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Comment by sputknick | Hacker News Reader

start-up idea if anyone is bored: disrupt car shipping. When I moved from Seattle to Raleigh shipping my car was BY FAR the biggest headache. It's a 20th century business where you have to call people, who will bid for you, and you have no idea if your bid is accepted. Agents will promise a low price to get your business, then tell you a week later that bid was too low, you need to double it. I eventually just gave up and drove it cross country.

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Businesses like these are hard to "disrupt" because despite all the fancy websites and apps, pricing algorithms, scheduling, reminders, live video feeds and whatever else you can build, underneath it all the success or failure still depends on some guy showing up at your house, picking up your car and trucking it across the country. Unless you can automate that part nothing will fundamentally change.

Exhibit A: TFA

TFA?

The [Fucking, Freaking, Fantastic, Fine] Article

It goes deeper than that. Even after all the sophisticated systems and automation, a huge amount of logistics is still email-driven, and it seems next to impossible to get account managers, carriers and customers past that.

I think the expectation is even worse for the car case than anything since so few people bother shipping cars to begin with. But just looking at moving and shipping, even then no one has really beaten the model that Uhaul has created. Have the 7/11 or big box hardware store parking lot and clerk be your brick and mortar and labor force. Have a very basic website match you to pickup and dropoff locations. Buy a bunch of cheap aluminum trailers that won't rust out on you. They will even sell you overpriced cardboard boxes they probably get a ridiculous markup on. I don't think you can lighten this sort of business much more than that, and yet the profit margins still aren't as high as you'd expect from such a skeleton crew of a business. 16% last earnings.

"Disrupting" this is quite a challenge due to the nature of the service and the logistics around this type of freight. You either pay for someone to drive it which will be on an ad hoc basis when someone is available and interested or you pay to ship it on a Class 8 hauled flatbed or car trailer.

A possible brokerage opportunity would be to inquire with Carvana or Carmax if you can buy slots on their cross country shipments as capacity allows, and sell those to customers. You'll be at the mercy of their schedules and capacity, but could be a service tier along with other more "white glove" services (dedicated driver "hot shot", semi shipment, etc). You could also buy capacity on freight rail cars shipping back empty to factories (depending on destination and routing). High touch biz, beware, there be dragons.

I've dealt with this, I've had friends deal with this, etc. Every person I've known who shipped a car was screwed over by it. Even military people. You're lucky they told you up front that your cost was double. I had a shipper tell me that I they were doubling the fee about 45 minutes before they delivered it (I called their bluff and said I'd just report it stolen - it was an $800 rat rod Miata though).

I think the fact of the matter is, shipping cars is not going to be cost effective for an individual. Trucks are expensive, putting fuel in them is expensive, paying a trained person to drive one is expensive.

Maybe a company like Carvana could offer this as a side service, drop your car off at a local Carvana, and eventually pick it up at another location. Even then, I think the costs are going to be order of thousands of dollars.

If one searches Reddit, there are brokers who will pass on wholesale car shipping prices which are lower than the prices of those one may find on Google.

Last time I moved a car halfway across the U.S. I just went online, submitted a request, got a quote, paid and it was all done. It was about as friction-free as something like that can be.

Just need to use a direct carrier like Intercity, NOT a broker. Brokers have infested Google SEO.

> Just need to use a direct carrier like Intercity, NOT a broker.

So because you mentioned it I just called them for transporting by enclosed carrier on the east coast between 2 cities. High end car enclosed carrier.

Intercity wanted $1995 for the same transport that the car dealer (a high end car dealer well established no less) want $1600 dollars for.

Intercity essentially said 'busy time of year etc etc'. Didn't give remarkable reasons why they would be better than anyone else. Picked up the phone right away and was otherwise business like.

https://intercitylines.com/request-a-quote/

Also their website to get a quote they want an 'auction' number. That made me call them (which I would normally never do.)

Additionally their price was higher than other brokers I had checked including the one that just moved a car for me (same route) not enclosed who quoted both enclosed and not enclosed.

Would like to point out that the job of a broker is not to match you with anyone but match you with people who they know and trust and have used. And specifically the broker I used (for the last open move) made a total of about $250 the rest paid to the driver on delivery.

Their point is that brokers are generally terrible. That you found an ok one is cool. We went through a broker for moving our possessions from California to Montana. Worst professional experience of our lives. They kept our shit at some lot for around six weeks while they tried to job out to other freight providers because the first one didn't work out. Or the next. Or the next. Finally they got someone who should have been on medical disability to drive our stuff up after the broker declared bankruptcy. Not sure how that worked exactly. I had to threaten to drive down there to pick up my own shit and load it into a uhaul or two.

Don't have experience with trans-continental vehicle transport but as part of an old job one task I had was "drive this truck from Utah to North Carolina.. work there for a few weeks then drive this van back to Utah". Certainly cheaper than designated shippers for a company...

As a consumer I'd assume there are hotshot truckers/services that would be used for this? People have mentioned similar "agent oriented" experiences with moving services and how it's opaque and unreliable.

sometimes, but they mostly get put on a transporter like any new car. If it’s something valid able (claaaic car, race car, etc) they’ll usually sprint for an enclosed hauler, which is am several times more expensive

This is the actual problem, because transporter trucks are almost always just used to bring a group of vehicles to a dealership from a rail depot.

The ones carrying cars across the country for moves are quite rare, unscheduled, and harder to find. They also can't carry anything else besides cars on the transporters - you might almost have better luck driving your car into the back of a box semi and letting them load other LTL loads behind it.

'Dealer trades' are pretty common now. If you want a very specific car it might be the only way to get it these days since the used market is so anemic.

My local dealer somehow got a lead that I want a very specific year and trim GTI and twice now they have offered to bring one in for me.

Although you will pay the local dealers mark-ups, not the remote dealer's cheaper prices, from what I hear.

Sure, what the world's in need now is more ideas that need VC capital to build. Convoy's CEO is bored and ready to take another idea.

Did you ship your furnishings? I have shipped my car by simply including it in the move and it traveled with my other goods in the same truck. Not that it was a huge SUV.

Not sure I understand - is this direct to consumer play? If so, you will have no return customers because on avg people buy a car like once every 7 years - bad business

I shipped a car across the country a decade ago, and I didn't go through any of this. I used a website, it gave me a price, I paid it, and a truck showed up.

I rented a flatbed car trailer and attached it to the back of the moving truck. Even if you hire a moving company, the same should be able to be done, right? I've never used a moving company. Is this not something they handle? I at least had experience pulling a trailer, so it maybe wasn't as daunting of an idea for me.??

A large, established moving company can. Last time I moved, they just drove my truck into the semi-trailer along with the rest of my stuff then took it across country.

Yeah maybe do it via some kind of car rental. Someone going from Seattle to Minneapolis pays peanuts and insurance to drive your car. Someone else going from Minneapolis to Memphis after that. And so on.

Talk with local car dealers. They often employ independent drivers to go and pick up vehicles all the time for little to nothing.

Isn’t this uship?

You place anything you need shipped on there and various shippers can bid without having to go through a broker.

Pretty much, yeah. And from my personal experience, uship is useless. Lots of independent people that charge too much due to small economies of scale (one guy with a goose-neck truck vs. a car carrier). The few times I've had to ship a vehicle cross country I've wasted time on uship before going back to a traditional broker and letting them handle it for less money and less hassle. It's still annoying dealing with the salespeople, but if you're good at playing that game you can at least use the usual negotiation tactics to get an even lower price.

too small a market to be worth investing.

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