There are many companies that ship cars within the USA. Just do a Google search and you’ll see a plethora of car shipping companies. While the Google/Yahoo/Bing search results display auto transport companies, many of the are simply lead generation companies. These lead generation companies offer 5-10 quick quotes. They say things like, “Let the companies fight over your business.” While that sounds great to a person who has never shipped a car before, one must be careful because in the auto shipping industry, cheapest is not always the best. If you end up paying too cheap, you risk the chance that your car will be delayed.
Ultimately the transport truck drivers do the shipping. Almost ALL of them work as contractors and they want to make money. Factoring in rising gas prices, the transport truck drivers normally only pick up cars that make financial sense to them. You can learn more about how the auto transport industry works.
With 30 years of experience, AA Auto has kept dozens of independent auto transport drivers in business, especially during the tough 2008 recessions. Our team of transport truck drivers love us and we love them. It’s a great partnership that can’t be built by these fly-by-night lead generation companies.
So let’s get into why many people have bad experiences when shipping a car. Below is an image of Google’s search results for “car shipping companies”. You will notice that half of the results aren’t even auto shipping companies! Instead what you find are lead generation companies.
Normal auto transport companies are all about the customer. However, lead generation companies couldn’t care less about providing good customer service because they aren’t the ones who are responsible for filling your order. Instead what happens is your information is sold (and sometimes resold) to other companies. Let’s take the lead generation company bestpriceautoshipping.com in the image above as an example. They claim they:
will give you 10 instant auto transport quotes from the most professional, reliable and affordable auto shippers in the nation.
This information is on their home page. You information is sold 10 times at a cost of about $10 each. So for every quote request bestpriceautoshipping gets, they make about $100. If you submit your email, expect 10 emails. If you submit you phone number, expect to be bothered. Why you ask? Well, 10 under capitalized auto shipping companies (real ones, not lead generation ones) have to lower their prices so far just to gain your business. This sounds great to the customer, but wait a minute… WAIT a darn minute. The transport truck drivers are the ones who need to make money because, as mentioned before, they are almost all independent contractors who only work for themselves.
There are 10 licensed brokers. In effect, only 1 out of the 10 “might” get the business if their price is low enough. If the price is too low, then your car’s shipment will be at the mercy of an auto transport driver’s willingness to “help you out”.
In conclusion:
Find a REAL company that has an office and staff.
Avoid using lead generation companies.They are fairly easy to spot out once you know what to look for like “Get 5 quotes”.