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How to prepare your vehicle for car transport

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Home  |  Car Transport   |   How to prepare your vehicle for car transport

Many car transport customers worry about preparing their vehicle for shipment. But there’s no need for concern. Not much is required on the part of the customer. Really, your driver does all the work. You just need to be on-call for pick-up day with your empty vehicle and a key.

You don’t need to prepare any documents or present any paperwork to have your car shipped. In fact, we recommend you remove any insurance documentation and important personal documents from the vehicle before shipment. Your driver does not need proof that your vehicle is insured, so you don’t need to risk letting those personal documents out of your sight. The only document needed to ship a car is the Bill of Lading and your driver will bring that for your signature - both on pick-up and delivery.

Relatedly, we recommend you remove items of value from your vehicle. As handy as it would be to pack your vehicle with belongings, your car transport quote is priced for the shipment of the vehicle only. Additional belongings often accrue additional fees - if they can be accepted at all. Sometimes, your carrier has no room in his weight limit to allow additional items, and/or he doesn’t want to risk the fines he would face to include your personal belongings. It’s best to assume the transport is for your empty vehicle only.

You don’t need to fill your gas tank or empty your gas tank. Your car does need a little gas (a quarter tank is enough), as it will be driven on and off the carrier. But if you have more than a quarter of a tank, don’t worry about emptying it before the carrier arrives. Some of the extra gas may evaporate over the transport, but it won’t cause any damage.

It’s easy to prepare your vehicle for cross-country car transport! There’s literally nothing to it! Of course, if you have any questions about preparing your vehicle or need more information about car transports, please give us a call: 866-221-1664.

Frequently Asked Questions

Honest Answers to Your Car Shipping Questions

Yes, we always ask for your specific pickup and delivery addresses, if the carrier can get right to the addresses you provide, they will. If the addresses that you give us are not safely accessible for a Multi-car carrier, however, you will need to make arrangements with the driver to meet at a nearby location where the carrier can safely get in and out.

People do it all the time (rarely for free) but the official answer is no.

Not what you wanted to hear, we know, but that is the honest answer.

We are not licensed to broker the shipment of household goods and, likewise, no car carrier that operates in the USA is licensed to transport them from state to state either. Despite what you might be being told by other car shipping companies you may speak with.

Remember, at the end of the day we're all salespeople, and the true answer to this question is not a great selling point.

You will hear a lot of companies tell you that you can put up to 100 pounds of items in the trunk, but that is not entirely true. That fact is that items of that amount are fairly common and the department of transportation is probably not going to split hairs and fine the trucker over items of that amount, provided they are not over their weight limit. They could fine them, however, if they see a vehicle stuffed full of personal items so the car carrier will most likely try to negotiate something with you to cover themselves against any costs they could incur. It's not something we can build into your contract though.

We have a short and helpful video on this topic in our user videos.

Only in rare cases and car carriers will usually charge a premium to make it happen.

All dates given by car carriers are typically estimates and projections.

For this reason (and to keep your cost down) we ask that you build in some flexibility and give us the earliest possible date you would be WILLING to release the vehicle, even though it may not be your preferred date.

We'll put you in direct contact with your car carrier and the driver will also typically call you the afternoon or evening before your pick up and delivery (they won't just show up unannounced, and if they do we want to hear about it). However, car carriers are out on the road battling traffic, weather and any number of other factors that can and do throw them off of their pickup and delivery projections from time to time.

If the projected dates we give you come and you are unable to make contact with your carrier, please call our office immediately so that we may help resolve the situation.

The average transit time from pick up to delivery on any vehicle going coast to coast will average 7 to 10 days. From there you can figure your transit time based on how far your vehicle is traveling, i.e. from either coast to the Midwest might average 3-7 days.

Yes!

Even better, we do not even ask for payment until we have you confirmed for pickup by a safe, reliable, fully insured, direct car carrier. If for any reason you do not ship your car with the carrier that we arrange for you, there is no fee.

The fees paid directly to the carrier however, (in most cases, their fees are not paid until your vehicle is delivered) are not directly controlled by us, so any requests for a refund of the carrier's portion would need to be addressed with the carrier directly.

Of course! And you are always backed by our Damage Free Guarantee policy.

Part of what you pay us for is to verify that the car carrier that we put you on is covered by the proper amount of insurance and that everything is up to date.

There is never any additional cost to you for this coverage, and their insurance is always primary.

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