornerBrook on its weekly service.

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