Auto Shipping Glossary: Driveaway Shipping
Normally, vehicles are shipped on an open auto transport carrier, the standard method of shipping in the industry today, though open carriers are not the only type of car transport truck out there. There are several different types of carriers on the road today, open shippers enclosed shippers, even flatbed trucks for when vehicles are too large to fit on the former.
But sometimes, customers aren’t looking for someone to ship their vehicle, they’re looking for someone to drive it. Whether it’s a hundred miles or a thousand, there are customers out there that don’t want their car to be transported, but shipped. This type of service is known as driveaway auto transport, and it’s a lot less common today than it was even two decades ago.
With driveaway auto transportation, your vehicle isn’t loaded onto a carrier. Instead, someone is hired to physically drive your vehicle from pickup to delivery. This used to be a lot more common than it is today, mainly because people of years ago used to be a lot more trusting. It was a good way to get your car moved without going through the then-hassle of booking with an auto transport company, which a few decades ago didn’t have the internet making the job five hundred times easier.
By just hiring someone else to drive the car for them, customers could still get the benefits of having a car transported without as high a cost or the additional time that carriers tend to take in moving a vehicle.
This was another benefit of driveaway vehicle shipping – it tended to be a lot cheaper, especially along shorter routes. A car can go a lot faster and a lot further than an auto transport truck because motorists like you and I are not subject to the same restrictive laws as freight haulers.
Driveaway drivers are the same – they can drive 800 miles or more in a day, whereas a car transport truck can only drive 350-400. This is an immediate advantage that driveaway services have over auto transportation and was a big reason for its rise in popularity for a time. Driveaway shipping had its time in the spotlight, but the internet has largely destroyed the industry, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Drive away shipping requires that you hire someone to actually drive your vehicle. While this can be faster, in today’s world it’s not nearly as cheap as it used to be, especially for longer shipments.
You have to pay whoever will be driving your vehicle for the cost of food, gas and lodging, since they’re driving your vehicle hundreds and thousands of miles for you, and if you’ve been around the last twenty or thirty years you know how much fuel prices and food prices have skyrocketed – basically, all the costs of living have gone up since driveaway became mainstream, which has only added to the cost.
Add to that the completion of the Interstate Highway System, and now auto transporters have a reliable method to get to most major cities in the country.
What this has done is pushed driveaway services out of the spotlight and auto transport by truck into it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though, since auto transport services are much easier find today than they were twenty or thirty years ago, and the internet is to thank for that.
Brokers are everywhere today, and the internet led to an explosion of carriers as well that has forever altered the car shipping industry. It’s more affordable than ever to ship a vehicle with an auto shipping carrier, and there’s a lot more oversight in the industry as well thanks to the internet.
That’s something that driveaway services never really had – reviews. There are several major review websites out there for auto transport companies, and we use them all to ensure that we work with only top-rated carriers. Thanks to the internet, auto transport fraud has dropped to record-low levels, and it’s no surprise that fewer people are trusting strangers to drive their cars alone when they could hire a legit company that is shipping nine other cars for nine other customers.
It’s simple economics – the auto transportation industry has changed a lot since driveaway auto shipping was a legitimate thing, and with the adoption of the internet as a primary means of doing business, the car shipping industry has been able to grow by leaps and bounds in a very short amount of time.
But this growth has also required new safeguards on auto transport companies, which has led to not only a larger industry that has cheaper services, but also one that is better protected against unscrupulous companies trying to take advantage of customers, which cannot be said for modern driveaway services.
Driveaway today is less regulated than ever, and is not offered by really any auto transporters that ship cars via truck. Most driveaway shipping services have been relegated to sites like Craigslist, where individuals can hire other individuals to ship their vehicle.
There may be other areas, but frankly we don’t know them, since it’s not a part of the industry that we associate with all that much. That said, we can get you a free quote to ship your vehicle on an auto transport truck. All you have to do is fill out our free online quote request form and get a free quote. If you need a quote over the phone, have questions, or are ready to place an order, give us a call at 800-930-7417 to speak to one of our representatives any time.
Since 2007 Dave has written all the content and blogs for American Auto Shipping and during this time added the duties of customer support and transport logistics.
He currently resides in Washington with his three kids and their mom and cat. A fan of Marvel movies and good stories, when not shipping cars Dave can be found working on his novel, enjoying a good book or playing some tournament HALO.
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