What Driveaway Auto Transport Services Really Are
We’ve written about driveaway auto transport services before in our Auto Shipping Glossary section, and in that post we detailed what driveaway transportation is and what you can expect if you were to use driveaway auto transportation services.
In case you don’t like following random links on random blog posts, driveaway services, simply put, are when you hire someone to physically drive your vehicle from the pickup to delivery location instead of having it loaded onto an auto transport truck.
Driveaway auto transport services take the best parts of auto transportation – namely, the safety, lack of wear and tear on the vehicle and faster transit time – and trade them for…not a whole lot, really. Driveaway transportation is on the downswing, and it likely won’t be coming back any time soon.
If a company offers driveaway auto transport services, take anything they say with a grain of salt. Every auto transportation company out there that’s worth its weight will ship your vehicle on a car transport carrier and not by sending someone out to drive your vehicle instead of ship it because it’s a lot more reliable.
Any company that does offer driveaway auto transport will likely be local, or operate within a region or multi-state area, because long-distance drives are tiring and a lot more expensive with driveaway services as opposed to simply shipping it. Seriously, you’ll have to pay for all the fuel that is consumed on the drive, and likely other expenses such as food and lodging for the driver.
You don’t have to do that when you ship a car with a transportation company because all those costs are included in your quote. Not only that, but with driveaway auto transport services you have one person driving your car the entire distance.
While auto transporters often only employ one driver per truck, they can haul up to ten vehicles at a time, which means that their operating costs are covered by more than one customer, which means lower prices for everyone. Instead of you paying $20 for a large pizza by yourself, you have your buddies pitch in and everyone pays $4.
Same basic concept when you ship a vehicle on a transportation truck – the more people pay, the less everything costs for everyone, including the driver. Driveaway doesn’t offer this – you cover the full cost of transportation and everything that comes with it.
So, driveaway auto transport services are less reliable and cost more, but they usually take less time to get a car from A to B, which is nice. But the lack of reliability and the higher cost often offset this advantage, which is why auto transport services are on the rise and driveaway auto transport is on the decline.
If you’ve changed your mind about shipping with a driveaway-type service and would rather save money and hassle by shipping your vehicle with a reputable and reliable transportation company, fill out our online quote form. We are a fully licensed and bonded transportation company and we only work with top-rated carriers. You can fill out our free form to get a quote or call us at 800-930-7417 to speak to an agent, get a quote, and even place a reservation to ship your vehicle today.
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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