Want to use car transportation services, but the fact you don’t really know how much that will cost is stopping you? You’re not the first, not the last, person to be puzzled about this. And, since you don’t like financial surprises, at least not those that take away from your budget, you want to learn some more about the costs before making any final arrangements.
How can you, however, find out what you need to know? To be more precise, how can you work out the car shipping cost and thus know for sure how much you’ll be expected to pay for the convenience that the professionals will provide you with when they take your vehicle and transport it somewhere else? Well, there are two different methods of finding that out, one of which is more effective than the other.
You Can Do the Calculations Yourself
Let us begin with the first method. Although not the most effective one, it can still provide you with some approximations and some estimates that could be of help. In short, you can do the calculations yourself.
Numerous factors to take into considerations and important steps to take if you want to calculate things alone. Below I will take you through those, explaining along the way the challenges and the drawbacks of this method. After that, of course, we will learn about the second method as well, thus providing you with a rather effective solution towards figuring out how much this will cost you.
Learn the Fees
You won’t be able to do any calculations at all if you aren’t familiar with the fees charged by different companies. And, as you may have assumed it yourself, those fees will differ from one firm to another. So, calculating the overall costs won’t be possible before you choose one of those companies, but the good thing is that checking those fees offered by different ones can actually help you make the choice. In any case, knowing the fees will be essential in your calculations.
This is how to ship a car, in the event you are not completely clear on how this works: https://living.geico.com/driving/auto/auto-care/how-to-ship-a-car/
Calculate the Distance
The distance is the second factor that you’ll need to consider. You know the pickup location and you know the delivery location. It is the distance between those two that the pros will have to cover and that will, therefore, impact the costs. The fee times miles. That’s how you’ll get an estimate.
Take Your Vehicle Type Into Account
It would be great if things were that simple, but they aren’t. While the “fee times miles” formula is certainly right, the truth is that other factors play a role here, so this is not as straightforward as you would want it to be. For instance, the vehicle type you’re shipping is also crucial and you’ll need to take it into account when calculating the costs too. This is the difficult part, because you can’t tell for sure what it is that makes a difference and which types of vehicles will lead to higher prices.
Think About the Trailers
The trailers, of course, also pose a challenge for those manual calculations. Sure, you know that the open ones are cheaper than the enclosed ones. But, you may not know by how much, so doing the calculations alone can be tricky.
The Dates Matter
If you thought the above made things tricky, wait until you hear this. The prices don’t differ only from company to company, but also from date to date. So, while you need to be careful when choosing a shipping company, and you can get some tips about that on this website, you’ll also need to carefully choose the dates. Meaning, thus, that you won’t be able to calculate the precise costs, because you don’t know how those will change for different dates.
Or You Can Use a Calculator
Hello, second method! Instead of trying to do all of this alone, you can use a calculator to help you figure out the actual costs. This is the method that people usually use, and there are reasons why.
More Accurate Results
First off, it will provide you with more accurate results. Especially when you use the calculators of those specific companies you’re considering working with. All of the above mentioned factors will be taken into consideration. Things are more complicated than “fee times distance”, and these calculators know it.
Easier
Not only will you get more accurate results, but this will also be the easier way of learning things. Put simply, with these tools, you’ll find out how much you’ll need to pay in a matter of minutes. Things cannot get any easier than that. So, it is no wonder that people are using calculators instead of relying on their own calculation capabilities.
