Enter your reference or registration below. A specialist will email your shipment status and expected delivery time within 24 hours. For an urgent update, please call us.
Request a status update
Enter your ICM reference (or vehicle registration) and the email address you would like the update sent to. A specialist will respond within 24 hours.
International car shipping is not parcel delivery. The vehicles we move are high-value, the routes cross multiple jurisdictions, and the customers — almost always — would rather have a written update from someone who knows their shipment than a refresh button on a public portal. The model below is the result of a decade of doing this work for private clients, dealerships, estate managers and the occasional public figure.
Every transporter on a UK-origin job carries a live GPS feed back to the office. Position, speed of progress, ferry crossing, customs hold and onward leg are visible to the team at all times. We do not publish that feed to the open web — the reasons are below — but it is what underpins every status update you receive.
At collection, at port loading, at customs clearance and at the door of the destination address, the vehicle is photographed from a consistent set of angles. Those images are filed against your reference and are available on request at any point in the move, and are sent automatically with the final delivery confirmation.
Your shipment is run by a named specialist, not a generic call centre. You have their direct line and email from the day the quote is signed. They are the same person you spoke to at quoting, at scheduling, and the one who confirms the vehicle has been handed over at the other end.
Many of the vehicles we move are six- and seven-figure assets belonging to private clients. We do not name owners, addresses or vehicles in any public-facing channel. Status updates are written to the customer only; nothing is published, shared with affiliates, or shown on a public dashboard.
The structure below applies to almost every UK-origin international shipment. Sea routes, road routes and transatlantic moves differ in detail but the milestone framework is the same. Status updates are anchored to whichever of the four the vehicle has most recently passed.
The transporter arrives at the agreed UK address inside the booked window. The vehicle is inspected, photographed from a documented sequence of angles, and loaded under cover where enclosed haulage applies. You receive a written collection confirmation within the hour, with the inspection photographs attached.
The vehicle reaches the departure port — typically Southampton, Felixstowe or Dover for sea routes, or the Eurotunnel terminal for road. Boarding is confirmed in writing with a sailing or departure reference, and we flag the ETA at the destination port. This is usually the longest gap between automatic updates and the most common point at which a status request is raised.
On arrival at the destination port — Marseille, Genoa, Algeciras, Palma, Le Havre, or a US East or West Coast port for transatlantic moves — the vehicle is presented to customs. EU clearance is normally same-day; US customs and the DOT/EPA filing can take longer. You receive a written confirmation as soon as the vehicle is released for onward delivery.
Final onward leg to the door — the villa, the apartment block, the hotel, the dealership. A handover inspection is run against the collection photographs, both parties sign the condition report, and the keys are exchanged. The full photographic record is emailed to you within 24 hours.
It would be straightforward to publish a real-time tracking portal of the sort large parcel networks operate. We have the feed, we have the data, and the engineering is not difficult. The reason we do not is operational, not technical.
The vehicles we move are typically worth between £80,000 and £2,000,000. A live position published on the open web — even one gated by a reference number that has previously been emailed — creates a meaningful theft and ambush risk at port stops, at customs queues, and at agreed parking points on long Continental routes. Vehicle theft of the kind we are guarding against is targeted and organised; the marginal information gain of a customer-facing dashboard is not worth the additional surface area.
The alternative — a specialist who knows your shipment, has the live data in front of them, and writes you a short considered update inside 24 hours — is the model our clientele consistently prefer. For sensitive shipments we will agree a private update channel with you at scheduling, and for very sensitive shipments we will run the move under NDA with unmarked transport on request.
A status update from ICM is a written summary of where your vehicle is, what has just happened, and what happens next. Below is the full list of what every update covers — with anything additional you have asked for in your message.
Current location of the vehicle, to the nearest town or port.
Last completed milestone, with the date and time it was reached.
Next milestone and the working ETA, with any caveat (sailing weather, customs queue, ferry strike, public holiday at the destination port).
Any delay, the reason, and the revised schedule — never a vague reassurance.
On request: the most recent photograph from the milestone the vehicle has just passed.
The direct phone number of your specialist if you would prefer the rest of the conversation by voice.
Most of the international car shippers you will see ranking on tracking queries are roll-on roll-off operators — scheduled sailings, port-to-port, with a generic tracking portal pinned to a sailing reference. That model works for high-volume, lower-value vehicles where the customer’s involvement begins and ends at a port. It is not the model we run.
ICM is door-to-door, enclosed where the vehicle warrants it, with a single specialist owning the shipment from quote to delivery. Tracking under that model is a written conversation rather than a port-to-port portal: you know who to ask, the person you ask knows your vehicle, and the answer arrives in the form of a short considered update rather than a sailing status code.
For most luxury, supercar, classic and high-value moves this is the right trade-off. For mass-market vehicles where port-to-port is acceptable and discretion is not a consideration, a RoRo operator is the more economical choice — and we are happy to point you in the right direction.
Enclosed, supercar, classic and multi-vehicle haulage — what each mode is for and when it makes sense.
See all servicesDestinationsCountry-by-country routing notes for UK origin shipments into Europe — ports, customs, transit times.
Browse the country pagesThere are two ways. The simplest is to request a status update through the form on this page — enter your ICM reference or vehicle registration and the email address you would like the update sent to, and a specialist will respond within 24 hours with the current location, last completed milestone and working ETA. The second is to email or call your dedicated point of contact directly — the named specialist who handled your quote and scheduling. Both routes pull from the same live GPS feed and the same photographic record, so the information returned is identical.
Security. The vehicles we move are typically high-value — Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens, vintage marques, classics, vehicles belonging to public figures. A public tracking portal, even one behind a customer login, materially increases the risk of theft, ambush at a known stop, or unauthorised photography. The trade-off — that you have to ask rather than refresh a page — is one our clientele consistently prefer. Where the move is sensitive enough to warrant it, we will agree a private tracking channel with you at scheduling, and you can request live position at any point in the move.
A written summary of the current position, the last completed milestone, the next milestone with working ETA, and any active delay with its cause. Where you have asked for them, the most recent milestone photographs are attached. We do not send generic reassurances or template phrases — if there is a problem we tell you, and if everything is on schedule we tell you that too.
Within 24 hours, in UK office hours. In practice the median response time is well inside that window. Out-of-hours requests are picked up at the start of the next working day, with priority over fresh enquiries. If the request is genuinely urgent — a customs deadline, a hand-over window that has narrowed — call the phone number on this page rather than emailing, and ask for the team handling international shipments.
Yes. Either request an update through the form and add a note asking for a call back, or telephone the number on this page directly. We work UK office hours; calls outside that window are returned on the next working day. For ongoing moves, your dedicated point of contact will have agreed a preferred channel with you at scheduling — email, phone or WhatsApp — and the rest of the shipment runs on whatever you said you preferred.
The tracking page is for existing ICM shipments. If you are comparing shippers for a future move, request a quote or use the pricing guide, and a specialist will return a precise figure within 24 hours.
