On-Time Vehicle Transport Companies: An Overview
What are on-time vehicle transport companies? You may be thinking to yourself that all vehicle transport companies should be on-time, but the fact of the matter is that what constitutes as “on-time” for you may not be the same as what people in the auto transport industry consider “on-time.” When you order a pizza, you expect it on-time – within 30 minutes usually, if you order from a pizza chain. When you ship something that’ll take two days to get to its destination, you expect it to be delivered on-time. And with on-time vehicle transport companies, they think the same way – but “on-time” means something else in the auto transport world. On-time means within the scheduled pickup or delivery timeframe, and we’ll explain what those are in just a moment.
On-Time Vehicle Transport Companies: On-Time Pickup
When you book with on-time vehicle transport companies, they’ll give you what is known as a pickup window, which is generally one to seven days on average; in this time your transport company will locate a truck for you and schedule your vehicle for pickup. From there, the pickup window may be narrowed – your carrier may arrive tomorrow, if your transporter says they will. But if your transport company says they’ll be there the next day, don’t expect a nailed-down time in which your carrier will show up; it doesn’t work like that. On-time vehicle transport companies will tell you as much; you should be available all day on the day the carrier is scheduled to pick your vehicle up. This constitutes on-time pickup in the auto transport world. However, if your transport company says it may take up to a week to get your vehicle picked up, make sure you realize that it may take the full seven days – hopefully no more than that, but delays can happen. Even on-time vehicle transport companies can’t predict if a truck will break down or if there’ll be a lot of traffic en route to picking your vehicle up. But don’t go ballistic if the carrier doesn’t show up two days into your seven-day pickup window; they’re still on-time, and so long as they pickup within the given window they are still considered to be on-time.
On-Time Vehicle Transport Companies: On-Time Delivery
Just like with pickup, on-time vehicle transport companies will give you a delivery window for when your vehicle will be delivered. Auto carriers travel hundreds and thousands of miles along major interstates across the country, and actual transport can take a bit of time considering that carriers can only travel a maximum of 350 miles per day. On-time vehicle transport companies will inform you when your carrier is close, but even then they won’t guarantee a delivery time; they’ll give you a one-to-two day delivery window in which they expect your vehicle to be dropped off, and they will expect you to be available (or someone who is authorized by you) to receive the vehicle. If a carrier arrives within that delivery window, that’s on-time, and while delays can happen just like with pickup, they’re generally pretty rare and all on-time vehicle transport companies will inform you of delays as soon as they hear about them.
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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