What is Drive Away Auto Transportation?
To put it simply, drive away auto transportation services are a type of car shipping method that relies on someone else driving your vehicle from pickup to delivery instead of relying on a car transporter to load and unload it off a truck.
Essentially, with drive away services, you’re literally paying someone to drive your vehicle for you. It used to be a fairly common practice, and a form of drive away auto transportation is actually not uncommon around college campuses, especially near large breaks like spring and summer.
Students trying to get back home will sometimes post advertisements in common areas looking for people to ride-share with – and when it comes to professional drive away auto transportation services, that’s about as professional as you get.
There’s a reason auto transport companies rule the industry over drive away companies – it’s so much safer, generally cheaper, and a heck of a lot more reliable. Plus, there’s fewer trust issues – when you hire an auto transport company you’re hiring a known quantity. You can check BBB records,
Transport Reviews and other review sites, can look up licensing information, bond statuses, the list goes on. Being an accredited auto transport company comes with a lot of perks, especially ones that will help sway customers to booking with you.
But with drive away services, you don’t get that – you have Bob, that one guy that you don’t really like but you need to get home and need to split the fuel with someone because you can’t cover the costs yourself, so you have to ride with Bob and his lazy eye.
Okay, maybe that’s an extreme example – many people who use or offer drive away services are completely normal people like you and me, and many of them don’t ride in the car with the person driving it (though it is common among students).
But there’s a lot more trust that has to be given – and earned – when it comes to drive away shipping as opposed to simple auto transport, and it’s for this reason that many people have decided to eschew the concept entirely and just trust shipments to auto transportation companies with big trucks and a friendly smile.
Drive away services used to be popular in the 50’s and 60’s, but times have certainly changed; you may still be able to find drive away auto transportation from someone, but it likely won’t be a legitimate transportation company and likely will be some weirdo from Craigslist.
If you’d rather avoid that whole thing, just ship your car. It’s a lot easier and usually cheaper, since you aren’t forking over money for fuel (though the money you pay does tend to go toward fuel, so does the money paid from the other nine cars on the truck – with drive away, it’s either you or you and one, maybe two people paying for all the fuel).
If you need help getting your auto transport started, fill out our free online form or call us at 800-930-7417. If you fill out the form you’ll get a free quote to ship a car right away. You can also contact us any time at 800-930-7417 to speak with a live agent who can answer your questions, give you a quote, 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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