Many consumers are not familiar
with how the car shipping business works. Understanding how it works gives you
a better idea of how and why things happen the way they do. Here are the
basics:
Most car shipping companies that
work directly with consumers do not own trucks. They are known as auto transport
brokers. Even if they do own some trucks, they typically do not own enough to
be able to ship cars everywhere that consumers want to ship their cars. Once an
auto transport broker has found a customer, the broker contracts with an actual
car transporter to ship your car. The car transporter may be a trucking company
or an individual owner-operator.
Car transporters look for
vehicles that are shipping in a direction they plan to travel, so that their
trucks can run fully loaded. Car transporters oftentimes use websites, known as
load boards, to find vehicles to transport. They may also have relationships
with auto transport brokers. They do not work directly with consumers, because
it would be too hard to find enough customers that have vehicles being shipped
along the same general route in which they have trucks traveling.
In most cases, auto transport
brokers provide a price quote to potential customers without already having a
truck lined up. This is because only a portion of potential customers become actual
customers. (Most customers get quotes from 3 to 10 car shipping companies.)
Once a customer has agreed to work with a broker, the broker then finds a car
transporter that will take shipment at the quoted price.
