Hello and welcome to Car Transport University. My name is Carl Rodriguez and today’s episode is about finding carriers and not brokers. I get this question all the time: how can I find carriers and not brokers? Or the way it’s specifically worded to me a lot of the time is, are you a real auto transport company or just a broker?
And it leads really to the biggest misconception in auto shipping. And that’s really because of what we’re all used to when it comes to anything else. Like when you ship a package, you use the post office or UPS or whatever. It’s their truck, their logistics. They show up, they deliver, they give you a tracking number, and that’s all she wrote.
With auto shipping, it’s segmented into carriers and brokers for a specific reason, and that’s because there really is no centralized company that does this. So, for example, even the largest company in the country right now—the one that shows up number one on Google all the time, the one that advertises the most—is a broker.
Carriers that do this themselves are usually in the background. They don’t have the ability to do this because their office is their truck. They’re owner-operators, meaning they own and operate their own truck. That also is a part of why shipping a car costs what it does. If there was a company that did it all, it would be so astronomically expensive that no one would be able to ship a car affordably because of all the levels of management, trucking, salaries—it’s very expensive to run. And that’s why no one’s been able to topple that system.
In fact, the carriers prefer it because they can simply deal with the hundreds of brokers that are out there. And in any given route that’s between two major cities, they can easily find dozens of cars available. So unless it’s shipping for a dealership that’s getting inventory from the manufacturer, all private or consumer auto shipping—about 99% of it—is done via brokers.
As of 2025, we’ve seen that basically on any given day, just on one of the largest boards in the country, there are about 40 to 50,000 cars listed per day. And right now, the tally for about how many carriers are online doing this through these boards is about 20,000.
Now, there is an exception to this, of course, which is enclosed auto shipping for high-end cars. For example, your McLarens, your rare Ferraris. There are companies that dedicate themselves to doing that. But even then, not only are they very, very expensive to hire, they also go where they’re needed. So sometimes if you’re trying to ship a car in a hurry—let’s say you need something from A to B tomorrow—you’re not likely to find someone that can do it that quickly because that truck has to make a route, figure out what other cars are around in your area, when they can ship those. It could be a few days to a couple of weeks before they show up. And then delivery time can also be a week or so or more because they again have to go where they’re needed, where it’s logistically profitable to do that with their own trucks.
Now there are ways you can try to find a carrier directly. There are some Facebook groups where carriers talk there and kind of try to get business. But to find someone that’s going on your route—specifically going to the destination that you’re planning to arrive in—that is really like finding a needle in a stack of needles.
The reason this system gets so much scrutiny is because, unlike real estate, for example, you have a code of ethics. You have an association that could actually influence whether you have your license or not to do this, because there are a lot of rules in how you should present things and how it’s supposed to work. That doesn’t exist in auto shipping. The FMCSA and the DOT are really more concerned with safety—like if the truck is going to run down a hill and topple a school bus full of children. They do not really care that much about the way the service is sold, unfortunately.
This leads to a lot of issues with how the service is presented and a lot of shady auto shipping contracts. So, if you are stuck with a broker, so to speak, how is it that you can assure that you have a good experience? I’m going to go over an entire video talking about all that, but in short: check reviews.
If they say they have a driver and they’re going to assign that carrier, make sure they give you the driver’s information. There’s no reason not to have communication with that carrier directly after the order’s been signed and accepted by the truck driver. And make sure no one’s charging any money up front. Really, no one should be charging anything for their services until they’ve provided the service.
But that’s it. So, if you have any further questions about that, feel free to hit me up, write, reach out to me, and I might even feature you in a video. If you’re a carrier or broker, talk to me. I’d like to hear from you. Thanks very much and have a great—