When it comes to auto shipping, there are two modes of shipping: door-to-door shipping, and terminal-to-terminal shipping, and many people fail to understand the differences that lie with each shipping method. It’s simple: door-to-door shipping allows for the driver of the truck to come to your door and pickup the vehicle. With door-to-door transport, you will receive a full inspection of the vehicle both before it is placed on the truck and when it is delivered, which allows you to assess any damages that were pre-existing on the vehicle prior to transport, and any new damages that it has since incurred.
Terminal-to-terminal shipping, on the other hand, is much more dangerous. When you drop your car off at a terminal, you really don’t know what you’re getting into because (for the most part, anyway) terminals are merely giant fields where cars can wait for weeks to be picked up. With terminal-to-terminal shipping, there is no insurance on the vehicle, so oftentimes people will report things missing from their vehicle after it were shipped from a terminal, and that’s something that no one wants to go through.
Typically terminal-to-terminal shipping is handy when moving from big cities and to big cities. New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C. – all these cities have narrow streets that can make it difficult and dangerous for an auto transport carrier to navigate in these giant cities. Most of the time, the carrier will arrange a location that is close to your house (in the event of door-to-door shipping) and meet you there; parking lots do nicely for this. But with terminal-to-terminal, you need to be careful, and always know that things can go wrong.
