Case files

Loads that taught me something.

Short write-ups of specific dispatches — what the shipper asked for, what I did, what happened, and what I'd do differently. Names, MC numbers, and precise locations are redacted. The lessons aren't.

File 24-041 Scottsdale → Darien Hard-side enclosed, 2-car

The fresh-paint restoration that almost went open.

Ask: Private collector relocating a concours-prepped early-'70s coupe and a daily-driver sedan. Shipper priced enclosed on the coupe, open on the sedan, two separate dispatches.

What I did: Pushed back on the split. The coupe had come out of the body shop nineteen days earlier — fresh paint, not fully cured. The sedan was a low-value daily. I re-quoted both on a single hard-side enclosed with a liftgate, at a combined rate roughly 14% above the sum of the two original quotes, and explained why.

Outcome: Delivered on day nine of a ten-day window. Coupe untouched. Sedan untouched. The shipper's restorer called me a week later to say he'd inspected the coupe under lights and could find no grit embedment anywhere on the clear.

Lesson: A shipper who wants to save money on the cheap car in a two-car load is not always wrong, but a fresh-paint vehicle on the same dispatch changes the answer. The premium is real; the reasoning is explainable; and the shipper who understands it books the next three loads with you.

File 24-029 Rochester → Tampa 9-car open, snowbird season

The load that wouldn't move at $1,050.

Ask: Dealer group closing out a fleet lease, four sedans southbound in the first week of November. Finance had priced the move internally at $1,050 per unit based on last year's average.

What I did: Ran the numbers against current diesel and the posted spot rates on the I-75 corridor, which had climbed hard on snowbird imbalance — northbound was collapsing and southbound had tightened. Told finance the load would not move at $1,050 and walked them through the math. Re-priced at $1,320 per unit. Load picked up four days later on a reputable nine-car with a carrier I'd used twice before.

Outcome: Four cars delivered inside the requested window, no claims. Finance accepted the new number because the math was shown rather than asserted.

Lesson: Quoting off annual averages in the shoulder weeks of snowbird season is how dealer groups end up with "booked" loads that sit for eight days. The seasonal correction is not optional; it is the market.

File 24-017 Austin → Portland, OR Hotshot wedge, 3-car

The expedited that didn't need a nine-car.

Ask: Relocation manager with three executive vehicles and a seven-day pickup-to-delivery window across 2,100 miles. Her first instinct was enclosed on all three.

What I did: Asked what each car was. Two were 2022–2023 sedans with normal ground clearance; one was a performance coupe with a front splitter at 3.8". Recommended hotshot wedge for the two sedans (faster, direct, no stops for other loads) and a separate 2-car hard-side enclosed for the coupe. Net cost was lower than three enclosed slots; delivery was two days faster on the sedans.

Outcome: All three delivered on day six. No damage, no drama. The relo manager has since standardized this split for any three-vehicle executive move.

Lesson: Hotshot wedges are not a downgrade from a nine-car; they're a different product with different tradeoffs. On expedited short-count loads where the cars don't need enclosed protection, they're frequently the right tool. The mistake is treating them as the cheap option rather than the fast one.

File 23-112 Denver → Cleveland 9-car open, inop

The "rolls and steers" that didn't.

Ask: Estate executor moving a 1987 sedan that had been sitting in a garage for six years. Shipper confirmed on the phone that the car "rolled and steered."

What I did: Asked three specific questions — do the brakes release, does the steering wheel turn lock-to-lock without binding, and is the transmission in neutral. Executor got back to me the next day: brakes were seized. Re-dispatched as a flatbed-to-yard in Denver, then as a winch load onto the open hauler out of the yard. Two dispatches instead of one; one extra handling point.

Outcome: Arrived in Cleveland with no new damage. Total cost was ~$340 over the original single-dispatch quote. Executor considered it money well spent when I showed her the photos of the winching, which would have been a forty-minute push-load nightmare at her mother's driveway otherwise.

Lesson: "Rolls and steers" is three separate mechanical questions, and shippers who don't know to distinguish them will cheerfully confirm all three based on the one that happens to be true. Ask the three questions. Every time.

File 23-088 Long Island → Jackson Hole Hard-side enclosed, 2-car

The carrier I didn't dispatch.

Ask: Repeat collector client, two vehicles, 2,000-mile transcontinental enclosed. Standard request, fair rate.

What I did: Posted the load, got three bids back within two hours. The lowest was from a carrier I'd never used. Pulled their MC number, ran the MCS-150 and the inspection history — clean. Requested the cargo policy dec page. It came back with an exclusion for "vehicles valued over $150,000 individually." One of my client's cars was appraised at $180,000. I asked about it; the carrier's dispatcher told me "the exclusion doesn't really apply, we've moved plenty of those." Took the second-lowest bid instead, with a carrier I'd used four times and whose dec page I already had on file.

Outcome: Delivered clean. I have no idea how the first carrier's run would have gone. I am comfortable not knowing.

Lesson: "The exclusion doesn't really apply" is the sentence that precedes the worst claims conversation of your career. The dec page is not a suggestion. Read it, and when it excludes something your load contains, move on.

— Files are numbered by year and sequence. Some are consolidated from multiple similar loads to protect the shippers and carriers involved. The dollar figures are approximate. The lessons are exact.