Why You Should Never Take Car Shipping Advice From Moving Websites
If you were shipping a piano, you would not want advice from a company’s website that ships pool tables. When I shipped my pool table, I researched and spoke to pool table shipping companies, not piano shipping companies.
Let’s take a look at some of the car shipping advice given by moving websites to see how good it is. Some moving sites advise getting multiple quotes from different auto transport websites. All but ours and one other website require no personal information (like an email address or phone number) in order to get an auto transport quote.
Many auto transport websites look like they are car shipping companies, but are designed to farm your personal data (like your email address and phone number) and then sell that information to up to 10 random car shipping companies who blow up your email and your phone with calls and texts forever.
Simply put: never take car shipping advice from moving websites.
Article Overview
How do we know? We did it!
We actually went to 5 different auto transport websites listed on the front page of Google. These websites looked like real car shipping companies, so we entered our email and phone number and we received, within 24 hours, about 100 emails, 52 phone calls, and 35 texts from 27 different car shipping companies.
So, the correct advice is to contact car shipping companies by phone or to get the quotes from car shipping websites that will give you a quote without entering your personal information.
You only want to enter your personal information after you have decided to place your auto transport order online with that company on their website. One popular moving website advises that one of the cheapest ways to ship your car is to use terminal to terminal shipping. The type of shipments that are cheaper in this way are those in or out of the Five Boroughs of New York City, for instance.
This is one of the biggest reasons why you should never take car shipping advice from moving websites.
More about Cheap Auto Transport Options
Ten-car carriers do not go into the Five Boroughs. They offload or pick up the vehicles at terminals in New Jersey. Then, they send flatbeds into the city to pick up and deliver the vehicles. You can save the flatbed costs by picking up or delivering your car or SUV to the terminals in New Jersey.
Other auto transport examples that fall into the 5% of shipments you can save money on are similar locations where ten car carriers cannot go, such as Cape Cod, or islands like the Florida Keys. As it turns out, 95% of vehicle shipments are door to door, which means, as close to your locations that the ten-car carrier can physically get to (as they’re about 80 feet long).
We can have the carrier deliver it to anyone you want – a friend, a relative, or even a neighbor. There are terminals available in all of these locations; however, they charge by the day, anywhere between $25-50 per day.
Terminal to terminal car transport is not cheaper since, in about 95% of shipments, a terminal will cost more money (as they have daily charges), whereas picking up and delivering to your home, neighbor, or friend is free. The correct advice here is that in 95% of shipments, door to door is actually the cheapest way to ship your vehicle, not terminal to terminal!
Are They Really the Top 5 Companies in the Industry?
Many moving websites are now advising which auto transport company you should use. They like to call it the “five best car shipping companies,” or, worse still, “”the top five auto transport companies of 2020.””
Here’s the problem: you would think that they research the top 100 or so to at least come up with the top five, and that they would disclose that they are not making money from any of the award winners. However, this is not the case, as the moving websites admit on their websites that they make money every time you click on the award winner’s website or ship with that company.
In Conclusion
It appears that these “top five best car shipping” pages are just advertising web pages designed to get you to click on the advertisers’ links. The truth is that you would save money by just visiting the websites of the award winners directly and avoid paying those moving websites a commission because obviously, the best companies are the ones that clearly spend the most on advertising!
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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