Preparing Your Car For Shipping

Posted on December 31st, 2011 | by admin in Car Reviews and News

Most people don’t give much thought to shipping a car until they are in a position where they need to ship a car for one reason or another. Then, they look around find a good car company that offers reasonable shipping prices and think they are good to go. The truth is that there are things that you need to do in order to get your car ready for shipping. Here are a few of the things you need to make sure are done before taking your car to be loaded and ship.

First you need to make sure your car is clean. That’s right you need to wash your car thoroughly before taking it to be shipped because the shippers inspect your car before it I loaded for shipping. They note any scratches and dings and write down what they find on the bill of lading so you don’t later claim that your car got damaged in transit.

You also need to give your car a quick once over and make sure that there are no noticeable fluid leaks such as oil, gas, transmission fluid, or water from your radiator. Car shipping companies can’t be driving down the road with a load of cars and trucks on spraying various fluids all over the road, other cars, and perhaps posing fire hazard.

Your car must have at least 1/8 of a tank of gas it in when it arrives at the car loading facility so that it can be driven on and off the transport truck. However, it should have no more than 1/4 of a tank of gas so you may need to siphon out an excess gas.

You need to make sure that your battery is secure in the mounting bracket so that it does shake loose when the transport truck goes over those rough roads. You all need to disconnect all your car alarms before your car is loaded. Imagine what it would be like for a transport truck to be going down the road, hit a bump, and all of a sudden have 10 car alarms going off as the truck is moving along!

You will also need to detract or remove any antennas, remove and CD players that are not built in and make sure there are no personal belongings left in the car as the transport company is paid to move your car not to babysit personal items for you.

You also need to provide the shipping company with a set of keys for all parts of the car including the doors and the trunk. There may be other specific requirements that each shipping company has, but these requirements are common to all car shipping companies and will help you be better prepared.