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shipping a car
fightinfilipino
Angry as Hell#BLMRegistered User regular
Angry as Hell#BLMRegistered User regular
i'm not sure how many PA forumers have experience with this, but i figured i'd give it a shot.
i need to transport my car from Boston to San Diego fairly soon. has anyone done a similar thing before? what company did you use?
main problem right now is just finding a reputable company to ship/transport the car. i don't have time to drive it all the way, and the cost would probably be a lot more anyways (hotels/gas/food).
i need to transport my car from Boston to San Diego fairly soon. has anyone done a similar thing before? what company did you use?
main problem right now is just finding a reputable company to ship/transport the car. i don't have time to drive it all the way, and the cost would probably be a lot more anyways (hotels/gas/food).
fightinfilipino on
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I can't remember the company's name, but I'll ask her later. Overall it seemed successful and worth the cash, as she even left some stuff in the trunk when they shipped it so that she wouldn't have to mail as much of her stuff back...although I would warn against this, because most places have a policy where you can't do this because they don't want to be liable for stolen stuff.
Weaboo List
Err, as Toefoo mentions, there are many companies that specialize in this, and while it's not cheap, it's not like you lick 4,000 stamps and try and fit in in a mailbox, either. People ship their cars all the time. I did it when I swapped coastlines for work. The shipping company came and picked up the car and put it on a car carrier, and then dropped it off at the destination. Expect to pay around $1,000 to go cross-country (USA), give or take a few hundred.
"Car Shipping" or "Auto Shipping" are probably the keywords you want to search on. If it matters, some companies offer carriage on covered carriers (as opposed to the open-air ones), which might matter to you if your car is valuable, or you hate to wash it. When my car arrived (it was carried on an open-air carrier), it was filthy (I washed it, big deal).
Other factors is arrival dates, and whether you need them to store it for any length of time before delivering it to you. Make sure you understand what the carrier covers in terms of damage when shipping.
but i want to make sure i use a reputable company. for example, i've been reading these forums, and the posters there seem to like Golden Key Express.
i got a quote from them that seemed a little pricey, but i am willing to pay a little bit more for good service and something not scummy.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
If you can just make it a fun road trip.
hence why i'm looking at transporters in the first place.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
if you do it, make sure you wash the car right before you drop it off and take pictures etc. if th ecompany thinks its dirty, any damages it might occur (scratches dings etc) are not covered since they "couldn't" document the condition before shipping
also i think i had the option of shipping it via truck or by rail
What kind of car are we talking about? Is this a car that you can't sell and buy another one when you get there?
Do you have any friends you can talk into turning it into a road trip for you with you paying their flight back? Most likely that would be cheapest.
If you're set on shipping. you might also contact Waggoners shipping. They ship all of the BMWs from the factory here in SC. They're enclosed and seem to do a pretty good job.
This is what I was going to recommend. Paying a friend to road trip your car, covering gas and some cheap hotels, and buying them a one-way plane ticket to get back home, will probably be cheaper than shipping it out.
I also had a buddy who moved his car from San Diego to Baltimore, and what he did was just move out here and existed w/o a car for the fall, until he went home for xmas. He drove it back then, when he had the time to do it.
Let's assume the car in question gets about 30mpg on the highway, which is just about average for a new car made within the past few years. 30mpg for 3000 miles translates to 100 gallons of gasoline required. Gas prices are still hovering right around $4/gallon for basic unleaded. So, that's $400 for gas right there.
The next expense for driving would be hotels. It is ridiculously fucking stupid and dangerous to drive for more than 8 hours per day over multiple days, but let's assume that the driver in question is young and foolish and thinks that fatigue-related car accidents are something that happens to other people. Let's say the driver puts in 12 hour days, every day. That's four days of driving, which means three nights on the road in hotels. It is pretty damned difficult these days to find a semi-reputable hotel for less than about $50 per night, especially if you're just walking in off the street with no reservation. So, another $150 for accommodations along the way. ($250 if the driver plays it safer and sticks to 8-hour shifts).
As for food... if all of your meals are on the road, you're not going to eat for less than $20/day, and that's bare minimum. Throw in snacks and drinks for the drive, and it's entirely feasible to hit $30-35/day. So, there's about $120 for food.
That's up to just under $700 so far, and that's for the bare expenses of driving. What about wear on the car, an extra oil change, potential emergency repairs, toll roads, maps, cell phone minutes, etc? What about the time involved in doing nothing but driving and sleeping for four days straight? If you get a friend to do it, a one-way return ticket would be $200 minimum, which puts the total cost at ~$900. That means it's already the same cost as shipping it, and that's with absolutely no provision for any of those extra expenses, and no reimbursement for your friend.
besides, there are insurance issues with having a friend drive it.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
Quick FYI, freeway driving is a lot easier on a car then city driving. So saying it would wear your car down is incorrect. Just search for car carriers/shippers and do as others have said and document your car before they take it on the chance they damage it during transport.
Neither of these are really good reasons to ship it rather than drive it. I mean yeah, there's the risk that you'll get in an accident or get pulled over with your friend behind the wheel, but you minimize that by not driving recklessly.
It's going to be cheaper and safer for you to drive it. You can get everything moved and leave the car somewhere safe and then, when you have the time, buy you and a friend a pair of one-way tickets back to where the car is and then drive it to your new home.
Also this kind of thing is really fun with the right friend(s). A few responsibility-free days to drive across the country and stop and see anything that looks remotely entertaining? Fuck yes.