AmeriFreight

The pickup went perfectly fine. The company picked up on the day that they said they would and gave me a good heads up and good location to drop my vehicle off at. With the delivery though, that turned into a different issue. My vehicle was scheduled to be delivered May 5th. From two to three days after they picked up the vehicle, I kept getting calls, back-to-back, about them trying to deliver the vehicle that same day. I got calls on April 30th, May 1st, and May 3rd and they asked, “Hey, can you come pick up your vehicle?” Even though the one I paid for, it was supposed to be dropped off on the 5th.

On May 5th, the actual delivery day, they almost did not deliver the car. It took me arguing back and forth with the company because there was a delay with another delivery they had. I was trying to convince them, “Hey, you need to bring it. This is what we arranged.” The car that they were delivering to me would have been the only car that my family had for a few days.

Originally, they were supposed to come at 2 o'clock in the afternoon then a guy called me and said, “Hey, it’s gonna be a little bit later,” till 5 o’clock in the afternoon. It gets to about 7 o'clock, and they still haven't called me back. I called them and they said, “Hey, give us a little bit of time.” 8 o’clock at night, I called them again and they said, “Well, this is gonna take a long time. Can you just get it delivered the next day?” That would not have been possible. I had a rental RV that I drove across the country with, and I needed to return it because I was getting charged a grand for keeping it an extra day. They ended up bringing the car, but it was almost 12 o’clock in the morning.

The delivery driver who dropped off my vehicle made quick work of it and it was an overall pleasant, productive interaction with him. He didn’t seem annoyed that he had to come and drop it off at 12 am. Overall, pickup and delivery were both very professional. Working with AmeriFreight, they always kept me informed and they worked with me pretty well. The initial offer I was given to transport the vehicle, I said, “Hey, those dates don't work,” and I was able to get a secondary offer pretty quickly.

AmeriFreight is acting like a broker and they post things to the big board, and then drivers bid on it, which I ended up learning more about how this works. Also, what I found is this is a little bit of a commodity. All brokers do that, unless somehow you're working with the broker shipper and they do it in-house. But this is not an in-house shipping company. It was some third party.

There was a mix-up with the title of the vehicle because it was handed to the driver and somebody somewhere in the process, which was nothing to do with AmeriFreight. Since it was purchased from an auction house, the people at that auction house should not have given the title to the driver. It was supposed to come in the mail to me later and so I ended up having to mail the title back. There was another complication here because I was working with a broker on the auction side in order to buy it from the auction because I don't have a dealer's license and then I had to work with AmeriFreight as a broker to figure out the best way to ship it. Then one of the challenges when working with an auction house is that the driver may have to sit there for up to two hours to get all the paperwork. The driver never complained about any of that or never asked for more money, and so whatever driver did the job, they were good about it.

The other thing is that the way these systems typically work is you pay AmeriFreight a deposit with a credit card and then to get “the best deal,” you pay the driver cash on delivery. My instincts tell me AmeriFreight keeps the credit card payment deposit and the driver keeps the cash and that gives some sense of where the monies are going. In my example, it was $1,200 shipping fee. The whole cost was $1,200. Approximately 300 was the AmeriFreight deposit, and the driver was given 900 in cash. 25% for the brokerage fee is pretty hefty. But they were the correct rate. I had quoted with other companies and they came in at the same price.

The key to a first-time person who has never shipped a vehicle before is to understand the difference between working with a shipping broker versus working with a shipping carrier. If he's able to speak directly with the company that owns the trucks and pays the drivers, then it may result in different expectations than if he's working with a company like AmeriFreight that is in the business of going and finding the best driver at the time.

She gave me a quote and I thought, “Oh, that can't be. This is too cheap.” I want to pay the market standard amount so I get the full service I'm asking for. So I said that to her. I said, “What's missing here?” And she said, “Nothing's missing. This is the quote. We got it from a supplier in California, a trucker here.” And I said, “Okay. So this is the date I want the car. Is that clear?” And she said, “Yes.”

I gulped and paid the full amount upfront. It freaks me out that I have to pay the full amount upfront or come with a check. I have to come with cash in hand to meet the truck driver at the destination. That seemed crazy and I didn't want to do that. I wanted them to be on the hook to deliver my car by paying them upfront. I preferred to pay upfront on Visa even though it was a little more. At least I had the protection of Visa and my particular card gives me 2% back so it ended up being a premium of 4%, which I swallowed. It was okay because then I know if they don't deliver, I could call up Visa and get them on it and they would do something for me.

In addition to my standard service, I wanted Auto-Protect Plus, which is where they basically give you a little insurance policy. If your car is damaged, they will pay that damage. The pay upfront and the extra special insurance ended up being another $250. The total bill was around 1,650 to have my car transported across the country. This was not a fee I relished paying, but I had to do it and it solved my problem.

Millie, my contact at AmeriFreight, said, “I'm now going to turn over your communication to CA Car Transport”. On my own initiative, I called them up. English was not their first language, which is why they probably make use of AmeriFreight. But they were very polite. They said, “What's your order number?” They looked it up and they said, “Yup, yup. We see it. You're going to get a call from the driver in two days.”

After that call, I got a call. The man said, “Hello. This is your driver for your car.” He said, “Yeah, I'm in New York State. I've got a couple of drop-offs and then I'll be over to see you. It'll be around dinner time. And they're going to tell you where to meet me.” The office called me and said exactly where to meet him, which was in a shopping mall. And I couldn't believe they picked that place because it's a very busy grocery store parking lot. So I'm sitting there in the parking area and lo and behold, this guy Steve drives in with this gigantic truck. It was like watching a cruise liner pull into a pond.” And he said to me, “Who picked this place?” And I said, “Talk to your office.” He was driving this enormous thing totally expertly and he told me what I needed to do, which was to line up and he would drive the car on the truck. He gets my keys, we sign the paperwork, and he drives it on the truck. Within 15 minutes, he was gone.

The first quote that she provided me, she said, with the fees and everything, she said she would try and get me in the $1,100 range. But she said, “Sometimes, it's hard to get them to bite on this. It just depends on what their load is and where they're at and things like that.” She explained to me what their fees were, so that was $1,100 including their fees, which would have put the driver at 800 bucks or whatever. And she said, “So chances are, it's going to come in a little bit more than that. But let's try with this.” I said, “Listen, I'm not gonna tell you how to do your job. You're honest. You're fair. Make it happen.”

She called me back a day later and she said, “As I discussed with you, I wasn't sure whether we could get you in at the lower rates, but we got you in it.” It was 1,390, which I thought was fair because everybody else was looking at $1,600, $1,700, $1,800. And I said to her, “Hey, sounds fair to me. And I appreciate your honesty.” And she said, “Do you want me to roll with it?” “Make it happen.” I've probably talked to her on the phone half a dozen times through this process. She called and said, “I want to let you know who your driver is. I want to let you know who the company is that’s moving the car. I want to tell you what their rating is and how well they're insured.” She went through the whole thing with me.

It was so effortless. But even the driver that the company that we used that she lined us up with went above and beyond. He stayed in contact with me, called me a couple of times while the car's being transported, called me at his halfway point. Said, “Yeah. I'm about halfway out from your location.” He said, “I picked the closes dealership to your house. I wanted to make it easy on you.” I said, “A good friend of mine owns the Chevrolet dealership right across the street. I'm not going to be able to get the car. My wife can meet you up there. But would you mind dropping it at that Chevrolet dealership? I'll call Mike right now and see if that's okay. Then we can leave the car there until we get off work this evening to pick it up.”

He asked, “What's that address?” And I said, “Well, I don't know the address. I just know the name of the dealership.” He said, “It didn't come up on my GPS when I was looking for different places to drop. If you can give me an address, call me back.” So I got him the address. I called him back. But when I did, he was pulling up. He said, “Oh, yeah. I found it.” And, “Man, I’ll help you out any way I can help you out. You want me to drop it across the street? That's perfectly fine. I'll make it happen.” The driver and the people at AmeriFreight were awesome. It was the smoothest thing I've ever done.

With the company that they got for me, they told me that I had a 48-hour window that they would come pick my car up. It got into that window and I still hadn't been contacted. So, I had to contact and I wasn't really happy about that. I was like, "You should contact me before that window to tell me when in that window you're going to get it." So, within those 48 hours, I was sitting here stressing, trying to figure out when and where and all these other details amongst my move.

The same thing happened on the other end. It got into that window and I was like, "Okay, no one's contacting me," so I had to contact them. AmeriFreight was really good. It was the other company. I kept having to go through all these people and that made it kind of frustrating. I contacted the driver, the driver didn't answer, so I contacted AmeriFreight and AmeriFreight was like, "Let me contact the driver." At that point, there was a different driver. So, it was like going into circles. I was supposed to get the car on Friday, then they gave my car to a local deliverer, and they don't work on the weekends. So, I didn't get it until the following Monday.

I understand there's traffic and things change and there's a lot of other cars. But I just wanted to know and I want to be contacted and communicated with. I don't want to have to reach out to get information on my stuff. If they would have told me firsthand before the time window that, "Okay, we're running a little bit late. The local deliverers don't work on the weekends. And so, you're not going to get your car till Monday," that would have been fine. But because I had to go through the hunt and then find out on my own that I wasn't getting my car until Monday, that was frustrating. I was supposed to take a video of my car. When I got it, I was allowed to inspect it and then sign off. So, in that process, I was fine and my car was fine.

We had used Amerifreight once before and it worked out. Our second try was not handled very well. We will use neither Amerifreight or Ca Auto Express (actual shipper) again. A critical piece of information you should get after payments, is the driver's contact number. In our case our daughter and a friend were going to have to drive two hours to retrieve her car, as there are some places shippers won't go.

We made half a dozen or more contacts to CA Auto Express, and a couple to Amerifreight to get the driver's contact info so we could confirm a mutual time and date to meet in advance. We wanted to prevent the 2 hour drive having to be made in the middle of the night, or cost my daughter and her driver a day's wages. Amerifreight's response was "talk to the shipper." As noted we did that numerous times and were told no problem. You will get a 1-2 day notice of arrival date. The transit from LA-Mia took almost 12 days.

Last night (Sunday) at 9:00 P.M. we got a call from the driver telling us he was in Mia and ready to drop off the car. Now. So two of our daughters had to get a car and drive on a dangerous road 2 hours each way in the dark, late at night to meet the driver in a strange area and take possession of her car. Not once in almost 12 days could anyone call the driver and have his arrival time provided to us at least 1 day in advanced. She had obtained her cashier's check in advance or I don't know what would have happened as it was a Sunday night.

Do yourself a favor. Find an actual shipper if you can, cut out the middleman, otherwise get EVERY piece of information before you make the deal. Better yet drive it where it needs to go yourself. All we asked for, and could not get, from anyone involved was one phone call from the driver or someone giving us a one day notice. Apparently that was too much to ask for a roughly 1800 dollar job. Even at today's prices $1800 buys a lot of gas.

Everybody was very responsive. I started off with one rep, and then it seemed like I was dealing with another rep, and then somewhere in-between, I ended up dealing with another rep. So, at the end, as we were trying to get things scheduled, there was a little bit of cross-communication. One rep was asking me questions, but I was answering that same question with another rep. They were not communicating on their end. But that got resolved with a phone call very easily and quickly. So, it was no big deal.