Answer: We were the first company to offer an instant online car shipping quote. When Direct Express entered the auto transport business in 2003, we immediately recognized how difficult it was to get a straight answer to a simple question, “How much does it cost to ship my car?”. Calling around to numerous brokers elicited the same response, that a vehicle shipping estimate would only be provided if personal information were received first. That would be like Ford, GM or Chrysler not revealing the MSRP until knowing their customer’s name and personal information. Give us a break – who does that anywhere else? Just tell us the price and we can start from there, right?
Direct Express Auto Transport went the opposite way, painstakingly creating an auto transport quotes calculator that could produce accurate rates instantly from any location to any other in the 48 contiguous United States. Further, we decided not to ask for any personal information, instead trusting the customer to appreciate our car shipping quote service and honor us with their business. We didn’t stop there. We also decided that it would only be fair to allow the customer to cancel with a full return of the deposit anytime prior to picking up the vehicle. We still do business that way and our customers appreciate it.
Answer: It was only a few years ago that a couple of auto transport brokers tried and failed to copy our rate calculator. We even recognized our words and descriptions on their sites. The auto shipping quotes calculator is a mathematical puzzle that those other cheap knockoffs have not solved. Direct Express Auto Transport has reportedly the lowest cancellation rate in the industry, only about 10%, which is phenomenal because most others have 3 or 4 times higher. Yes, we are very proud of our success and know it is because our car shipping rates calculator is spot on most of the time.
Answer: Because you are competing against other customers for space. It is all about supply and demand, which is in full play in the auto transport business. Whose vehicles will ship first if there are more waiting than space available? The highest priced ones, of course. It does not matter when the customer enters their order. The best paying loads for the drivers will always go first, which means somebody new can cut in front of somebody old at any time. The higher priced cars will cut in front of the lower priced vehicles and ship first.
That’s why we are so good. We pass up the low-ball won’t ship anyway orders, and price our customers’ orders properly to ship on average inside of one week. That’s what our auto transport rates calculator is doing on this page – producing accurate quotes that you can count on. Florida is a great example. After the holidays tens of thousands of retirees who are called “snowbirds” in the auto transport business, all want to ship their vehicle at roughly the same time from New England, the Atlantic eastern seaboard, and Midwest. However, that is typically far more vehicles than the transportation system can handle. A broker can actually put any low price he wants on those quotes and book a lot of business, and many do just that, but we know that the chickens will come home to roost when those cars don’t ship. So it makes no sense to us not to price orders proper. Our customers’ vehicles are most often among the first to ship.
Answer: Yes there is! In the example above, imagine being the guy who is doing the reverse and shipping from Florida to New England in January. There would be a smaller supply of cars in Florida going that way in the winter, and therefore, heightened carrier demand. That will serve to push down the price for auto shipping dramatically. The customer in Miami can probably get exceptionally fast service to New York or Boston at nearly half the normal rate. Isn’t that amazing? Our car transport quotes calculator accounts for that too.
There are also certain cities that it just seems like the orders ship faster almost year round. Our favorite places to ship in or out of are Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco. We wish we could include New York City, but there are some boroughs that are just plain tough. We discuss that more in depth on our states page.
Answer: We put together a very helpful list of what to do, what to expect and how to prepare your vehicle for shipping. It’s too exhaustive to place on this page, but we think you will find it very valuable. Go to our FAQ page for that, or you can learn more about the auto shipping industry by going here.
