How to Prep Your Vehicle for Cross Country Transport

Posted by LaPowski Transportation LLC on May 4th, 2019

If you have decided to ship your vehicle across country, the bulk of your worries are over as long as you picked a reputable company from the auto shipping companies you looked at. You still, however, must get the vehicle ready for shipping. Here is a checklist for how to do that.

Clean it Out

Clean out all personal items, paying attention to any information that has personal data like addresses or phone numbers. Remove all trash and other items, including anything in the trunk. You want your vehicle to resemble the vehicle you bought at one point in time in terms of being free from any identifiable or personal items. Leave only floor mats, a spare tire, and a jack.

Wash It

Hand wash, take it to a car wash, it does not matter, but make sure you drop it off clean. Thisn’t only will make your vehicle look good, it will highlight any blemishes that already exist and make any that appear during transit really stand out. Make sure your vehicle is gleaming so that any scratches or dents stick out like a sore thumb.

Take Pictures

Photo-document any damage that already exists on the vehicle. Take pictures of dents, stains, scratches, dings, rips, you name it. If it is a blemish, document it. Also take a video of the entire vehicle, exterior, and interior, to document how the vehicle looks. This way, you can compare the delivered product to what you dropped off and if anything bad happened, you will have documented evidence it was not there when you dropped it off. Make sure you use a camera with a time and date stamp feature that will imprint on the photo or video.

Do some Maintenance

Check the air in the tires and fill them to the recommended air pressure level. Check all fluids and top off if necessary. Make sure you only leave about a quarter of a tank of gas and try to get it to register exactly on the quarter tank line when the vehicle is on a flat surface. This is so that siphoning the gas isn’t worth the trouble, but you can tell pretty quickly if anything was taken from the tank. You also will ensure with a half a tank that you can get the vehicle to a gas station to fill up.

Honor Requested Documentation

Gather any information requested by the transportation company. This could include the title of the vehicle, insurance information and your license. Make sure they have what they need beforehand so there is no delay.

Once this list is done, your role is over until it is time to pick up your vehicle. As with all auto shipping companies, you want to check in if your delivery spans multiple days, but let them do their thing.