Is Drive Away Car Transport Viable?
When you ship a car, one of the most important decisions you are going to make is deciding who is going to ship your vehicle and how you’re going to have it shipped.
Okay, technically that’s two decisions, but that’s okay – you get the drift. There are lots of different potential shipping companies that can transport your vehicle, but there are only a handful of different ways to actually get it moved.
The standard is open auto shipping, which is cheap, secure and reliable. Enclosed costs a bit more, but has additional protection for your vehicle that open shipping does not. Flatbed transportation is used when your vehicle is too large to fit on a standard carrier. And drive away car transport is used…well…virtually never, at least nowadays.
Drive away car transport is when you hire someone not to transport your vehicle but to actually drive it from pickup to delivery. We’ve discussed drive away services before on our blog, and those entries all have a lot of great information for you. But they don’t answer the question of whether or not the service is actually viable, which is what we’re going to discuss here.
Simply put, yes, drive away car transport can be viable, but likely not through any vehicle shipping company. Car transporters don’t deal with drive away shipping – it’s too unreliable and too time consuming and often too expensive for them and not cost-effective for you.
This usually means that, if you have your heart absolutely set on using drive away car transport services, that you’re going to have to find another way to book your shipment. Many companies don’t have drivers on hand for drive away car transport services, so we recommend searching in the Yellow Pages or online via Craigslist or something.
There are likely going to be plenty of people that are willing to drive your vehicle for you, but it’s something that you enter into at your risk. With a professional shipper you don’t have to worry about your vehicle being stolen or things inside it going missing, though, so there is that.
If you are interested in car transport, take a minute and fill out our free online auto transportation quote request form. It’s completely free and will get you a free quote to ship your vehicle right away. We work with only top-rated carriers who are fully licensed and insured. You can also contact us any time at 800-930-7417 to speak to a live representative. They can answer questions, give you a quote, place a reservation to ship your car, and more.
Since 2007 Dave has written all the content and blogs for American Auto Shipping and during this time added the duties of customer support and transport logistics.
He currently resides in Washington with his three kids and their mom and cat. A fan of Marvel movies and good stories, when not shipping cars Dave can be found working on his novel, enjoying a good book or playing some tournament HALO.
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