What to Know About Shipping Specialty Vehicles
Everyday, there are hundreds and thousands of people shipping a vehicle or two, and a high percentage of those vehicles are your standard, every-day people-haulers.
People tend to ship the cars that they drive, or cars that they’ve driven and are selling to other people to drive (or, conversely, buying from other people in order to drive them). Typically, vehicles being shipped are personal vehicles, used for personal uses.
And then there are the specialty vehicles, the vehicles that people don’t usually ship because how many people actually own that type of vehicle.
Some things may be more common than others, but in this helpful blog post we’re going to discuss a bit about how auto transporters ship specialty vehicles such as golf carts, boats, and motorcycles, because you’d be surprised at how often people call us asking if we can ship those types of things.
Let’s start with the inspiration for this blog: shipping a golf cart. Golf carts, being smaller and lighter than a regular car, typically can’t be shipped by a standard auto transport truck, just like with boats and motorcycles.
Their small stature and light-weight configuration make golf carts bad ideas on the back of a standard carrier, so typically flatbed shippers are the ones to haul them. As you may know, flatbed shipping isn’t the cheapest or the fastest method of transporting a vehicle, but when that’s the only type of carrier that’ll move what you need moved, you tend to stop shopping around and just pay them what they want.
Luckily, golf carts are generally cheaper to ship on the whole because you’d be amazed at how many people actually ship golf carts. There’s a thriving little niche for it, and while pickup may take a bit longer depending on where you’re shipping from and to, you can rest assured that there’s a shipping company out there that will be able to help you. Just make sure you give it time, because not everyone knows the companies that ship golf carts.
Boats and motorcycles are a bit more common, on the whole, mainly because so many more people own a boat than a golf cart (seriously, most people shipping golf carts are golf course managers adding to their fleet).
It’s the same with motorcycles. Luckily for you, we’ve talked about shipping a motorcycle before, so if that’s why you’re here you should probably check out our other articles and blogs about motorcycle shipping. Boats are a completely different story. Most of the time they’ll need a flatbed carrier, if you want the boat shipped completely and not just hauled behind a truck on the trailer.
Many shipping companies will offer transportation services for boats by simply hooking up the trailer onto the back of a pickup and driving it where you need it to go – yes, there are plenty of people out there in the auto transport industry just looking for situations like that. Size obviously matters a lot when shipping a boat, and you have to make sure that you always have the trailer for it – and that the boat’s on it before transport.
There are way too many specialty vehicles to talk about them all in this blog post, but we’ll start a new series breaking down some of the less-popular items that people like to ship and giving you the rundown on them. It’s important to know as much as you can about what exactly you’re shipping and what to expect when it comes to transporting it.
Many specialty items take longer to find a carrier willing to haul them, and they’re typically going to cost more than a standard car or truck to ship, but don’t let that discourage you; it’s the nature of the industry, and really there’s not much you can do about it other than boycott (and that’s not going to do anything because this is a multi-billion dollar industry that no one really thinks about).
If you’re looking for a free quote to ship a vehicle, fill out our online quote form. You’ll get a free quote to ship any vehicle right away. You can also call us toll-free at 800-930-7417 to speak to one of our live agents. They can give you a quote over the phone, answer questions, and even help you place a reservation to ship your vehicle.
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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