Shipping Car

[Sue46]

We need to get a car from Williamsburg VA to Phoenix AZ.



Has anyone ever shipped a car?


What questions should we ask?


What are we looking for in a service?
-guaranteed price
-insurance
-on time


This is a whole new world for us.


Thanks

[Bahamaniac]

Enclosed transport or open transport? Does the driver check in with you? Will my car stay on the rig or will it be unloaded to get to another car? These are the big ones. I set up a cross country enclosed transport of an exotic car. I set up first to be loaded, tied down, covered, and guaranteed not to be moved. Car was videotaped being loaded and driver unloaded in front of me. How far do you want this experience to go?

[Sue46]

Wow.........Never thought about half of those quesitons.


It is jus a second car, we sold our house and are buying in Phoenix. In the way past we just put the car in the moving van but they don't do that any more so it needs to get shipped and we figure the moving company is the most expensive.



Car is 15 years old, Toyota Sienna. We use it as our hauling car. Kind of beat up but runs well, never had anything major go wrong with it yet. Just normal maintenance. Not worth anything except to us.



So an open carrier would be fine but prefer having it picked up at the house and delivered to the Phoenix house. Going to a central location means I need a ride back to get to/from the car


Thanks.

[Dutch Star Don]

My niece had a car shipped several years ago. It was the first time she or her family had done something like that and learned that there can be some issues. The car eventually made it from Florida to California unscathed, but it took awhile.

What they didn't know.....was there was no set time frame to ship the car. The company picked up the car, but waited several weeks until they had a spot in their shipments to include it. Apparently, they let it sit until it was convenient to add it to a load and save shipping it separately.

[Sue46]

I wouldn't expect them to ship it seperately but to wait until they have a load going in the general direction.



That is a question I will need to ask.


Thanks.

[AudiDudi]

I had one shipped from Salem, MA to Montana several years ago. Open transport. Cost was about $1300. Had to meet the driver at a Walmart parking lot at 3am as my driveway/neighborhood was not conducive to big trucks. It took them less than 2 days from pickup to drop off 2400 miles later.

[Bahamaniac]

One item I didn't touch on was timeline. If you want it delivered by a certain timeline it must be negotiated. Giving them a bigger window will reduce costs if you don't have to have the car right away. Open transport should be fine for your situation.

[Nuk]

You'll need a broker. We spent a few months in Florida last winter so I had my 'fun' car shipped out and then shipped back from California. All shipments on time and no damage to the car.

This is who I used, great service, no-nonsense. Check the reviews for yourself.


Zip Auto Ship
(561) 609-4911

[DegoRed]

Have shipped several (10+) cars, I typically buy most of my cars out of state, and have them shipped in. For a 15 year old car, open carrier will be your best bang for your buck, and it does not sound like you are in a big hurry, which also lends itself to better pricing.

Will probably get into trouble for posting up a link, so go to U-Ship dot Com, create an account, and plug in the necessary info, and you will get about 30 bids from haulers. For a 15 year old Toyota, just go with the least expensive, all will have insurance and reviews and most all will end up with in $50 of each other.

Good luck!

[Isaac-1]

One thing to be aware of is the real chance of the car sustaining body damage on open transport trucks, particularly, if it will be loaded and unloaded multiple times in route to get other cars off the trailer. My sister in law's next door neighbor of several years works in the body shop at a large local car dealership, and according to him it is rare for them to get a truck load of new cars in and for none to need body shop work to repair damage that occurs in shipping. I recall talking to him at some backyard BBQ a couple of years ago where he was complaining about the fact that the previous day they had 23 new cars come into the dealership that needed body work before they could be put on the lot to sell, a couple were so bad that they might be totalled.

[Sue46]

Thans for all the good input. We had planned to take a video of the inside and outside of the car before loading.



I appreciate the uship and the Zip number. I'll look at them tomorrow.


I knew the forum would come through. It is amazing how much good information is on the forum.

[SLOweather]

Have you considered having someone drive it? There might be someone in your area that wants to go to Phoenix one way, or fly back.

[spuds]

I shipped an older car open-transport last summer. After reading up, I used https://www.montway.com/ as my broker. They placed my shipment with an owner-operator who was very much able to work around a particular schedule.

Now, in most cases, the transporters will not be able to accommodate unusual timing requests, especially those involving delaying delivery at all (like I had). Usually they want to pick up and deliver fairly quickly. I paid a little extra because we simply couldn't have the car picked up any later than a certain date or delivered any earlier than a week later due to a house closing and move where we were going to be on the road for several days. If you have more than a couple of days between pickup and delivery your options will be limited.

I was very pleased with the service, even though it was expensive (about $750 for DFW to middle TN). Pickup and delivery was door to door, with extensive inspection of the vehicle prior to loading. I had absolutely no damage to the vehicle even though the carrier had to unload it and store it for a few days at their Nashville yard.

[SlowJoe]

I have used U ship several times and have always had great results. It is very helpful when finding carriers as well as for price if you able to have flexibility on pick up and delivery timing.