Loading a non-running car without a winch: what to say no to.
A car that "rolls and steers" is not the same as a car that "loads." If the shipper can't confirm three specific mechanical conditions, the right answer is a flatbed to the yard and a separate pickup.
The three questions
When a shipper tells me an inop "rolls and steers," I ask three separate questions. Every time. I have never regretted asking them, and the one time I skipped them I ended up with a sedan stuck on the edge of a ramp at a dead angle with four guys trying to move it by hand.
- Do the brakes release? A car that sat for years in a garage often has calipers rusted to the rotors. The wheels will not turn regardless of what the owner remembers. The test: can you push the car by hand on level ground, with the parking brake fully disengaged? If there is any doubt, the answer is no.
- Does the steering wheel turn lock-to-lock without binding? A steering rack with no fluid pressure and a seized column is not going to let a driver correct the car's angle on a ten-degree ramp. The test: with the front wheels off the ground (or on a flat surface and power steering assist off), can the wheel turn freely from stop to stop?
- Is the transmission in neutral? An automatic stuck in Park because the shift interlock is dead, or a manual with a seized clutch, cannot be pushed. The test: can the car be put in neutral with the engine off, and will it roll?
What "no" costs
If any answer is no, or unknown, the load is not a standard inop dispatch. It is a flatbed-to-yard plus a separate winch-equipped pickup. That adds roughly $200–$450 to the total, depending on the yard distance and the carrier. Every shipper who has ever balked at that number has also been the shipper who, when shown the photos of what a push-load gone wrong actually looks like, has paid it without further discussion.
What the wrong answer costs
Case file 23-112, condensed from the longer writeup: an '87 sedan, garage-kept for six years, shipper confirmed rolls-and-steers on the phone. The three questions were not asked. Driver arrived with a ten-car hauler, no winch, and a schedule that had him at the next pickup in ninety minutes. The brakes were seized. The four men who moved that car onto the top deck did so by a combination of leverage, creative parking-brake pumping, and the kind of improvisation that is either charming or horrifying depending on whether you are responsible for the vehicle. The car arrived in Cleveland intact. It could easily have arrived scraped, bent, or not at all.
Winch loads, briefly
A winch-equipped trailer is not a universal solution either. The winch pulls the car onto the deck at a fixed angle. If the car cannot steer, the winch drags it straight up the ramp whether the wheels are pointing that direction or not. Rocker damage, bent tie rods, and ramp contact on the lower body panels are the predictable outcomes. A true winch load needs a driver who is going to stop the winch every four feet and reset the steering by hand, and not every winch carrier will do that on a daily-driver inop at the rate you're paying.
What I tell shippers up front
An inop is not a harder version of a regular car. It is a different kind of load, with different equipment, different costs, and different risk. Shippers who understand that get honest quotes and realistic timelines. Shippers who don't understand it, and who are shopping inops on price, will eventually find a carrier who tells them what they want to hear, and that carrier will arrive with a ten-car open hauler, no winch, and a look of dawning concern when they see the car.
— Filed under Inoperables. Related: case file 23-112.