The epic Christchurch to Auckland return, towing, all electric
So every year since 2012, I have been attending Auckland Armageddon as a stallholder to sell printed tshirts at the show. We make our prints on site, so that means shipping up all my printing gear to Auckland, getting our stock delivered on site, then shipping everything back to Christchurch. I will usually fly in to Auckland, borrow a car, do the show, fly home. That’s how we’ve always done it… Until this year.
This year, our freight quotes went up. In 2020, we paid $856 inc. gst to send one pallet at 420kg to Auckland, return from Christchurch. In 2019, it was $745. In 2022, we were being quoted $1200 inc. gst for the same movement.
For reference, it’s $600 return to take a vehicle and a trailer on the ferry. Obviously we needed to do this differently. It was too late to change the flights, so that’s another sunk cost of $250, but we still have a sizable difference that can save us money. To make matters better, I already usually drive my electric car and trailer to our Wellington show. I’d thought about doing Auckland previously, but up until now, the added effort hasn’t made sense. Now, I get to put it to the test.
My friend Duncan was willing to swap cars with me for a week, I figured I could probably do the trip in my 30kW leaf, but a 40kW would give me more breathing room on a long trip through unfamiliar territory. I’ve driven Christchurch to Wellington or Invercargill a lot, but almost nothing in the North Island. The trailer weighs about 250kg, and the rest of my gear is about 400kg, which filles the entire trailer and boot.
In total, my charging costs for the entire trip (2,698km return and running around besides) were $266.54. Adding this to our ferry cost of $622, the total spent on ‘fuel’ and ferry was $888, resulting in a saving of $311. If we hadn’t booked the airfares, which I will do next time, I would have saved $560.
Now there are obviously a few caveats there. I am lucky to have friends in Hamilton, Hastings and Wellington who were happy to put me up for the night. Accommodation would have blown this comparison out of the water. I left on Monday, and I arrived in Auckland on Wednesday morning. I left Auckland on Tuesday morning, and arrived home Thursday night. In terms of charging time, in total I charged for a total of 14hrs across more than 24 charging sites!
However if I wasn’t driving electric, this option wouldn’t even have been available to me from a cost comparative sense, as fuel for this trip would have been at least $845 alone, that’s just based on my previous car, a Ford Mondeo station wagon, without assuming extra fuel cost for towing a trailer.
There are also a bunch of positive factors from moving the freight myself, as opposed to getting a freight company to do it. For one thing, it means that the majority of my trip to Auckland was emission free, as opposed to a truck moving it.
It means I retained control of my goods. For example, if I had used the freight company, I would have had to give them my pallet on 31st May, instead I got a whole extra week to pack and prepare for my trip north. In the past, my pallet has arrived damaged, because of the shipping company not caring about myself. By moving it myself, I don’t have to worry about this. Finally, shipping companies are bad at time frames. I’ve had pallets arrive late before, and the knowledge that this time could be the time the pallet doesn’t arrive at all, and render my entire trip useless is always a possibility. I’ve had issues where the freight company forgets to pick up my pallet, and I’ve had to worry about whether my stuff is going to be safe. These are all issues that go away when you are looking after your own freight.
Going forward, I definitely will be using this method in the future to transport my freight. I’d rather sacrifice the additional travel and charging time to retain control of my freight, and ensure it arrives safely and on time. I’d rather save money, avoid emissions, not have to fly, not have to worry about a rental car in Auckland. Back in the day, it used to be cheaper and easier to travel around the country through driving rather than flying. I’m glad those days are coming back around, there’s nothing like a road trip.
