Hurricane Rita

Unfortunately, another hurricane is in the Gulf of Mexico with projected landfall somewhere alone the Texas coastline. As the storm is supposed to hit on Saturday much of Houston is being evacuated. This is causing a tremendous traffic jam and is also affecting the fuel supplies in the area. Further, there are reports that many inbounds lanes in the area will be used to assist in evacuating the area. While we all hope and pray the damage caused is minimal we have to be realistic and understand this will have an impact on the transportation industry. As of Wednesday drivers were reporting long delays. This many people evacuating also means there are less people available to receive their cars so this will delay the drivers as well. Please join us in praying for those impacted by not only this storm but Katrina as well.

Fuel Prices

We’ve all seen fuel prices steadily and dramatically increase over the past few months. While it can be frustrating to your family budget, this increase can literally put some auto shippers out of business. Any industry that faces an increase in operating costs is faced with few choices. The most immediate and painful one is to increase the price they charge for their services – in this case the cost to ship your car.

The average auto transporter gets only about 5 miles per gallon. At an average of only $2.50 per gallon (in many areas the drivers are paying $3.00 per gallon) it costs $25 per hour just to keep the engine running at 60 miles per hour. According to recent news stories fuel prices are up 40% in the last 12 months. Fuel cost is easily the largest expense in maintaining and running a car shipping company. A coast-to-coast auto transporter will put 6,000 miles on his truck for the round trip. That translates to around 1,200 gallons of fuel – or about what the average consumer would use in a year! Imagine how this fuel situation will impact your pocketbook over the next year and understand the auto shipper will feel that pain over 14-17 days! A .50 increase in fuel cost adds approximately $1,000 each month in additional operating costs for each car transporter you see on the road!

This increase in fuel price has forced the auto transport industry to increase our rates. This is an action National Car Shipping takes very seriously. We pride ourselves on giving our customers the best value for their dollar. However, it simply isn’t fair to the drivers to ask them to shoulder the entire burden of rising costs alone. Our rates have increased by $50-100 across the board to enable our quality drivers to continue shipping cars for our customers. If and, hopefully, when the price of fuel falls the rates will as well. We appreciate your understanding and are always here to answer any questions you may have about shipping your vehicle.

Summer Rush is Slowing Down

There is good news to report! Many of the summer moves are now complete so demand on the trucks is lessening which results in faster pick up times. The east coast will begin to notice a large number of transports from the northeast to Florida (Snowbirds) in the coming weeks. Please keep this in mind if you will be shipping a car in this direction.