diff --git a/vllm/engine/multiprocessing/engine.py b/vllm/engine/multiprocessing/engine.py
index 9dd6fa5b14315..e1dcb82829d76 100644
--- a/vllm/engine/multiprocessing/engine.py
+++ b/vllm/engine/multiprocessing/engine.py
@@ -5,7 +5,6 @@
 
 import cloudpickle
 import zmq
-from ray.exceptions import RayTaskError
 
 from vllm import AsyncEngineArgs, SamplingParams
 # yapf conflicts with isort for this block
@@ -306,11 +305,17 @@ def _health_check(self):
     def _send_outputs(self, outputs: REQUEST_OUTPUTS_T):
         """Send List of RequestOutput to RPCClient."""
         if outputs:
-            # RayTaskError might not pickelable here. We need to unpack the
-            # underlying exception as the real exception in the output.
-            if (isinstance(outputs, RPCError)
-                    and isinstance(outputs.exception, RayTaskError)):
-                outputs.exception = outputs.exception.cause
+            try:
+                from ray.exceptions import RayTaskError
+
+                # RayTaskError might not pickelable here. We need to unpack the
+                # underlying exception as the real exception in the output.
+                if (isinstance(outputs, RPCError)
+                        and isinstance(outputs.exception, RayTaskError)):
+                    outputs.exception = outputs.exception.cause
+            except ImportError:
+                pass
+
             output_bytes = pickle.dumps(outputs)
             self.output_socket.send_multipart((output_bytes, ), copy=False)