If you’re someone who has to move from one place to another, or has sold used refurbished cars, then there’s a good chance that you are already aware about the process of shipping out a car. It’s something that’s gotten more popularized in the past few years, but you’d be surprised by how many folks still don’t know it’s an option If you are interested in learning more about car shipping and how the process works, then this is the right article for you to read.
While you can find guides on some of the individual steps of this process (like the one seen here: https://www.homemadesimple.com/beyond-the-home/how-to-clean-your-car-seats/), it’s more difficult to find a comprehensive list. Whether you’re new to this process or a total pro, hopefully we can help you learn something new!
Step One: Get Your Plans Sorted
This may go without saying, but if you aren’t sure about the destination of the vehicle in question, then you probably shouldn’t be thinking about car shipping just yet. In this process, it is important for you to know and decide where you are sending your vehicle to, whether that is to a buyer, or to a new home address, after that you’ll already be able to get off on the right foot.
This is important because it can play a pretty big role in everything else along the way. You don’t want to get a shipping quote that will be way over than what you should be paying for as the price quote for vehicle shipping depends on the distance from where you are shipping from to its destination.
Step Two: Get Your Paperwork in Order
This is something that often takes people by surprise when they’re learning about how to ship a car – you see, there are a lot of legal documents that will be involved. After all, no car shipping company wants to be held responsible for unintentionally transporting a stolen car or any vehicle for that matter.
Therefore, if you’re planning to send a vehicle somewhere, you’ll want to have a few things prepared already. Usually, when the driver arrives to pick up the vehicle, you will be asked to present necessary documents like your identification card, as well as the recipient’s identification card, and your insurance details as well as proof of ownership of the vehicle.
No one wants to be stuck scrambling and trying to get these things ready the morning of the transport date, so it will help a lot to have that prepared. Just be ready for that sort of thing!
Step Three: Prepare Your Vehicle
Another thing that folks don’t anticipate when they initially decide to ship a vehicle is that it’s pretty important to have a clean car for when the driver comes to pick it up.
As far as the exterior is concerned, when you are transporting a vehicle, there’s a lot to take into account as far as the damage that is pre-existing versus any scratches that could happen throughout the process. The cleaner that your car is when it gets picked up, the less liability both you and the shipping company are taking on. Better safe than sorry in that sense, right?
For the interior, it’s a somewhat similar story, although the specific reasons are a tad different. When you think about the stuff inside your vehicle right now, there’s a good chance that you’ve got something like a portable charger or other personal belongings, right? Well, that’s probably not a good thing to leave behind.
For one thing, it could end up lost. Cleaning the interior, as you can read about here in this article, also prevents you from being charged more money because of the weight of your vehicle. More often than not, the price you’re charged will be based on the total weight of the car, meaning that if we can reduce that in any way, it can save us some cash.
Obviously, the entire thing doesn’t need to be completely spotless. Just bear in mind that the cleaner you get your car, the more beneficial it will be for the shipping process.
Step Four: Fine Tune the Details
We’ve covered the most important parts and the basic things about the process of car shipping already. However, there are a few other things to keep in mind as you proceed. An example of that is sorting out things like the type of shipping container you want the vehicle shipped in.
There are closed ones and open ones, and each has their own pros and cons of course. The closed containers are a bit more expensive, but they do tend to keep our vehicles safer than they would be otherwise. Meanwhile, open containers are more affordable, but there’s a bigger chance that our car will get damaged somehow.
These are the details that you can iron out once you’ve got everything else handled!
