It might be a funny question to ask, but in auto shipping it is one of the biggest surprises people get when shopping around.

It's pretty normal for auto shipping to be paid at delivery. Fortunately we have options being one of the largest auto shippers in the country.

With us the answer is yes you can pay the whole auto transport fee with a credit card. However, there is a $75 processing fee for doing so and not all orders qualify. This is because of the liability involving credit card charges having to do with interstate transport and fees we have to collect in order to transfer the carrier their money.

This fee does not apply for most overseas shipping. For example some orders like those going overseas require some if not all of the fees to be paid on a credit card so are not subject to the extra convenience fee. Such as a car coming from a customs terminal to a port. The customer is not there.

Otherwise to save that fee you may consider paying at delivery.

"COD" is Outdated But Alive and Well in Auto Transport

Believe it or not about 99% of all auto shipping there’s usually a small deposit charged at the time that the carrier is scheduled for the pick up and then the remaining balance to the driver is due in cash, cashiers check, or money order at the time they’re dropping off the vehicle in front of you.

Some carriers are now accepting Cashapp, Zelle (available with banks like B of A or Wells Fargo) , and Venmo.

There are two main reasons as to why carriers like being paid on delivery:

First, it’s because of the industry having such bad actors in it. A lot of times broker companies take a very long time to pay the drivers and they constantly have to chase them around for payments.

The second reason is that carriers are on the road constantly and these trucks are extremely expensive to maintain and fuel. Most truck drivers own their trucks and are not part of some major corporation or massive trucking company as you may imagine. If payments fall behind or if they have too many pending orders without payment, they could easily have not enough liquidity to operate.

The Carriers

The majority of the carriers we work with are owner-operators. This means they are a one-person operation and don’t have a formal office with a billing department or a way to easily handle receivables. This makes the additional paperwork that comes with a billing shipment difficult for them to process. The other reason that carriers prefer the COD payment method is to cover on the road expenses. Drivers tend to use the payments they collect to pay for their every day expenses like fuel. When they pay for fuel with cash they receive a discount, and this adds up to a very large amount over time. If you would like more information about this please check out our blog.