Need to ship a car from Florida to San Diego for my grandson in the Navy. I have received about 8 quotes from various companies. How best to evaluate them?
You might research some of these.
http://www.transportreviews.com/directory/reports/pasttwoyears.asp
There is one company that you might steer clear of and that is DAS (Dependable Auto Shippers). I’ve read a lot of complaints about them.
Other people have done this, also. Place an ad in one of your local papers. Ask if someone is going from your city to San Diego during certain dates that you specify. If you find one or two, or more, scrutinize their license very carefully.
Have your insurance company run license checks on both or three people. You’ll want to have them put on your existing insurance policy so the ins. company will do this check automatically. Then you’ll know who your insurance company says who’s o.k. to put on the policy as an additionally-insured driver. You’ll end up paying for that driver’s meals, motels, tolls (if any), and of course the fuel plus extra for the driver’s time.
I’ll betcha that it will cost less than using a car carrier service. Of course, you’ll have to be very specific where you’ll want that car delivered to in San Diego. You probably won’t be able to ‘get on base’ since neither the car nor the driver is authorized to get ‘on base’. Your grandson can probably make arrangements for someone ‘off-base’ to accept the vehicle until grandson gets approval to drive it on base.
Tell him to take a leave and fly to Florida. Then he can drive back. It only takes four days to get there. It will cost less than shipping it.