Shipping a Car to Puerto Rico

Most guides to shipping a car to Puerto Rico quote a shipping price and move on. That price is the smaller half of the story. Puerto Rico charges arbitrios, an excise tax, on a vehicle brought onto the island, and it is charged on the value the Departamento de Hacienda assigns the car, not on what you paid for it or what the shipping cost.

Read those bands against a real car. A tidy ten-year-old sedan may land near the bottom and cost a few hundred dollars. A three-year-old SUV that Hacienda values at $35,000 sits in the fifth band, which is $5,575.15 plus 27.2% of the excess — several times what the voyage costs. The tax is what decides whether shipping the car makes sense at all, or whether selling it on the mainland and buying on the island is the better move.

The journey has two legs. First a truck takes the car to a port, usually Jacksonville, Florida, which is the main gateway for Puerto Rico traffic. Then it sails as roll-on/roll-off freight to San Juan, driven onto the ship rather than packed in a container.

Those three are the whole market from that port, and that is not an accident of competition.

So this is domestic shipping with a short list of carriers. There is no customs entry, no import duty and no passport for the car, but there is also no way to shop the route to a hundred operators the way you would a cross-country move.

Ocean carriers are stricter than road carriers, and the rule that catches people out is about belongings. Crowley's own guidance is blunt: "No personal items will be accepted inside the vehicle, including umbrellas, visor shades, CDs, boxes, suitcases, etc."

• Empty the car completely, including the glovebox, door pockets and trunk. A spare tire and jack are normally the only exceptions
• Expect a fuel limit. A quarter tank is the usual instruction, and an overfull tank can get a car turned away at the terminal
• Wash it before you go. A clean car is easier to inspect, and agricultural cleanliness matters on island routes
• Make sure the VIN is readable and matches your paperwork exactly
• Photograph every panel the day you hand it over, with the date visible
• Take the toll transponder off the windshield and cancel or move it

Carrier requirements differ in detail and change, so ask your carrier for their current list in writing rather than trusting any summary, including this one. A car rejected at the terminal is a wasted trip and often a storage charge.

You will need the title and registration, photo identification, and the booking paperwork from the carrier. The complication worth knowing early is finance: if there is a loan or lease on the car, the lender owns it, and carriers ask for written authorization from the lienholder before they will load it.

That letter takes time. Lenders are not quick, and some refuse to let a financed vehicle leave the mainland at all. Ask your lender before you book a sailing, not the week you plan to travel.

Once the car lands, registering it in Puerto Rico is its own process through DTOP, and the excise tax has to be settled before the car is yours to drive on the island.

Ask before you plan anything else. Ocean carriers have grown wary of lithium-ion batteries at sea, and two of the carriers serving the other island routes have stopped accepting electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles outright.

Those two policies cover Hawaii and Alaska rather than Puerto Rico, and we have not found a published refusal on the Puerto Rico route. That is exactly why you should ask your carrier directly and get the answer in writing: a policy that has already spread to two ocean routes is not a safe thing to assume about a third.

For a car you love, an unusual car, or one you own outright and intend to keep for years, shipping usually wins. For an ordinary car with a few years left in it, do the arithmetic honestly before you commit.