Los Angeles · Hong Kong · Est. 1982
We have carried one-of-one freight across the Pacific for four decades. Collector automobiles, pre-production prototypes, diagnostic systems, flight hardware. Never in volume. Only in full custody.
02 — The house
Barracuda Exports was founded in San Pedro in 1982 with one chartered vessel and a single customer who needed a racing car in Yokohama by March. We are still family-owned, now in the second generation, and we still take that call personally.
Scale was available to us and we declined it. A carrier moving forty thousand boxes a week cannot know what is inside any of them, and cannot stop the ship when one of them matters. We sail fewer containers in a year than a mainline operator sails in a morning, and we know the contents of every one.
The Hong Kong office opened in 1989. In 1994 we acquired Wang Ltd. Containers, which remains our container operation in Kwai Tsing and the reason we control our own equipment rather than renting it from whoever has a box free.
04 — Cargo classes
Every class below has its own cradle design, its own insurance schedule, and its own surveyor. We do not carry general freight, and we will tell you plainly when a consignment belongs with someone else.
Class 01
Pre-war coachwork, homologation specials, factory race cars, and the occasional car that has never been titled anywhere. Each vehicle travels in a dedicated container on a bespoke cradle, strapped at the chassis rather than the suspension, fluids managed to the consignor's instruction.
Class 02
Tooling, first articles, and equipment that exists in a quantity of one. This is the class where confidentiality matters as much as handling: manifests are abstracted, crates carry no maker's marks, and the number of people who know what is in the box stays deliberately small.
Class 03
Imaging gantries, surgical robotics, cryogenic assemblies and calibrated instruments that arrive useless if they arrive shaken. Reefer and controlled-atmosphere equipment is our own, monitored continuously, with a power path that survives a terminal outage.
Class 04
Structures, propulsion components, optics and flight hardware moving to integration. Cleanliness classification is maintained from the consignor's floor to the receiving bay, and export control paperwork is prepared before the container is ever positioned.
06 — Chain of custody
Most losses do not happen at sea. They happen in the handovers — a yard, a subcontracted haulier, a night shift that was never told what it was lifting. We remove the handovers.
A surveyor attends the item where it stands, before anything is quoted. Dimensions, mass, fragility, and the honest answer to whether we are the right carrier.
Crating and cradles are built for the object, not ordered from a catalogue. Drawings are approved by the consignor before a single piece of timber is cut.
Under-deck stowage, always. Position, temperature and shock data are available to the consignor for the whole crossing, not summarised afterwards.
Seals are broken in the presence of the consignee and our own agent. Condition is recorded against the departure record before anyone signs anything.
08 — Network
We work one lane and we work it deeply. San Pedro Bay to Kwai Tsing, west and east, on a published schedule that has not been missed since 2019.
POLA
Berth 148, Terminal Island
San Pedro, California 90731
Head office, marine survey, and the crating shop.
HKG
Kwai Tsing Container Terminals
Kwai Chung, New Territories
Operated with Wang Ltd. Containers, our subsidiary since 1994.
09 — Affiliations
Our subsidiary, our accrediting body, and the agents who represent us in ports we do not call at ourselves.
10 — Enquiries
Every enquiry is read by a surveyor, not a sales desk. If your consignment is better served by a mainline carrier we will say so, and we will tell you who to call.