Shipping from East to West Coast... Experience?

[kajcienski]

Howdy! Here is the run-down... I recently moved to LA from NYC (Glendale/Burbank area) for expanding my work and am thinking of shipping my D here (not great for obvious reasons including snow to say the least) I was only going to be here for 6 months but looking like a second home here perminantly. I'm wondering what the cheapest and most reliable company might be that the community recommends...?

[Iznodmad]

Cheap and reliable are two words that really don't belong together. I've used all kinds of different shippers, and by far my favorite all around was Horseless Carriage.

[kajcienski]

Cheap and reliable are two words that really don't belong together. I've used all kinds of different shippers, and by far my favorite all around was Horseless Carriage.

I mean "cheapest" vs cheap... Willing to pay for what I get (I'm realistic), just want a very competitively priced company that people here might have had a good experience with for coast to coast shipping. I've shipped within east coast areas before with Passport Transport, they were great, but with this sort of distance am hoping there are options. I'll check out Horseless Carriage, thanks for the recommendation!

[DMCMW Dave]

Passport is great too. I have not used Horseless Carriage but they have been around for decades and do have a great reputation.

Stay away from "brokers" who just find you the low bidder on an open privately-owned truck. I've seen issues and heard horror stories. You'll also hear great stories, but the problem is that you have no control and no recourse when things go wrong.

The difference with Passport and HC are that they are branded trucks, i.e. owned by or leased exclusively to the company. 90% of the time when we use Passport the DeLorean is the lowest-value car on the truck. The no-name guys might be hauling a leaky salvage/wreck over your car.

We actually pull in most of our own service cars in a single closed trailer, but not the far away (over 500 miles) stuff.

[berickson926]

A cautionary tale from someone who had a car shipped with no prior experience:

When I bought my car, it was from just another random classic car dealer. They told me they would get me a good rate with their preferred shipper.

The car was supposed to arrive in the afternoon and ended up not arriving until early next morning. When the car finally arrived, the driver tells me that he can't find the keys!

Now he wants to unload the car into a no parking zone on my street leaving me without any way to move the car. Fortunately the steering column was locked so he couldn't get it off the trailer. I caught him trying to do some shady things with a jack to move the car, probably would have damaged the rear suspension if I didn't tell him to stop immediately.

Fortunately DMCCA was able to make me a spare key when I demanded he take the car and myself down to the shop.


The driver on the way down told me that the 'shipper' was really a broker/dispatcher who took maybe 60% of what I paid. The driver was just a random contractor who takes jobs from several different dispatchers.

Although the broker informed me I would pay the balance upon delivery, I was never told I would have to pay the balance to the driver in cash. He refused credit cards forcing me to go with him to a nearby gas station ATM.


The only way I think things could have gotten any worse was if the car was destroyed or stolen.

[dn010]

Everyone I know that used a broker had some kind of issue. As already mentioned, a broker takes your money and then pays (less than you paid the broker) the cheapest shipper to deal with your load.

I've heard stories where it is impossible to contact the driver or track your shipment because the broker doesn't give any "shipper" details to you. Once the broker has your $ and the car is picked up, it is "no longer their responsibility" they say.

Every time I talked to someone I knew who used a broker, each one of them told me that once the "shipper" would arrive with the vehicle to drop off, they demand more money (cash) for a variety of reasons and will refuse to unload your vehicle until you pay up.

I have used uShip with great results, from shipping my D's frame from CA to FL, or my '57 Cadillacs from state to state numerous times. You can use it to find some good companies out there that will truly give you a wonderful experience shipping your car. However, uShip is also filled with brokers so you have to look at all the information to see if you're accepting a broker to ship or a private company to ship.

If it was my DeLorean, I'd stick with HC, you won't have any of these issues described above.

[vtdmc]

+1 for Horseless Carriage. I used them extensively when I worked for Ferrari and Lamborghini.

Cheap and reliable are two words that really don't belong together. I've used all kinds of different shippers, and by far my favorite all around was Horseless Carriage.

[kajcienski]

My quote from Passport was in the $2.5k range, which for potentially only being on the west coast for 6-8 months more, means $5k here and back. I was hoping for the $1.5-2k range. I might as well lease a Maserati Haha...

[dmcerik]

Have you thought about just making a road trip out of it? I'm from West Michigan and recently moved to the Burbank area too. I looked into uShip which seemed decent. Then thought about doing the drive and making a vacation out of it. In the end I convinced my dad to put it on his flatbed trailer and bring it out the next time he comes to visit me at the end of March.

[David T]

I also can vouch for H/C and Passport is good too. If you don't care how quickly sometimes you can make a deal if they have an empty spot. Make sure you have plenty of good insurance too and take a lot of pictures. The only way to use anyone else is if they are highly recommended and are going to do the whole trip and have their own and plenty of insurance. BTW the "big guys" use enclosed transport with built in elevators and cover the cars and offer GPS tracking. The "little guys" use open transport and may load/unload the car many times before it is delivered. The brokers will take your car cheap and list it for bid. They will take the lowest one. Sometimes several. If anything happens no one is responsible. If the car is late, lost or damaged all of a sudden you can't get in touch with the broker anymore. Because the East-West route is so popular and competitive you can get reasonable pricing. Expect to pay $1.8k-$2.1K depending on time of year, if there is a big auction nearby, etc. If the car won't run it gets VERY expensive because they have to do extra work to load and unload it.