Transporting 2 nonrunning classic cars across the country
Saul
Submitted this review about
AmeriFreight Car Shipping
Review made Live: 5/11/2009 11:37:00 AM
Won these cars on eBay, and first looked at Hemmings online transport listings to get an idea of price for shipping from CA to NY. After looking at a bunch of reviews on shipping, I came to the conclusion that unless I was willing to pay a huge amount for enclosed, white-glove transport, I could probably get the job done cheaper than the specialty shippers on Hemmings charged (I consider these parts cars, so they're not worth the extra money for enclosed transport). I also realized that going with the lowest bid might not be a good idea, since it might not be picked up for quite awhile if at all, which would inconvenience the seller who wanted to get the cars off his property relatively quickly. So I put the cars up for bids on UShip.com and emailed 5 brokers. Amerifreight was one of the brokers, and the first to respond, with a 3-tier quote:Economy, Priority, and Select rates. This worked well for my purposes, since I had a little time before the seller wanted them removed: I figured I'd try the Economy rate and if they weren't picked up in about a week I'd upgrade to Priority. I should note that other brokers may do this, but they don't inform you of the choices beforehand; with the choices in front of me and Amerifreight's reputation, I figured that if I had to upgrade to Priority (pickup within 48 hrs) I could count on the cars being picked up as promised, so I was safe waiting a week to see if the Economy rate would work with no worries about having to cancel my order and find another broker/shipper. I should also note that Amerifreight's Economy AND Priority pricing beat both of the offers I received on UShip.com, one of which was from a direct shipper! It wasn't the cheapest of the broker quotes I received, but it took 4 days for a cheaper broker bid to come in (time which I didn't have), and I very much doubt that this bid would have been fulfilled, which would have meant either cancelling or trying to upgrade (but this broker offered no upgrade information, so I had no idea of what the upgrade price or new time frame for pickup would be). I ended up going with the Priority rate, as the cars were not picked up within 7 days on the Economy rate, and Amerifreight kicked in $50 of their own money for each car. My final price per car, $1200, was, in my opinion (based on a lot of research around the Web), the best price I could have gotten on the transport, and included guaranteed 48 hr pickup. After I upgraded, I received a call back within a HALF HOUR from Amy to let me know they had a carrier! The cars were picked up the next morning, April 21. For those of you who don't think this was such a great price, you should know that these 2 cars were 40-year old nonrunning Mercedes-Benzes that had been outside for years, one of which had 3 flat tires, the other of which had no keys-not easy to move. Amerifreight's price for the 2 cars beat the cheapest Uship bid by $150, and the cheapest Hemmings bid by $1100, and I know that the Hemmings bidder was planning on transporting them exactly the same way as Amerifreight's carrier, Ambela. Cars arrived on May 8th, which was exactly when I wanted them, probably with no damage from the shipping (see my review of Ambela also). Only problem with Amerifreight was reception of the Transportreviews.com rebate offer before the cars had arrived (it expires in 5 days); however, Amy was out of the office for the week, so I figured it was an automatically-generated email, and a call to Lesley confirmed this-she told me not to worry about it, that they give everyone 5 business days after the car arrives to do a review. Overall, very satisfied-things worked out exactly as planned. Thanks, Amerifreight!
