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Drove my car from Dallas to Phoenix instead of paying $1,100 for a transporter, and I have thoughts
Last spring I had to get my 2013 Camry from Dallas to Phoenix after taking a job out there, and I got two quotes from transport companies: $1,100 and $1,450, both with pickup windows of 5 to 10 days. I ended up just driving it myself over a weekend, 1,065 miles in two days with a stop in El Paso, and it cost me about $180 in gas plus one night in a cheap motel. The transporter people were fine to deal with, no complaints there, but something clicked for me around hour 14: I was paying a huge chunk of money to hand my car to a stranger mostly because I never sat down and did the math on doing it myself. The drive was boring, west Texas is rough, but I knew where my car was the whole time and it showed up exactly when I did. Now I'm second guessing whether I made the right call, since I've heard one bad story about a guy whose car got scratched on an open trailer and the claim took forever. Has anyone here actually used a transporter and felt like it was worth the money, or do most of you just drive it yourself when it's under 1,500 miles?
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avery3664d ago
Did you ever look into how the pricing actually works? From what I've read, a lot of those quotes are one way runs where the truck is deadheading back empty, so you're covering their fuel both ways plus the driver and insurance. That's why Dallas to Phoenix runs so high while the reverse can be half the price. So the math isn't just gas versus quote, it's gas versus a guy getting paid to sit in traffic for two days so you don't have to. Which honestly, for some people with a tight schedule, might be worth every penny.
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