Western Canada – eastern Australia
Ambercor transports two mobile drilling rigs. The size of the consignment wasn’t the only challenge facing a heavy transport operation recently carried out by the Canadian specialist Ambercor Shipping. An insect measuring only about 1.5 cm across had to be taken into account too.
Ambercor Shipping, a heavylift specialist headquartered in Toronto (Canada), successfully completed the challenging movement of two mobile drilling rigs from Calgary, the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta, to Brisbane, the capital of the northeastern Australian federal state of Queensland.
The 4.6 m height of the consignment proved to be an obstacle for the heavy haul, the firm said. Ambercor vice-president Christian Wagner told the ITJ that “we’d have scratched the inside of every tunnel and the side of every bridge in the Rocky Mountains if we’d loaded the assembled drilling units on to a trailer.”
The height of the units meant that the masts of the rigs had to be removed for transport. They were then hauled to the port of Tacoma, in the northwestern state of Washington, on special trailers, and loaded onto a ro-ro vessel for export.
A flat-rack container was dispatched from Vancouver to Calgary to carry more accessories. A standard box was loaded with further small accessories; it made its way back to Vancouver by rail, where the equipment was consolidated and loaded onto a container vessel for export.
Australia’s strict rules concerning the brown marmorated stink bug, which run from September to the end of April, had to be followed, so Ambercor had to fumigate and power-wash the units for their cleanliness certificate before loading.
Smooth cooperation with the manufacturer, the transport firm, craters, cleaners, fumigators, customs authorities, terminal handlers and the shipping line made the loading of the vessels a comparatively easy task.