"Delivering someone's car" OR "How to get across the country very cheaply"

Half A Dog

I have this idea that people will sometimes seek out other people to drive cars long distances for them, if they're in one place and they need their car brought to them, or if they need it taken somewhere far away, and don't want to do it themselves.

This happens, doesn't it?

If it does, does anyone know if there's an online forum where these people find each other? I live in Atlantic Canada and am moving to Vancouver in January. I'd like to load myself, my girlfriend, our cat, and a bunch of our crap into someone else's car and drive there for free. Ideally. Seems like I could save some money, which is short, as it always is. Trying to fly with a pet is a hassle, and I could take a lot more stuff with me to.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

Sam

it sounds like something I wouldn't hire someone through a forum for. More likely some kind of agency?

Improvolone

I looked into this a few years ago.
From what I've found, it isn't going to happen. Most people who need their car transported will either pay someone they know, have it shipped on a truck, or drive it themselves. Given what it would cost in gas and peace of mind, they could put it on a truck that can carry 12 cars and insurance.

DeathPrawn

Unless you have a friend who trusts you very much and happens to want his car moved to Vancouver, not gonna happen. To reiterate what Improvolone said, I had a car shipped cross-country last year. It cost me less than the gas would have to drive it myself, and that's even before factoring in things like wear and tear.

Even if someone came up to me and offered to not only drive my car for me but even pay all gas costs, I would be extremely hesitant to trust a stranger with that sort of risk when the alternative is relatively inexpensive and includes insurance/peace of mind.

I would look into how cheaply you can rent a car. Depending on how long the trip takes, you would still probably save money.

A Bear

Yea, loaning a car to a stranger (especially one who wants to put all their things and pets in it) is going to be a long shot. In all honesty, renting a U-Haul isn't that much and can hold a lot more stuff than a normal car, or if you are planning to travel light an aforementioned rental car might do. Also, you could try to keep costs down by seeing if someone else is planning a similar cross-country trip at a similar time and split a truck or something. I've never tried, but Craigslist might be a good bet.

Improvolone

U-Haul is crap, get a Budget or Ryder truck.

Kate of Lokys

Driving from Atlantic Canada to Vancouver is a long, arduous, expensive proposition. It's about 6000km, depending on where on the east coast you are. Your speed is going to average about 100km/hr, factoring in things like pit stops, border crossings (it would be faster to cut through the US), traffic, and accidents, which means doing solid 10 hour days of driving will get you there in six days. Or you could half-kill yourself driving 15 hours per day, in which case it would take four days. That's a bare minimum of twelve meals on the road per person, at an average cost of about $5 per meal, and three nights in hotels. Not just any hotels, either, you'd need to find ones that took pets, which tends to rule out the dirt-cheap chains. So, let's say $50 per night for a hotel room. $125 for food, $150 for hotel. It's the gas that will kill you, though: my 2001 Ford Focus burns about 10L/100km on highway driving. A newer car might do better, around 7.5-8. Still, over 6000km, you're looking at anywhere from $450-600 for gas.

We're up to around $800 now, and that assumes you already have a car that won't require any service or emergency maintenance during the trip. But you don't have a car. No stranger is going to hand you the keys to theirs, which means your options are renting or buying. Renting would be prohibitively expensive, if you could even do it in the first place - Budget, for example, won't even allow you to drive one of their vehicles one-way from the east coast to the west. You'd probably need to rent in stages, hopping from one major city to the next, and man, good fucking luck with that. I just priced out the cheapest possible econobox: going from Halifax to Fredericton, a tiny 4 hour drive, would cost just over $200 for the rental, plus a $150 one-way fee, plus taxes. And that's to get you one fifteenth of your way to Vancouver.

Buying is dimly feasible, maybe. If you know your way around cars, or you have a friend who does, it might be within the realm of possibility to drop $2000 on an old but still solid beater in Halifax, drive the shit out of it for a week, then sell it in Vancouver for $1500-1800, depending on car prices in both places. But if you don't know your way around an engine block, that option could get real expensive, real fast. Like "oh shit my radiator block just cracked in the middle of the fucking prairies, so much for my college fund" expensive.

Honestly... sell your stuff. Sell all of your furniture, sell your bigscreen TV, sell most of your clothes and sports equipment and things you haven't used in years. Fly to Vancouver, and deal with the very temporary inconvenience of travelling with a cat. Then buy new stuff when you get there, scrounging Kijiji and Craigslist to find deals. Any other way you could try to do this move will end up in raw misery for all involved: sitting on a bus for that long would be hell on earth, and the train is slow and late and more expensive than flying these days.

Improvolone

Yes on selling as much of your shit as you can.
I've never done the canadian rail, but trains can be do-able. I don't know about having a cat on one though.

Half A Dog

Sounds like we've reached a consensus.

Appreciate all the suggestions, especially yours Kate, that's some solid analysis. I have looked into rentals and as you said, it's prohibitively expensive. Ridiculously so, actually. Buying is out of the question not only because I absolutely can't afford it, but because it invites complete disaster if anything whatsoever goes wrong.

I don't care about my stuff. It was an afterthought, really. I don't have anything worth selling, and what I do have will just sit unused in family member's basements.

This was sort of a longshot and I knew as much, but figured it couldn't hurt to ask. At this point it looks like we will do exactly this:

Kate of Lokys wrote:

Honestly... sell your stuff. Sell all of your furniture, sell your bigscreen TV, sell most of your clothes and sports equipment and things you haven't used in years. Fly to Vancouver, and deal with the very temporary inconvenience of travelling with a cat. Then buy new stuff when you get there, scrounging Kijiji and Craigslist to find deals. Any other way you could try to do this move will end up in raw misery for all involved: sitting on a bus for that long would be hell on earth, and the train is slow and late and more expensive than flying these days.