Auto Shipping Pricing: More or Less

By Tom Kearns

The cheapest way to get that classic car or family sedan transported over many miles is by auto carrier. Auto shipping offer a safe and inexpensive way to get your car to its new location. You know the cost of fuel today as well as the possible cost of car maintenance and repair of driving your car yourself long distances.

For those in the know, and there are more and more of those all the time, the auto shipping industry is a first choice for vehicle transportation. The customer nonetheless assumes some risk when hiring even the most reliable and most experienced auto carriers. One must be cautious and diligent in their search. You must review insurance policies and past experience and performance with shipping similar vehicles, especially if yours is exotic. Hauling an expensive, custom, or vintage car requires different safeguards than that Ford Taurus. The pricing aspects of such vehicles will also differ substantially.

Clearly, all companies will start the price structure with the model, the travel distance and the exact sites of pick up and delivery.

Some peculiar, out of the way destinations may require out of the way services, and precise destination, rather than only the distance, is important for the service provider to know what conditions to expect along the way. A good company should inform you of any road or weather conditions which might be harmful to the vehicles transported and offer services which will suitably prevent any damage or unwanted circumstances.

If your vehicle takes up more space that a normal one, that will cost you because it reduces the number of paying customers' vehicles that the company can handle on a single carrier. The expensive vintage or classic cars that are usually a collectors' pride and joy have odd dimensions that will not fit normally on a carrier and will also demand more loving care in transport, even if of standard dimensions.

The amount of insurance necessary to cover your vehicle in transport is also a consideration. Your regular policy may not cover the odd conditions that the car might meet in transit. The auto shipping company will have its own insurance carrier and you need to research the policies offered to pick the one most pertinent to your vehicle. It is undoubtedly not the cheapest option that will meet your needs, especially on the vintage model.

One other determination aside from the above is whether your car is drivable or not. If the car cannot be driven on and off the carrier, special trucks will be dispatched to take it to the carrier, it then must be pushed or towed to its spot, and the entire procedure must be repeated at its destination.

Better to have an operable vehicle and hire the carrier giving them as much advance notice as you can before your required shipment date. If you give the company only a few weeks notice, the price will increase, and if because of your car's pre-shipment condition it becomes damaged along the way, oh boy, are you in for some sticker shock. - 30243

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