There have been a number of articles on tracking your new US-bound BMW in transit published online (usually based on this BMWBlog article or its i3 follow-up), and they do get the basics right. I have learned a couple of new things since then.

The main thing that is different in my experience is that, despite the impression you get reading the articles, BMW doesn’t exclusively use Wallenius Wilhelmsen for East/Central US transatlantic shipping. To be fair, they do list out a bunch of carriers… You just get the impression that K-Line is the West Coast delivery carrier. As it turns out, it also is a carrier for deliveries through the port of Galveston – so Texas & surrounding states.

K-Line’s website is somewhat less user-friendly than Wallenius & Wilhelmsen’s, but it is possible to find a RO-RO (roll-on, roll-off) shipping schedule on there. I don’t really know what drives BMW to choose one carrier over the other, but both our cars made it on Galveston-bound K-Line ships.