One of the most important questions we get from customers is when should they book their car shipment. Everybody’s situation is just a little bit different, but the short answer is not to do it too soon. Because there is absolutely no advantage to booking early. Here is why you should not book car shipping services too far in advance.

Key Takeaways:

• Car transport carriers rarely commit to picking up orders more than three days in advance. So there is no reason to book early, especially many weeks early.
• Knowing that carriers don’t commit early, most auto transport brokers will not even look for a carrier until about three days before the first date available. Doing so earlier than that is risky for the customer.

The prudent thing for any car shipping customer is to have the most current market pricing. Too low and your car won’t go. Too high and you wasted your money. Current pricing solves that problem. So don’t book car shipping services too far in advance.

So why do most auto transport broker websites recommend booking an order far in advance of the ship date? We think there are two main reasons: 

First, like most businesses, they would prefer to book your order before you find someone else.

And secondly, it may have something to do with AI, artificial intelligence. For some reason, AI writing programs like Chat GPT and others, have a knee-jerk answer as to when is the best time to book car shipping. AI gives the same answer that they would if you were booking a seat on an airline flight. Which is early, of course. But it is the wrong answer for an auto transport customer. 

The big difference between an airline flight seat and a car transport carrier spot is that you’re reserving a seat on the former, but not a spot on the latter. It is easy for a car shipping customer to make the wrong assumption that they are all set, have reserved a spot on a vehicle transport carrier, have locked in the price, and needn’t worry anymore. So that is why we are writing this blog, to correct that wrong assumption, and steer people in the right direction. 

Folks, you don’t have a reserved spot on a car transport carrier until you’ve received a car shipping assignment email with the name of the carrier and his phone number.

Here’s the thing folks, most auto transport carriers are not sure what they’re doing later this week. They might have a rough idea, but they know that circumstances can change quickly and their schedule upended entirely. 

Now imagine that they have any idea whether they’ll be in Chicago in three weeks or San Francisco. Most of them have no idea. And certainly cannot predict that they will be able to pick up your vehicle on any particular date three weeks in advance. Or two weeks. Or even one week. 

Because of that uncertainty in their schedule, almost all carriers are loath to commit to an order weeks in advance. Dear readers, most auto transport carriers are reluctant to commit four or five days in advance. They know that they can easily be off by a day or two, and maybe more. 

If a car transport carrier won’t commit early, why would a customer?

Once burned, twice shy, as the saying goes. For most auto transport brokers, it’s getting burned more often than that before getting wise. Most car shipping brokers who have made an order available a week or more early, have had carriers cancel on them just as the shipping date arrives. The reason could be quite honest, that the Carrier truck broke down, or their schedule changed.

But more likely, the car transport carrier had so much time to beat the carrier fee on that particular broker order and was able to replace it with something that paid better. They don’t say that of course. But the thought comes quickly to mind. The vehicle shipping carrier simply found a better payday and came up with some lame excuse not to come through on their commitment.

So every broker lives and learns not to act too quickly. We have noticed at Direct Express Auto Transport, that most carriers will come through on their commitment to pick up a vehicle order within three days of the available date to ship. We have learned the hard way, not to count on carriers more than three days in advance.

The good thing about car transport carriers is that they generally pick up a vehicle within one or two days of it being assigned to them. Sometimes a carrier will pick it up the same day it’s assigned. Rarely do they say that they want to pick it up in three days. We rarely hear a carrier say that they’ll pick up a vehicle in four days, for the very reasons we articulated above.

So looking for a carrier to ship a vehicle three days in advance, is kind of the sweet spot when it comes to searching for an auto transport carrier to commit to a customer order.

We have noticed that many snowbirds like to be organized and book their car shipments weeks in advance. It makes sense in many ways, to get your ducks in a row, cross that off your to-do list, and feel that they have secured a spot on a car transport carrier. 

They might book in October or November, for a spot around Christmas time heading to Florida like tens of thousands of other snowbirds. They are surprised when what they thought was a sure thing, turned out to be nothing of the sort. 

There is no better time to ship a car than in October or early November. Pricing tends to be low. By the time Christmas comes around, with a huge influx of customer orders, and people trying to get to Florida and elsewhere warm for the winter, the car shipping rates tend to skyrocket to the highest levels of the year. So within just a few weeks, the market goes from the lowest pricing to the highest.

The only way any auto transport broker could even begin to guarantee a price is if it is way way too high. Because you cannot guarantee what you cannot control. And as auto transport prices skyrocket, every auto transport broker is along for the ride.

So an order that was booked too far in advance, and priced at that time properly, but many weeks later is too low for the current market, most car transport brokers will likely go back to the customer and say things have changed. Because they have. And then the customer will be informed of the much higher price. Which is a conversation that never goes well.

So in that instance, there was absolutely no advantage to the customer by booking his car shipping order so early. It gives the customer a false sense of security and leaves him scrambling at the last minute, at considerable expense.

What happened to that early booking customer, was that many others who booked after him in the interim at the higher rate, will certainly ship first. It is not first come first served when it comes to the auto transport industry. And that comes as a rude awakening to many nice people caught unaware.

At Direct Express Auto Transport, we try to warn our customers about that very thing. And we do it here in this blog. Frankly, we haven’t seen any competitor write this way and give such clear and good advice about not booking early.

Oh but wait, most auto transport brokers will honor an early car shipping order booked many weeks in advance if the price is too high.

How might that happen? Let’s continue with the snowbird example. Imagine a customer who booked their order during the busiest season, the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, but didn’t want to ship until February. The pricing when he booked was very high.

By February, however, it rivals October in its low pricing. Unfortunately, the customer has locked into the higher price and if he only waited until February to book, he would’ve enjoyed a nice savings. Ouch.

So you see once again, it was not in the customer’s best interest to have booked his order many weeks in advance.

The best time to book your car shipment is anywhere between three and 10 days before you make your vehicle available to ship.

A smart and savvy broker, such as Direct Express auto transport, won’t start looking for a carrier for many reasons, before three days from the first available ship date. Generally speaking, pricing won’t fluctuate very much one week before that, which would be 10 days before the first available day to ship.

You can probably get away with booking your car shipment two weeks in advance, but it gets more and more dicey the farther out you go. There is no good reason for booking an order more than two weeks in advance. None.