uShip: 2024 Car Shipping Prices and Review

uShip is what is called a “metasearch” company for auto transport and car shipping needs. Rather than pecking away at a keyboard on multiple shipping sites, or spending a day talking to an automated phone system, uShip quickly provides you with quotes from multiple companies that are available to ship your vehicle.

Pros and Cons

How Does uShip Work?

The way the company works is pretty straightforward. You decide where you want the vehicle to leave from and where you want it to go. Plug this information into the uShip quote generation tool and it spits out a half-dozen quotes for your vehicle and tells you who they are from so you can check out the shippers’ references.

Think of uShip as a matchmaker bringing together the folks who want their car someplace else and the folks capable of putting it there. And it’s not just cars that uShip can handle.

Would you like to ship your vintage Indian motorcycle from your Sarasota home back to your summer digs in Winnipesaukee? No problem, Easy Rider. How about moving your boat down to the Gulf for the season? Not a problem Skipper. uShip can ship pretty much anything you can think of. Heck, they even ship Pitbulls. Who they heck ships Pitbulls?

uShip also has a great list of helpful resources. Want to know if you can load up your trunk with medical THC oil and fireworks for the trip? uShip has all the answers (No, in the case of loading the trunk up, Sparky).

How To Get An Online Car Shipping Quote From uShip

Getting a quote from uShip is as simple as it gets. You start at uShip’s quote tool. The tool is going to ask you a few basic questions. Stuff you already know. They will want to know the year, make, and model of the vehicle you are planning to transport to your destination. For example, the 2007 Toyota Camry. That’s it. They don’t need you to look up the dry weight or the dimensions or any silly nonsense.

If your vehicle is something unusual or special, this is the time, to be honest. If you have a vintage convertible Corvette, uShip needs to know it is special. They want to take some extra care to protect the top. They will recommend an enclosed transport truck. The same goes for any modifications. Have you lowered the car and added 22-inch wheels? They need to know so they can prevent any damage. Most importantly, you need to be sure to tell uShip if the vehicle does not run properly. They need to drive it up onto or into the shipping truck trailer. If it is not a runner, you need to let them know so they can prepare for that. They can still handle it, but it will cost a bit more.

Once you fill out your quote request, uShip puts the request out to its network of carriers. You’ll know when it does, because your email inbox is going to fill up with questions from carriers and quotes. We did this recently and within five minutes, we had five quotes. Within a day, we had more than two dozen.

There’s good and bad to that: It’s great to know the range of potential prices to ship a vehicle. What’s not so great is that you really have no idea who any of these carriers are. A few will be identified by name, and you can research their individual ratings online, but some are going to be small carriers who you won’t find anywhere online. It’s tough to know exactly who you’re dealing with, and whether or not you should trust them to move your iron.

uShip Car Shipping Prices & Fees

There are some factors that will influence the price to ship your vehicle with uShip. Let’s just list them out here:

• The exact pickup and drop-off location.
• The size and type of vehicle.
• Any special considerations like convertible tops, modifications, etc.
• Whether the vehicle runs or is a dead heap.
• The time of year matters a bit.
• How quickly you need the vehicle where you want it (is it an emergency?)

We know you are just dying to find out roughly what it costs to ship a vehicle, so rather than refer you back to the uShip calculator for the third time, we created the chart below for you to get a feel for the range of prices. We chose the 2015 RAV4 crossover as our example vehicle. We like the RAV4 example because it is the top-selling non-truck vehicle in America. If you own a ginormous Buick Queen Mary, add about 20% to the price examples we show.

How Much Does uShip Cost?

You can see that to ship a RAV4 from Boston to New York it is a very reasonable $580. Heck, you’d pay a hefty portion of that in gas and tolls if you drove it yourself. Stop to eat a steak when you arrive in New York and it may be a wash.

But try as you might, you can’t drive from Honolulu to Miami. That will require a ship, and you don’t have one. So uShip will get you a ship and it will run you about $3,000. This isn’t Ship Talk, so we don’t know if that is a good deal or not, but it sure seems reasonable. Remember, uShip shows you a bunch of quotes. That helps to ensure you do get a look at the best price available.

Are there any hidden fees when you use uShip? Sort of. There is a fee that uShip adds to the cost they show, but it is a small percentage of the cost and it gets added in and shown to you when you proceed with the order. We have included that fee in our chart of example prices above.

Our price matrix will help most people get a feel for what it costs to transport common vehicles to and from some common locations. If you want to check out some oddball costs you can view uShip’s fun cost-to-ship index for more examples. Our favorite was the cost to ship a mower lift on a skid from Sullivan, Illinois to Jessup, Georgia. $673. Just what we would have guessed!

For more information on this topic, check out our very detailed guide on how much it costs to ship a car.

uShip Insurance for Your Car

uShip refers you to the carrier for its individual insurance policies. You should review this before agreeing to ship with the particular company. We also recommend you call your own insurance company and ask if you are fully covered for car transport already. For example, in the event, your car is damaged when the truck hits the overpass on Memorial Drive.

Remember that uShip is just the marriage-maker in this transaction between you and the shipper who you will ultimately do business with. When you use the uShip service you will eventually be turned over to the actual shipping company that transports your vehicle. Those folks will be available to help you, and uShip is also available if you need to ask questions. Like this one: “My vehicle’s state safety inspection sticker is expired. Will it be a problem when the vehicle first arrives?” That is a real question asked by a Car Talk fan shipping a car home from Florida this month. The surprising solution, in that case, was that the shipper offered to have the vehicle inspected upon arrival for a small fee. These folks are in the service business. If you want something extra, just ask.

uShip Review in Summary

Shipping a vehicle can be stressful. uShip can help. The service quickly answers the cost question, and all of the shippers uShip works with have their customer reviews shown right on the list of quotes. uShip will save you a lot of time versus trying to find a good price by calling one shipper after another individually. Give the uShip site a shot. We found it very easy to navigate and didn’t have to ask our nephew for help with it even once!

Our Methodology

Some shipping companies are aggregators that work across multiple car transporters and will help you price shop across them. The aggregators are responsible for vetting the individual carriers and often will show you the consumer ratings and individual price quotes so you understand exactly who will be moving your vehicle. They also tend to offer standardized insurance packages that work across their carrier network.

We selected good companies based on over 30 data points and an extensive secret shopper initiative to ensure unbiased and clear results. Our main focus is obtaining the most useful information for our readership based on the central ideas below.

• Reputation - Companies that maintain a strong rating score and industry reputation on trusted review platforms.
• Cost - There are many individual factors that can impact the cost of car shipping including location, timing and worth of the car. We took all these into account when examining the cost structure of each company.
• Consumer Reviews - Individual reviews from current and past customers who have used the business and have personal experience to draw from.
• Longevity - How many years a company has been in business, growing their company, gaining reviews and establishing trust within the industry.
• Services Offered - These services can range from international shipping, enclosed options, open container options and more.

You can read more on Car Shipping and see our recommendations for the Best Car Shipping Companies in 2024 here.

Car Talk's Top Picks For Best Car Shipping Companies