Re: cross country car shipping

Who's the best - No answer.  I've shipped 4 cars across the country and 
never had a problem.

First thing you should know is that you are going to be paying a BROKER who 
will find transport(s) going the way you need and sub-contract them.

The first auto transport I hired moved a car but griped about the job and 
was an ass.

The second one I hired (Southerland) did the job and I was VERY happy with 
them.  When I went to re-hire them for the 3rd transport, I found MANY 
complaints about them on the web and found out that the owner was under 
investigation.  Needless to say, calls to their offices were never answered 
nor returned.

So, I found the 3rd transporter, Aries.  They did a great job also and I 
was very pleased.  Now I need to move another car and when I did a web 
search on Aries, guess what, they now have a BUNCH of complaints against 
them!  When I found them originally, I could find no complaints.

Really and truely, you (and your broker) are at the mercy of the 
tranporter/driver.  He can pick up your vehicle and then decide he won't 
release it to you until you pay a little more for his hassles (hasn't 
happened to me yet but, I've read some stories). As far as the broker goes, 
once you send them the money and they find a driver, they could careless 
about you or your transport.  I am not trying to sound bad but, as I 
understand it, that's how it is.

Like I have stated earlier, I've had nothing but happy moves.

Now, about the cost of your transport.  IF you are on a route that gets 
alot of transport traffic, your cost will be low.  If your pickup or 
delivery is off the beaten path, you will pay more.

It cost me $400 to ship a Rebel from Calif. to Austin, Texas (through 4 
states) but, it cost me $800 to ship from Colorado to Texas (less than half 
the distance) for the EXACT same car!  Why is this?- because, there's alot 
of traffic along I-10 from the east coast to the west coast and there were 
plenty of transports going from Calif. through Texas whereas, not much 
traffic going North/south through Colorado.

The good news is:
Seattle is a large city so, there's probably a decent amount of traffic 
going to/from it AND Virginia is easy to ship to because it's got the east 
coast corridor running right through it!  Your car will PROBABLY be picked 
up in Washington, sent through Chicago to Ohio then down to Virginia.

As far as running, the fee for a non-running car is TYPICALLY an extra 
$150.  That's not set in stone.  Also, there's another fee if the car won't 
roll or the brakes don't work.  Any of those three conditions will make the 
transport longer and more costly.

How to find a transport?  Do a web search for "Auto Transport", fill out a 
bunch of online quote forms and compare the prices.  You will note that 
MANY pages all go back to the same transport brokers (I hate it when people 
do that!).

For my next move, I'm looking at "America's Choice"  and "Speciality Mobile 
Systems" because they ranked the highest on:

         http://www.moverreviews.com/Auto_Transporter/




>Didn't think I would be having to do this, so I didn't save the old stuff.
>Someone in VA wants to buy my '86 Montero and we need to ship it from
>Seattle. Who's the reasonable service to do it? It's currently not running
>(flywheel got chewed by the starter and either the ignition module went or
>
>the carb flooded everything)