Your Guide to
Auto Transport Services
Whether you’re a first-time shipper or someone who has moved multiple vehicles before, it’s always good to have a guide to auto transport services. Being able to refresh yourself on the process and what you can expect when shipping a car, or having tips and tricks at your fingertips through a guide of some kind, can be invaluable no matter how many times you’ve shipped a car.
That’s why we’ve created this definitive guide to auto transport – for our customers, both current and future.
Article Overview
Once you know for sure that you are shipping a vehicle, you need to find someone to actually move it. This is both easy and difficult, depending on what you’re shipping, when you’re shipping, and how you need to move it.
To start, find a broker, not a carrier. Brokers are auto transport companies that find carriers for customers. Carriers are the transportation company that physically move vehicles from point A to point B.
It’s important to find a broker because carriers rely on brokers for the vast, vast majority of the loads they ship. Finding a carrier company yourself is much more difficult, as they don’t advertise their services online. Most carriers don’t have websites or marketing teams or people to book those orders – they have dispatchers that work with brokers to keep their trucks full.
Some tips on finding the right broker for you
You want to find a company that has some or all of the following:
- Quality, binding quotes
- Experience
- Quality customer reviews
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Finding the Right Auto Transport Carrier
You should understand the different types of auto transport trucks on the road, as there are different ones that serve different types of vehicles. Booking transport on the wrong type of carrier can lead to problems including longer wait times that are unnecessary, potential damage issues, and more.
Open auto transport carrier
Open auto transport trucks are the most popular vehicle shipping trucks on the road today. They are the most common and the cheapest on the road. They can ship as few as 1-3 cars on a trailer, or as many as ten at a time!
Open transport trucks move vehicles on the back of an open trailer. What does “open” mean, though? It means that the vehicles they ship are open to the elements. In other words, they are not covered in any way; if it rains, the cars on the trailer get rained on. If it’s snowing, or sunny, they bear the brunt of that, too.
Open transport trucks provide a similar level of protection as when you’re driving it yourself. Of course, because it’s being transported and not driven, you don’t get the wear and tear on the wheels, the engine, or the undercarriage. So open transport trucks protect the vehicle more than it is when it’s being driven.
This is why open carriers are the most popular – and the cheapest – on the road. Most people are transporting vehicles that they drive daily, so they’re used to seeing dirt and mud on their vehicles. You should expect the same when shipping on an open transport truck as well – vehicles get dirty when they’re moved overland, naturally.
Not only that, but their ability to move up to ten vehicles at a time helps to keep costs lower for consumers. Carriers can still turn a profit despite offering low per-mile prices for vehicles as they have up to nine other customers on their trucks as well.
Open transport is safe and secure for most vehicles that you see on the road. They are also the cheapest, as there are more open trucks on the road than any other type of transport truck. But they’re not the only ones.
Enclosed auto transport carrier
Enclosed auto transport trucks differ from open transport trucks in three key areas: price, protection, and availability.
Let’s start with the first: price. Enclosed transportation services are more expensive than their open counterparts, often by 50-100% more. This is because enclosed transport trucks often haul 2-6 vehicles at a time, and there are few that can take more. This means that the costs have to go up on a per-vehicle basis in order to keep the truck fueled and operating.
However, the trade-off for a higher price is increased protection for the vehicles. Unlike an open transport truck, enclosed haulers are just that – completely enclosed. This means that the elements do not affect vehicles, and they are further protected from other on-the-road hazards such as dirt, debris, and accidents.
Damage is much less common – almost non-existent – when vehicles ship enclosed. However, damage on an open transport truck is very rare as well – damage occurs on less than 3% of all vehicles shipped.
Enclosed transport trucks, in addition to hauling fewer vehicles, are not as common on the road. This isn’t surprising; there’s less overall demand for their services.
We highly recommend enclosed transport for anyone shipping a vehicle that is going up in value. However, we also recommend it for higher-end sports cars and luxury cars, as well as classic cars, show cars, and other vehicles that retain their value over the long run.
Flatbed auto transport carrier
Flatbed auto transport trucks are the least popular and least used transport trucks on the road. They’re often not available on-demand; that is, you can’t usually call an auto transport company and say you want to move a car on a flatbed truck.
