How To Ship A Car To Denmark

First, you need to contact an international car shipping company with a good track record, insurance coverage, and overall customer satisfaction. Your Google search will yield you many options, but you can't treat them all the same. After all, every business is bound to write glowing descriptions and share the most positive reviews on its website.

What you ought to do is to dig out information from third-party websites such as Google My Business, Yelp, Bing, and so on, where customers can post reviews for businesses. From there, you're bound to get a fuller, more neutral picture. Based on these reviews, you'll be better able to see if the contractor has a record of satisfying their clients and keeping vehicles safe during the transport.

After that, you'll have narrowed down your choices, preferably to the top five or top three. Next, you can contact the transport companies individually for licensure verification to see if they are insured for auto transport and whether or not they guarantee complete safety for your vehicle during the shipment process.

It would also help if your candidate could help you with the customs clearance, door-to-door delivery, and vehicle registration. Of course, none of this is compulsory, you can do all of this yourself too if you want to save some money, but if you can afford to do so and are busy, then it will be worth it.

Just a PS, A1 Auto Transport has a flawless record of ensuring customer satisfaction, and we offer all sorts of service options.

Overall, shipping your car from the USA to Denmark will cost you about $2,000 to $4,400, but this is merely an estimate for container shipping with standard service options. Your choices in this regard will matter a lot.

The total cost for shipping the car will depend on the following factors:

• Your car's specifications, i.e., the value of the vehicle, make and model, size, weight, etc.
• Value-added tax or VAT applied to your car in Denmark
• Customs duties placed by the Danish customs department
• The overseas distance between the point of departure and destination
• Whether you opt for roll-on, roll-off shipment, or container shipment, or air freight
• Whether you chose door-to-door delivery or decided to handle the overland transport on your own, i.e., port-to-port delivery
• Vehicle registration tax payable to the Danish Register of Motor Vehicles
• Insurance charges coverage during the transport

Several of the aforementioned factors are affected by your choices, you can either sit back and relax while the contactor handles everything for you, for a bigger price, of course, or you can avoid the money drain and do things yourself.

Plus, you can also try to get an exemption from the VAT and customs duties.

Before you send your car off to overseas transport, you need to make sure that it is ready to be shipped. As with all other EU countries, there are entry requirements for your car in Denmark. These regulations are mostly centered on biosafety concerns, so a thorough cleaning should do the trick.

Start by cleaning the car's exterior and steam cleaning the undercarriage to remove any foreign soil deposits from underneath. Next, clean the interior, remove any possessions of yours from inside, empty the glove compartment, remove anything hooked into the console, and remove any discarded stuff (tissue paper, paper cups, etc.)

Then move onto the exterior once again, where you'll have to strip your car off any attachments and add-ons that might get damaged during the move, such as the antennas, décor accessories, and so on.

In essence, you'll be stripping your car down to its factory configuration.

Fill about a quarter of the car's tank with fuel, don't keep it bone-dry, but don't fill it more than this limit.

Finally, have your car inspected and photographed from all angles so that you can compare its condition after you get it at your new address.

These documents have to be submitted to the Danish customs department for customs clearance. For an up to date list of documents, be sure to long into the Danish customs website before shipping your car, but you'll most probably need the following:

• The original title certificate for your car
• Export permit
• Your passport (a copy will do)
• Documentation of vehicle registration in the USA
• Driver's license
• Sales invoice with the price of the car stated and all other specs mentioned
• Bill of lading
• Insurance paperwork
• Proof of ownership of the car
• Documented proof of residence

Before you submit your documents to the customs department directly or via the transport contractor, be sure to double-check every detail to see that there are no errors and omissions. Any mistakes here can create issues for you.

Next, you'll have to pick an option for shipping your vehicle overseas based on your budget and preferences. You have the following options:

Roll-on, Roll-off Shipment: This is the cheapest and simplest of the three options but is reliable enough. Here, the car is simply driven onto the transport vessel's deck, fastened on board, transported under the open sky, and then taken off the ship. The only backside is that there is no protection against the weather.

Closed Air Shipment: This mode is more or less the same as the previous one, except there is a container in the equation. The car is sealed inside one and thus safeguarded from any damage. Upon arrival at the destination port, the container is unloaded and unpacked. You'll have to pay extra if you want to go with this one.

Air Freight: If you can't wait to have your car delivered to you overseas, especially if it is a luxury vehicle or a classic, then air freight is the perfect option. It is fast, secure, and reliable, but of course, it costs much more.

Apart from choosing how your car will be transported, you also have the option of picking between port-to-port delivery (cheaper) and door-to-door delivery (convenient but comparatively costlier); for the former, you'll have to drive your car to the departure port and pick it up from the destination port yourself.

If you want to import your car temporarily, you'll have to submit your vehicle registration documents and proof of your stay in the country for a given duration. On top of this, there will be a small fee (DKK 400 at the moment).

Import taxes and duties are waived for temporary imports.

For permanent import, you'll have to provide a bigger stack of documents (noted in an earlier section). Plus, if you want to seek exemption from paying customs duties and import taxes for your car, you'll have to prove that you are:

• The legal owner of the car being imported
• Moving into the country from outside the EU with a residence of one full year outside the EU (in this case, the USA)
• Planning on settling in Denmark and securing a citizenship
• Able to prove that you owned and drove the said vehicle for the past six months
• Not going to sell the vehicle for one full year after moving to Denmark

Note that the tax exemption does not apply to commercial imports.

After customs clearance, you'll have to have your car inspected for emissions standards and vehicle safety, nothing major. Following this, you can submit your application for valuation (before you register your car) to the Danish Register of Motor Vehicles, also known as SKAT.

Once they're done with the valuation, they'll ask you to pay a certain amount in registration tax.

After paying the tax, you can get your car registered in Denmark and drive legally.