Finding Reliable auto shipper (Honolulu: transport company, insurance, broker)

[Globetrotter800]

I'm trying to find a reliable, reputable shipper to transport my compact to Honolulu from the DC area. Can anyone recommend one? I've gotten online quotes, but when I google the companies, almost everyone has a complaint of some sort against them. What is the proper payment procedure? How much is a reasonable deposit? How much is paid upfront? All the quotes only vary by a minimum. I keep reading reviews about how the companies that offer the home pickup option never show up and then demand extra to rebook with another overland transporter.

[NoMoreSTL]

Hello!

I've been on Oahu for about 3 months now and my car is finally on it's way. Hooray!

I did a lot of digging before I settled on Cascade Vehicle Shipping (Vehicle Shipping Rates | Cascade Vehicle Shipping Quotes Car Transport). They aren't the transport company, but more like a broker that sets everything up for you. From St. Louis to Honolulu, the total was about $1900.

For a Hawaii shipment, all of the companies I received quotes from require payment in full at the time of booking. There is only a deposit situation if you are shipping within the Mainland. That made me very nervous, but things are going way more smoothly than I had expected.

The general process is:
1- Book your shipment
2- The broker (Cascade in my case) finds a trucking company that will be in your area during a timeframe you set. Cascade asked me what the first available day to pick up my car would be. This is a time for patience! You are now at the mercy of a trucker's schedule. He has other cars to pick up/drop off, so you should expect to keep a 4-5 day window open for him. He can get behind due to traffic, weather, getting lost, etc. For my car, the first day available for pickup was a Friday. The car was picked up in the early evening the following Wednesday (2/11).
**SHOUT OUT to my dad for sending my car on it's way. Thanks Dad!**
3- The trucker drops your car off at a port. That's where my car is now, in California. (Cascade keeps me updated throughout the process.) More patience... Your car will wait for a boat at port. I'm told the car can sit waiting for around 5 business days. After all- they won't ship out with just your car, they will wait for a full load.
4- The car is now in the hands of a shipping company. Mine is going through Matson. I'm told it can take 10 full days from CA to HI.
5- You are called when your vehicle has arrived and is ready for pickup. In Honolulu, you'd go to the Matson offices on Sand Island.
6- You wait for your car again. They will pull it up for you to inspect for damages. Paperwork. I haven't been through this personally yet, but I'll keep you informed if you want. It seemed to go pretty smoothly for my fiance, whose car arrived over a month ago.

Some things to remember:
*Patience, patience, patience. You are dealing with a lot of time WINDOWS instead of solid dates. I can see where the more impatient folks would get agitated and rush to an internet message board to complain when everything doesn't happen at a specific date/time.
*Your car will probably be damaged, at least a little. I haven't spoken to anyone whose car didn't get dinged or scuffed a little, including my fiance. The bigger your car is, the more likely it will be roughed up.
*Keep your auto insurance current. The shipping companies have insurance too, but just in case.
*Check out Transport Reviews.com - Ratings and Reviews of Auto Transport Companies - Your Source For Finding a Quality Auto Transporter!. It's a great tool when searching for a shipping company.

Good Luck!!

[Sweetbeet]

We shipped two with Horizon. One, a newer model (2006 Prius) from Oakland, directly with Horizon. No damage that we could see. Horizon ships in closed containers, but I understand the cars are on open barges inter-island (we are on Kauai). One nice thing was that we were actually delayed a week in dropping off the car, and it was no big deal, not even a "change fee". They just said, tell us when you're going to drop it off. Once you've paid, as long as you don't wait too long (they'll tell you how long the quote is good for), you can drop it off anytime. Once we did drop it off, it arrived on Kauai much faster than we expected. (We dropped it a day or two before the next ship left.)

The other was from Maryland, a 1974 VW Thing. Horizon uses DAS auto shippers or has some affiliation with them for the overland portion. (In fact, it might have been DAS that actually booked the Prius shipment over the phone, but we delivered it to Horizon at the port in Oakland and worked with Horizon people from that point on.) We paid extra for them to pick it up at the home of the guy we bought it from, and that went without a hitch. The only problem was that it sat at the port in LA for quite a while. Actually, DAS got it to LA but for some reason didn't take it to the port for a while. We had to keep bugging them, but eventually it did get to the port and from that point on it was fine. Again, no damage that we know of, but we had just purchased the vehicle sight unseen, and it is an older vehicle, so there might have been some minor dings but that was not a big deal for us.

With DAS, you can pay more for your car to be on the "top rack" of the car carrier, and still more for it to be shipped overland fully enclosed. We opted to save money and go with the basic option.

[PacificFlights]

There's only a few shippers of autos to Hawaii. All the brokers, auto transport companies, and other shippers will use one of them to get from the west coast docks to Hawaii. That's why if your near the west coast it's generally easier to just deal with them direct and cut out the middle man.

NoMoreStL, one quick correction to your list. #3, Matson, Horizon and Pasha are all scheduled service. The broker could have timed the deliver wrong and the ship sailed as scheduled so they had to wait for its return. Sometimes they don't book the trip until the car is in CA so they can try and get some last minute reduced rates from one of them to fill empty space.