How Many Vehicles Can I Ship at Once?
You’d be surprised at how often we hear that question, at least until you begin to realize that a lot of people actually have quite a few cars that they need to ship at a time.
Usually, these people own or manage dealerships or fleets of vehicles (for rental purposes, usually), and generally have a lot of vehicles to ship at a single time.
This is completely acceptable, and many auto shippers prefer loads with multiple vehicles, especially along routes that are popular with auto transporters but don’t see a ton of customer traffic.
Shipping, for instance, four to six vehicles at once can really help out an auto transport carrier since they fill four to six spaces at a single pickup, and with more vehicles comes more money for less work – this is generally where multi-car discounts come in, since auto transporters expend less fuel-per-vehicle-shipped as they don’t have to make as many detours and route adjustments to accommodate all the deliveries – they just deliver to one place.
At the end of the day, you can ship as many vehicles as you want, but you need to understand that only ten vehicles can fit on a standard carrier at a time, and it’s hard to find a truck that has their entire back completely empty.
Auto shippers go from pickup to delivery to pickup to delivery for their customers, A to B to C to D and so on and so forth, every single day. If you’re shipping more vehicles than can fit on a standard carrier, you need to be prepared for staggered pickup – that is, waiting for multiple carriers to show up to pick all your vehicles up.
This is called “staggered pickup,” or “staggered delivery” on the receiving end, and simply means that more than one truck must be employed to pick all your vehicles up, and they won’t all show up at once.
This can cause inconveniences for customers, of course, so to avoid any of those inconveniences you’ll want to book a shipment with more than ten vehicles at least three to four weeks out, as opposed to the standard week or two for normal shipments.
This gives your shipper more time to arrange pickup of all your vehicles, and will make it easier to schedule them in accordance with your own schedule. Auto transport representatives have to juggle a lot of timetables when it comes to shipping a vehicle – they have to take into account your day-to-day schedule, the carrier’s day-to-day schedule, and also account for any unforeseen circumstances that can also cause delays.
Auto transport is a fluid industry in that it is constantly moving, changing and evolving, and keeping up with all that is what auto transport representatives are supposed to do.
If you need a quote to ship one vehicle or twenty, you can use our online quote form to get them. We work with only top-rated, reliable shipping companies on the road so you’ll be in good hands from start to finish. If you are trying to ship more than one or two vehicles, it’s best to give us a call. You can reach one of our representatives any time at 800-930-7417. They can give you a quote right over the phone for as many vehicles as you need to ship.
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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