Car Carrier Industry: Ferrying (The) Wheels!

Facing a multitude of challenges posed by sluggish domestic car sales, soaring operational costs, overcapacity of fleets, and booming rail-based automotive logistics, the car carrier industry is far from happy.

- Dhiyanesh Ravichandran

Yet, the industry keeps its chin up, making headway in productivity and efficiency. In conversation with Mr. Vipul Nanda, President of Car Carrier Association of India (CCA).

Every time we get a brand new car delivered to us at the dealership, the feeling of holding the keys can be as overwhelming and exciting as the first time itself. A moment of joy that is, we often forget to wonder how the car found its way into our hands in the first place. Surely it isn’t like a pizza we ordered at the food kiosk, baked inside while we wait and served sprucely hot. Like every other merchandise we buy, cars do undergo the same eternal processes to reach their end users. They are assembled somewhere, made to wait indefinitely at stockyards and embark upon journeys inside closed containers to finally meet their gleeful owners. No matter how mammoth they are in size, they are transported thousands of miles safely and swiftly, with their pristine charm intact, thanks to truck-bound car carriers.

Ever since the advent of modern cars aimed at the mass market in the 1980s, particularly brands like Maruti Suzuki, the car carrier industry began to take shape in India in a big way. Today, it includes several transporters operating about 15,000 trailers and some 3,000 containerized rigid trucks across the country hauling over three million cars every year and doing a business worth Rs. 4,000 crores plus approximately. Of this, a majority of car carrying trailers are registered in Haryana, with Gurgaon being a major hub for car carriers in India, locating around Maruti Suzuki, the largest car maker in terms of domestic sales. Mumbai-Pune and Chennai are the other regions where car carriers are based in, along with a few players from the Eastern belt. While voluminous haulage happens to and fro between the North and South, the Eastern region is gradually opening up with increased car sales in north-eastern States and exports to Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh.