Take an inside look into the vehicle transportation process of a 2010 Scion automobile, from Virginia to Seattle, WA! Listen to a recorded phone conversation between We Will Transport It, Inc. and a real customer.
Customer: Hello
WWTI: Hello, my name is Dave, I’m with We Will Transport It. How are you today?
Customer: I’m good. How are you?
WWTI: Great. Thank you for asking. I was calling about the Scion you’re moving from Sterling out to Seattle.
Customer: Yeah, yeah.
WWTI: …that area, I went to school in Vienna so I know exactly…small world, small world. So when were you actually hoping to have the vehicle picked up? When does it need to be picked up?
Customer: Anytime till Monday cause I’m leaving on Saturday so…
WWTI: Oh okay, but your folks, somebody will be in Sterling to give the driver the key, correct?
Customer: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
WWTI: Okay. Let me just…I don’t know how you’ve done this, but let me just take a couple minutes off to explain how this works okay…
Customer: Yeah that’s great.
WWTI: …because I know you’re getting all kinds of prices and you’re probably like “Well why don’t I just go with this third price? This is how it usually works. These guys who are calling you, we’re one of the few…I think there are maybe five of us that have a license to broker and we have our own trucks. Now 99 and a half percent of everybody else you talk to are just brokers or telemarketers okay.
What we do is a door-to-door delivery, we come to your home in Sterling Park or in Sterling; the vehicle is inspected, meaning the driver will walk around the car with either your mom or dad or whoever is turning over the vehicle. Any scratches are noted on the bill of lading, that way you know that it gets off in the same condition it gets on. Now with our company, once the car is on the truck it stays on the truck, it’s never off loaded, it’s never shuffled from one truck to another or it’s never put on a terminal lot waiting for the next truck. The same guy who picks it up will be the same guy who delivers it, and that’s important because well for one it’s faster but it’s also safer. When it gets to Seattle it comes off the truck and at that point you and the driver will walk around the vehicle again just to make sure it got off in the same condition it was loaded.
What we do is, I get a contact, a name, an address and a phone number in Sterling and then I get a contact name, number and address in Seattle, I put it all on an auto shipping auto form and I send it to your yahoo.com email address. All you have to do is confirm it’s a 2010 Scion, you confirm that my addresses and phone numbers are correct and then by approving the form, it’s all electronic, it’s all going through your email so there’s no copy and the fax and paperwork, it’s pretty easy. This is 2015 so there’s no faxing necessary.
So once I have all that information I shoot it out, email it out to all our carriers and any carrier that we deal with up in that Northern Virginia area, that’s going towards Seattle. As soon as I have the driver I call you, I give you the driver’s name, I give you his cell phone number, your pickup date, your delivery date. At that point if you say “Okay Dave everything sounds good, the dates work, let’s go ahead and get it done.” At that point I email the driver the auto form, he signs off on it, that way there’s no funny business when it gets out there in Seattle trying to hold your car hostage cause you got a copy of the order, he’s got a copy and we have a copy okay.
When it gets out there after it’s finished being…first of all the driver will call four to six hours prior to pickup to let your folks know so they can coordinate a time that’s convenient for pickup. At the same time you’re going to know the date that the driver’s going to be delivering and he will call you four to six hours prior to delivery so you can coordinate a time that’s convenient for you at that end. At that point you pay the driver and he hands you the keys. It can be pretty much that simple.
Now I know you got a lot of different prices okay. What I did is because you’re from up there, I just moved a car this morning out of Great Falls so I take a interest in when they’re coming out of that neighborhood. We’ve got you door-to-door at all inclusive, fuel, tolls, taxes, you do have a hundred thousand dollars worth of insurance on your car while it’s on the truck and it’s all included in the price, and we’re at 13 hundred.
Now I know you’re getting lower prices. The problem with that is, and this is what I want to explain, what the brokers do is they are not established, they do not have a reputation, they’re brand… they’re new, and so what they do is they give you a price, it sounds great. Now they have no input, they have not say-so as to what gets on the truck, it’s the drivers, not the guy that’s sitting at the desk drinking coffee and giving you figures. So what happens is once they get you to sign their contract the next step is finding a driver, and the way they do that is they will list your vehicle on a board which shows every vehicle in Virginia waiting to go to Washington.
The drivers, they’re trying to make a living just like you and me and everyone else, they pick and choose what they’re putting on their truck based on price. So what happens is that guy gives you that real low price and you think “Wow this guy did me a favor, he did a good job.” What happens is…when it’s too low the drivers don’t respond, they’ve got plenty of vehicles to pick up and that’s what they do. They grab the vehicles that are paying what they expect. See these guys are driving from Virginia to Washington, they don’t run to Florida, they don’t run to Texas, they don’t run to California, this is their run, and so every time they make the route they get paid within $50, the same thing every time. So when the guy gives you a low price, you think you got a deal and then you’re out in Seattle and you call that company back and say, “Listen you said you’re going to be picking up my car Monday and it’s Tuesday now, so what’s going on?”
And they say, “You know what ma’am I’ve talked to 30 different drivers and every driver is telling me I need more money.”
So what they did is they gave you a great price to convince you to go with them, now every driver they talk to wants more money. And that’s what it’s supposed to be but what they’ve done is they undercut everybody to earn your business. It’s a slimy way to do business but they get away with it, so they continue to do it.
What I want to do now is, I’m pretty much on the phone all day with customers, I can grab the guy who talks to the drivers. If there’s a way that we can discount this I have no problem doing that, I’m just not going to preach to you one minute and then do the same thing, you see what I’m getting at? Could you give me one second? He’s probably a lot closer to your age than mine…
Customer: Well I also have a …can I put stuff in the cargo?
WWTI: Yes. Up to a hundred and 50 pounds that’s a lot of stuff but they have to draw the line somewhere. A hundred and 50 pounds is a lot of clothes.
Customer: Just like clothes and shoes and…yeah no furniture or anything like that, it’s just shoes and clothes.
WWTI: Yeah, cause you seen out there on 66 that way station? Well they got those all through the country and they got to go over way station in every state, and you can imagine on a 10-car hauler if everybody put 400 pounds worth of stuff in their car they cross the scale at 400 pounds overweight and they get cost some fines. So yeah they draw the line at about a hundred and 50 pounds. If it’s nice and neat you might be able to get it to weigh a couple more pounds. But as long as the bumper is not dragging the ground you know… there’s something fishy going on. But let me do this, let me grab him, he’s a good guy, he’s not all stick in the mud, he’s the one that can sign off on the discount for me. Can you give me a second?
Customer: Yeah.
WWTI: Thank you so much. Hold on one second, he’s a good guy. Hold on.
