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Shipping a car cross-country
Steev
What can I do for you?Registered User regular
What can I do for you?Registered User regular
Next month my wife and I are moving from Illinois to California. We're dealing with a lot of things with this move, but one thing I'm working on dealing with alone is shipping my car over there. We each have a Toyota Corolla; mine is a 2004 model with standard transmission, while hers is an automatic from 2007. We've decided it would be easiest to make the 2000-mile drive in the 2007 vehicle since it's newer and she's more comfortable driving automatic.
I briefly considered selling my car here before moving and buying a new (or used) car out there, but honestly, I don't want to deal with the hassle. It's been a pretty reliable car. And so I've decided to try and ship it out west!
Does anyone have any tips or suggestions for finding a company to ship my car? I've gotten one quote from a company so far, and it was pretty expensive, but also about what I expected it would cost (roughly $1300). Or any other suggestions/ideas you can think of.
edit: update 7/13/2017:
All right, starting to lean towards selling my car now that I spent a few days visiting the place we're going to be living through next June, and it kind of cleared my head a bit. The problem is I need my car up to the week we're planning on making the move. Pretty tight schedule! I will try friends/coworkers first before trying something like Craigslist. There's also a Carmax about an hour away, so I might make a trek out to them to get a quote which will probably be trash.
I briefly considered selling my car here before moving and buying a new (or used) car out there, but honestly, I don't want to deal with the hassle. It's been a pretty reliable car. And so I've decided to try and ship it out west!
Does anyone have any tips or suggestions for finding a company to ship my car? I've gotten one quote from a company so far, and it was pretty expensive, but also about what I expected it would cost (roughly $1300). Or any other suggestions/ideas you can think of.
edit: update 7/13/2017:
All right, starting to lean towards selling my car now that I spent a few days visiting the place we're going to be living through next June, and it kind of cleared my head a bit. The problem is I need my car up to the week we're planning on making the move. Pretty tight schedule! I will try friends/coworkers first before trying something like Craigslist. There's also a Carmax about an hour away, so I might make a trek out to them to get a quote which will probably be trash.
Steev on
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We're moving our stuff in a UPack relocube, so basically we're shipping our stuff. We didn't want to deal with a moving truck on a 30-hour journey. The goal is for the trip to be just one car with my wife and I, our two cats with their chorus of sorrow, and whatever stuff we can fit in there (PCs, food, disposable litter boxes, etc.).
My Backloggery
make sure you get the car cleaned before you drop it off and note any and all dings/scratches etc. if its dirty they will use that as an excuse to say it was there before us but we couldn't see it.
you also can pack some stuff in the trunk, but weren';t allowed to have stuff in the seats etc.
Do you have a trailer hitch on your car?
Good call. From what I have read about shipping cars these days, they want the car to be completely empty of personal effects and to have the gas tank down to about 1/4th a tank to keep the weight low.
Nah, neither the car we're driving west nor the one that I'm planning on shipping there has a hitch.
My Backloggery
plus it's a corolla. that ain't towing shit. Though a roof rack and box is not out of the question.
I've used UPack before for shipping my stuff and was pretty happy with them. The less I have to worry about my stuff and the more I can concentrate on our poor feline friends, the better.
My Backloggery
Pretty much just pick one. There's a bunch of middlemen between you and the truck, and My experience was that they all have awful reviews. On the other hand, I've done it twice and it was fine both times. I basically went with the intermediate cost option, because the cheapest options seemed sketchy.
All of that said, 1300 is pretty high. We did LA to dallas for 600 and GA to CA for 700, I think.
It's best if you, or someone you trust, can be there to drop off and pick up the car at the end.
Also hotel for at least one night but probably two if you want them to not kill themselves driving. Then food for the two/three days of driving and the 50 hours on the train ride back. Also gas for the two thousand miles of driving to be done.
$500 is real low and you could easily spend half of that on expenses of the trip. You'd quickly be paying them less than minimum wage for the pleasure of taking a week to do you a favor and that's if you just count driving time.
But the fact some of the sellers refuse to ship a car or use a certain service does raise a lot of questions I don't know how to look up
Grab a set of walkie talkies if you take that suggestion, fun to use and a lot faster for "hey I need gas this exit" than a cell phone.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
If we didn't have the cats, we'd definitely be taking a more leisurely ride across the country. We want to preserve their sanity and get them to our new home ASAP, though.
Back when I was first thinking about the trip, I considered two-carring it and also thought of the walkie-talkie bit. The downside is that it puts each of us behind a wheel for The whole journey. I'd prefer to be able to swap off every 2-4 hours. Not completely ruling it out, but it's looking less likely.
My Backloggery
i cant remember the name of the website but I looked into this once and found a place that just bids it out, because this is a fairly common thing for shipping antiques and show cars, so basically you can just hitch a ride on a trailer that's already going
from FL to IL was like... maybe 300?
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Fwiw, we had no problems with either transport. Not even a scratch on either vehicle. I would gladly opt to do so again over trying to take two vehicles on that drive.
Auto train travels from Florida to DC only.
I hadn't even thought of this as an option. Seems neat, but quick googling seems to indicate that this service is only available on the east coast.
Selling the car is definitely an option, but that's something I've never done before and the process sounds like a pain.
My Backloggery
I ended up driving the first up, loaded with everything we weren't able to ship or could fit in the car. I then took a standby flight back south and all of us (2 people + 2 cats) crammed into the 2nd Corolla for a much more leisurely drive.
It turned out to be really relaxing, and it let us focus on the health and sanity of our cats (and ourselves) on the way up during the 2nd trip.
I've known people to load one car up and go. Then on their first visit back, get one way tickets and do the drive again. It does mean you have to have a place to store the car and I don't know I'd want to do Illinois to California in the late fall or winter to finish off a vacation.
Where do you dump it off? as I guess it's one of the many car haulers I see parked in the lot at work.
These are just some of the questions I have for the companies that haul cars I see people on ebay or other car online things use
My Backloggery
Funny how this thread changed from "I need to ship my car" to "I'm going to sell my car" but I guess that's H/A for you!
My Backloggery
I mean, telling someone that it's time to break up is like the default H/A response. Seriously, dump her (the car) already. It's time to move on.
Don't forget to delete your car's facebook
If the carmax quote sounds good to you I'd list it on CL for a bit more and indicate that it's a no dicker price. You might be able to get more, but you've got the carmax offer to backstop if it doesn't move this week.