As an update to my prior response, I have since experienced the frustration associated with car transport carriers. Plycar provided a pick-up window between November 19 and 21. I then scheduled my family’s physical move to CA based on this window, since it matched our household items mover’s window. It’s now November 24, and my 911 is still sitting in MD. Very annoying if not frustrating.

I’m sympathetic to you but having shipped a lot of cars there is one immutable truth that I have learned. You simply can’t schedule a car transport based on when you need the vehicle at the destination. You will be frustrated, angry, confused as to why this is so hard... let it go and relieve yourself of wasting the energy on negative emotions. It won’t get your car to you any sooner and no amount of barking at the shipper will get that truck to you faster.

A comment was made in this - or another - thread about “these guys simply don’t get buying online in 2018” (to paraphrase). A mulit-million dollar historical Porsche may get put on an airplane for shipping, the rest of us ship on a truck. A Fedex driver won’t drop it off in a box with a tracking number and hour-by-hour scanning. Cars are specialty items to ship and they require special trucks to ship them. There is a finite capacity and the high capital expense of getting started means that the company landscape doesn’t change, which means that these companies have little incentive for developing new business innovations. Even if they could, moving atoms is different than moving bits, even when the bits fit in a box.

Combine that with the fact that government regulations dictate how many hours a day the drivers can drive, speed, inspections, and so much more. You won’t get your car faster than the schedule and when things go bad on someone else’s shipment, your pickup will be delayed. My Ferrari was stuck on a truck in Reno for 3 days while the driver fixed a broken hub on his truck, so the cars he was scheduled to pickup in LA were also pushed out. I could have been upset but, honestly, I chose to give the driver a pass and ask him about his truck repair. No one was going to pay for his repairs so he took a big hit on his profits for spending 10 days going from one side of the country to another and back. Enjoy your rental car and consider that you won’t be the guy sitting for hours on end going through an empty landscape with other people’s expensive cars as cargo.

Thanks for your response and sharing your experiences and perspective. I am compelled to provide 2 statement themes.

1) I provided the update primarily to the OP, to let him/her know of a possible interim outcome, and

2) This is a bit of a vent...a challenge and my point of frustration stems from my understanding and expectation that service providers in the relocation process/industry need to provide quotes or estimates with a high degree of confidence, even if the service windows are ‘long’.

Having gone through the international and national relocation process 4 times in my family’s life, we need some certainty in such an ambiguous process. This not only provides comfort, but minimizes costs. Juggling home selling, home searching, home purchasing, house hold items moving and vehicle relocation can be taxing. With each of these failing within a timeframe negotiated with a new employer is frustrating. So my annoyance stems from a cascade of failures. A car relocation alone is trivial, but in aggregate with other failures is a bit much.

Totally get it, and I am really sympathetic to your plight. Venting is good.

Moving a family and everything that goes with a family is an inherently frustrating process that makes one question every dictum about customer experience that has been uttered with regard to modern business. Good luck.

I have a different problem I’m struggling with and just reading posts about shipping cars gives me anxiety. I have to move 5 cars from the Bay Area to south Florida and the cost alone is prohibitive enough to make me think that buying a 5th wheel trailer is a cost effective solution. And then I won’t have to deal with trucking companies.