For anyone who isn’t overly familiar with the process of car shipping, it can seem pretty intimidating at first glance.  There’s a lot of steps along the way, for one thing.  That alone can scare people off.

Luckily, though, it’s not actually as hard as it might seem on the surface.  There are a ton of guides out there to help out along the way, and when we break it down into more digestible chunks, it’s not nearly as intimidating as it could be.  Part of the trouble is that it can be hard to figure out what advice to listen to.

There’s so much of it after all, as you can see here: https://www.angi.com/articles/5-tips-shipping-car.htm.  Since a lot of it is similar, today we’ll be going over how you can prepare your vehicle for car shipping.  There’s a lot to keep track of here, so make sure to follow along!

Whether you’re deciding to take a long vacation and you need your car or you’re moving cross country, you’ll want to brace yourself for a long-term sort of deal here.  That’s because even though the actual transportation of the car won’t take all that long, there’s just a lot of other stuff that will be happening as well.  What do we mean by that?

There’s a good chance that whatever depot or shipper that you end up working with will want some personal documentation before they’re ready to move your car for you.  That might include the registry info and things like your passport and your driver’s license.  Having your records in terms of past tickets and the like might also help, but it’s not always necessary.  Insurance will probably be more critical there.

The gist of this is that you’ll just want to be prepared to have a lot going on at once during a big move or vacation like this.  When you’re going to a new place, it already feels like there’s a lot on your plate.  Although the initial process for car shipping might seem stressful, in the long-term it can actually save you a lot of headaches. 

When we’re busy and on the go a lot, it’s pretty easy to forget to take care of some of the little things.  Honestly, half of the time it feels like our cars are totally clean until we get to the point where someone else has to take a ride with us, and then we realize that there’s actually a fair bit of grime and trash that’s built up.  Something pretty important when it comes to car shipping is to make sure that your vehicle is spic and span.

Why is that?  There’s a few reasons for it, of course – the main one is that when you do decide to get this sort of service, typically there will be some sort of charge based on the weight of the car in question.  You know what all that clutter does?  Well, it adds pounds to your vehicle.

All of that weight will end up costing you more to ship your car, so that’s why it’s a good idea to declutter beforehand.  Really, it’s good for your mind too, as you can read about on this page.  So, before you bring your car to the depot, just make sure that it’s squeaky clean.  It also helps to ensure that you can catalogue any dents or other damage to your car without anything else getting in the way.

What many people don’t realize before they start this process is that there are actually a few different methods for shipping that you’ll have to choose from.  The main two are open trailer versus enclosed trailer.  That describes whether or not there is any external protection around the vehicle in transit, essentially.

There’s an upcharge for the enclosed option, but it does generally keep the vehicle safer, so it will be up to you whether or not you want to splurge on that sort of upcharge.  Most of the time it will probably be worth it.  A lot of it will depend on how far you’re having the car shipped, though, as well as the weather conditions that it might be passing through.

If you’re ever not sure about something along the way, don’t be afraid to talk to the shipping company you’re deciding to work with.  Hopefully, they’ll be able to answer anything else that comes up that wasn’t covered in today’s article.  Despite how easy and convenient this method of moving a car is, there are inevitably going to be some intricacies that are somewhat hard to understand if you aren’t hearing it from an expert!