You’ve probably seen a flatbed – they’re common as tow trucks, for instance, and they’re used mainly for vehicles that cannot fit on a standard open or enclosed trailer.
This includes vehicles such as heavy equipment, severely lifted or extended trucks and SUVs, motorhomes, boats, and other non-road-legal vehicles.
It’s the most expensive method of transporting a vehicle and it is not used for standard vehicles. If the vehicle you are shipping is large, overweight, a piece of machinery or heavy equipment, then yes, flatbed auto transport is probably right for you. But for everything else, open or enclosed should do the trick.
This is the type of truck you want to discuss with your auto transport broker if you think you may need it. They will likely also let you know if you need it based on the vehicle information you provide.
The auto transport industry is very much route-based in terms of prices and carrier availability. This is not a surprise; carriers want to go where their customers are, so they stay on routes that take them into and out of major metropolitan areas. This means that big cities, like Los Angeles and Dallas, tend to be more popular than smaller cities and metropolitan areas.
But city size is far from the only major metric that plays into your price and transit times. You also have to look at the regions that cities are in. For instance, the northeast is pretty popular up until Boston – go further north, though, into states like New Hampshire and Maine, and there are few carriers that go up there.
The same holds true for areas like Minnesota, especially Minneapolis, as well as the southwest, like Albuquerque. Both are major cities with hundreds of thousands of people in them, but they aren’t popular among carriers due to a lack of anything nearby. Minneapolis is a long drive away from other major cities, as is Albuquerque. So these areas tend to take a bit longer to ship to or from and usually cost a bit more per-mile than other, more easily-accessible areas.
This doesn’t mean you can’t ship a car to or from those areas. It just means you need to prepare yourself for a longer wait or a higher price – or both, depending on the time of year.
This is the type of truck you want to discuss with your auto transport broker if you think you may need it. They will likely also let you know if you need it based on the vehicle information you provide.
One of the biggest sources of confusion for many customers is the idea of transit time. Every route has a transit time associated with it, ranging from a few hours for local trips of only a hundred miles or so, to weeks for cross-country shipments.
Your transit time is going to depend on where you are shipping from and to as well as the physical route the carrier is taking. On average, though, carriers can drive 400-500 miles per day. You can use this to estimate the transit time on your shipment.
This of course is just an estimate. Transit times are affected by numerous factors as well, including inclement weather, traffic and reroutes along the highway, as well as delays in other pickups and deliveries.
Note, too, that auto transport carriers have to abide by both state and federal laws and regulations that govern how long they can drive. After a point, carriers have to take a mandatory 34 hour rest period before resuming driving. This can push transit times back a bit depending on when that rest period occurs.
Though auto transport services are available year-round, summer and winter tend to be extreme in terms of demand for services. While spring and autumn are usually fairly stable in terms of pricing and availability, summer and winter mark drastic changes, with the former seeing lots of demand and the latter seeing much less.
Summertime is the peak season for car transport services. Lots of people need to ship a car for a litany of different reasons. A lot of people, especially those with children, like to move during the summer so they don’t disrupt their kids’ schooling. More people are buying vehicles during the summer months, and with weather generally nice across the country, many people wait to ship until the spring or summer to avoid snow and ice.
This increase in demand can be both good and bad. On less popular routes, the increase in demand along most routes tends to result in faster pickup times and lower prices, so trucks can maintain full loads.
However, on more popular routes, prices tend to increase. This has to do with how many carriers there are versus how many people are shipping. More people shipping means more demand for truck space, but only so many trucks. Carriers, therefore, can get the highest-paying loads first, leaving cheaper shipments behind. As such, out of major areas like Los Angeles and Miami, prices can skyrocket.
During the winter months, though, demand drops considerably. This results in lower prices along most routes, though along less popular routes – where there are fewer people shipping vehicles – prices can actually go up a fair bit, as carriers have a harder time keeping their trucks full.
On more popular routes, though, prices decrease as there are plenty of carriers running those routes still, but much less demand. This means carriers have to take whatever they can usually, resulting in lower prices for most customers.
