uShip

uShip has been referred to as the eBay of shipping. People post items they need to ship, carriers offer their dates and price, and the customer picks the carrier whose criteria best suits them (usually the lowest rate). The idea is to find cheap transport on space the truckers would not have filled anyway.

I am not sure about other items but it does not quite work that way for auto transport.

The main issue with uShip is that anyone can join as a carrier. There are no insurance requirements or background checks. If a driver damages your car during transit your only recourse is to give the carrier a negative rating on the site. Same with drivers who are late or do not show up at all. A quick web search will reveal plenty of customers who have had this experience. Damage to your vehicle is essentially only paid for if the driver wants to pay or if you can win a lawsuit.

Unaccountability is not just prevalent on the carrier side; customers can back out at the last second because there is no real recourse against them either. Auto transport trucks don’t often have empty spaces anyway, there is usually another shipment that the carrier could book instead of a uShip order. For these two reasons carrier adoption of uShip has not been widespread. Why book a load that has a 50% chance of working out when you can book one that has a 90% chance of working out?

In my experience uShip does not genuinely save customers money. No matter what channel you go through the carrier has the final say on what price they ship your car for. There is really no way around paying the average. Furthermore, most of the auto transport companies on uShip are brokers, so you could have three fees to pay to three separate companies (uShip fee, broker fee, carrier fee).

In my opinion uShip isn’t worth it. It’s a good idea but the execution isn’t quite right, yet. I would limit the shipper registration to carriers only (no brokers), I would verify all of the carriers insurance, and I would create a cancellation penalty. A site like this wouldn’t necessarily be able to make the claims that uShip does in regards to how many carriers are registered and how cheap you could have everything transported for, but it would be much more secure and fair. If you do use uShip check the DOT and MC numbers of the carrier, with a little research you can find the insurance certificate and verify that carrier has proper transporter authority. If they don’t provide these numbers the carrier isn’t legit. But, most of all, be careful.