Fastest Way to Ship a Car: Understanding Fast Auto Transport
The fastest way to ship a car is probably by cargo plane, but shipping a vehicle this way is hardly practical. Cargo planes are hard to find, they’re expensive, and they aren’t an option for most people when they’re trying to find the fastest way to ship a car.
As such, probably the fastest way to ship a vehicle is via an open auto transport truck. These are the most common carriers on the road, capable of hauling up to ten vehicles in a single load. They travel along state and interstate highways and provide door to door transportation services. This is by far the most direct route from your pickup to delivery locations, making it faster than almost any other method.
Open transport on a door-to-door route is also one of the cheapest methods of transport available. But when we speak of the fastest way to ship your vehicle, you need to understand that “fast” is relative. Carriers can only travel so many miles per day due to government regulations. Not only that, but they are also picking up and delivering other vehicles for other customers along the route, which can increase transit times.
Fastest Way to Ship a Car: What Fast Really Means
Fast, in the terms of the fastest way to ship a car, can mean two things. For most people, it means how quickly your vehicle will be picked up. But it can also mean how long it takes to get a vehicle from pickup to delivery. Let’s break these down one at a time, starting with pickup windows.
A pickup window is a time frame, typically 24-48 hours (but it depends on the broker and the carrier as well), that determines when your carrier will arrive to pick your vehicle up. When it comes to fast auto transport services, this is what you have control over.
Many auto shippers provide methods of finding carriers more quickly than the average of one to seven days. Most of these methods involve paying more money. Carriers take the highest-paying loads they can. Therefore, if you’re offering more than anyone else on your route, they’ll be willing to get your vehicle before anyone else’s they have scheduled. We offer some of the most cost-effective rates to ship a car as well, even if it’s expedited!
Now let’s talk about transit time. As transporters can typically cover about 400-500 miles per day, there’s no way they can get your vehicle from New York City to Los Angeles in 48 hours. It’s physically impossible for an overland transporter to go that fast. But, you can do a bit of quick math to get an estimate of how long it will take to get your vehicle from pickup to delivery. If the distance between those two locations is a thousand miles, you’ll be looking at two to three days of transit time.
This is of course a rough estimate, and we can’t say for certain how long a route will take due to the many, many factors that can impact transit times. But it’s a good estimation and, for most shipments, it’s accurate.
Fastest way to ship a car: expedited services
When you’re looking for the fastest way to ship your vehicle, you need to focus on how fast it can get picked up. The fastest method we have to get your vehicle picked up is expedited service. Expedited service is really the fastest way to ship a car in the auto transport industry, but it is pretty expensive – even for open carriers. Not only that, but not all shippers even offer it – but we do!
The prices rise because most standard pickup windows are one to two weeks; a two-day pickup window is much harder to accommodate, and as such carriers need to up the price in order to entice carriers who otherwise wouldn’t pick your vehicle up to actually pick it up. Not all carriers in your area will be available – hence the longer pickup windows on standard shipments. But if you absolutely need expedited services, the money’s worth it because it truly is the fastest way to ship a car.
If you’re not worried about when your vehicle will be picked up, you don’t need expedited service. But if you need to get your vehicle picked up within the next day or two, the fastest way to ship a car is through expedited service, despite the price hike.
Fastest Way to Ship a Car: American Auto Shipping
If you’re interested in shipping a vehicle, make sure to give us a call! We have over twenty years of experience shipping cars across the country and can handle shipments across the contiguous United States as well as to and from Alaska, Hawaii, and overseas U.S. territories.
We use an auto transport rates calculator that is designed to provide the right price every time. It uses over 500 points of data in real-time and is constantly adjusting itself to match current pricing trends. This way, the prices you pay will get your vehicle moved on time the majority of the time.
We offer multiple levels of service as well, so you can find the fastest way to ship a car depending on your budget. If you’re interested in any of that, give us a call or fill out our free online quote form to get a free quote right away. You can also contact one of our representatives any time to get a quote over the phone. If you’re looking for the fastest way to ship a car, we can help.
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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