A Brief Checklist When Getting Ready To Ship Your Car
After you’ve found a dependable auto shipping company, the most important thing on your car shipping checklist should be to make sure that your vehicle is fully prepared to be to be shipped. Not only will these prep tips ensure that the cost of shipping your car is as low as possible, but they’ll ensure that you don’t have to deal with unnecessary damages to personal property.
Whether you’ve shipped cars before and you just want a few new tips, or whether you’ve never used a car shipping company before and you don’t know what to expect, these four points should help you out:
- First, make sure to remove all personal items from inside your car. In some cases, car transport companies use the weight of the car when determining the cost of shipping, so removing heavy items will make your shipment fees much lower in this case. Some transport companies allow customers to put extra cargo in their cars during shipping (around 50 to 100 pounds), but insurance policies may not cover damages to these cargo items. The best thing to do is to be familiar with company policies and insurance claims before putting extra cargo into your car.
- Emptying your gas tank (about one-fourth full is usually recommended) will also ensure that your car weighs as little as possible. After making sure that your gas tank is low, also make sure to find out where the nearest gas station is located at the final drop-off point! You definitely don’t want to run out of gas right after driving off the lot.
- Making sure that the exterior of your car is clean(ish) is important if you have a visual inspection done, either by the company or by yourself (and it’s always a good idea to have one of these reviews before you ship a car). Taking pictures of your car as proof that there are/ aren’t any scratches or dents will ensure that you’re protected if something happens to the vehicle during shipment — but these pictures won’t help much if the car’s too dirty to see any pre-shipment damage (or lack thereof).
Keep in mind that every car shipping company is a little different and may have their own rules and policies — but if you really don’t know what to expect when shipping a car, these tips are a great place to start. More can be found here.