My experoence with uShip and its carriers, brokers, and agents.

[Mick_D]

Don't use uShip, as they will lead you to people who will mess you over bigtime.

Here's the short list of people not to use:

ADL Logistics, David Gravel
Bryan Mahaffey, Jazz Trucking out of Joplin MO.



My story:
I had a car painted by Kenny Laramore at K+R Automotive in Rogers, AR. Great painter, I'd seen some of his work and he was willing to work with me time-wise. I live in Dallas, so it's a350-mile trip each way,so I needed transport. A friend suggested trying uShip, so I did, and got good results the first time, with my car being transported in an enclosed trailer by Mike at the Toy Hauler, based out of Springfiled, MO. He was nice,
friendly, knew his way around, showed up at the time he said he would, charged me a fair price, and did a great job.

The car was in Arkansas for more than a year. About a month before it was ready, I called Mike directly and asked him to schedule a trip for just before Thanksgiving. He said to call him back then, his schedule was free.

So I did. And he never answered my calls or messages.

So I went back to uShip and put up another bid. This was answered by A+L Custom Carriers. They were initially great, working with me on timing issues and scheduling. They set up a pickup on a Friday for the following Monday. Then the driver's wife's sister died, so they called me back Saturday and cancelled. I asked them to reschedule and they said they weren't able to at all for at least two weeks.

During my bid process, ADL Logistics had been emailing me bids beginning at amounts of more than twice what I had wanted to pay and I kept declining , and their last offer was the same as A+L was bidding. I emailed them directly, explained the situation and asked them if they could schedule me for Monday pickup. They promised me they could, so I paid them a deposit.

ADL Logistics is a broker, they go looking for jobs like this and match them to carriers in their database. Bugt they weren't paying attention, because I had listed for an enclosed single-car trailer, with an inoperative car. This was important later.

This time I drew the bad seed, Bryan Mahaffey at Jazz Trucking out of Joplin, MO.
He started off by calling me and telling me he was rescheduling the pickup for Tuesday. I let him do this. Monday he called back and rescheduled for a Wednesday pickup and Thursday delivery. I told him that wasn't the deal. He was belligerent, bellicose, selfish, and completely indifferent to what I wanted. So I cancelled and started trying
to get my money back from ADL. Bryan eventually called back and told me he could pick it up Thursday morning for delivery the same day. I was having a very hard time even getting hold of ADL, so I agreed.

Baaad move.

The driver showed up to the painter, saw the car had no motor, and called me and told me he was charging me an extra hundred bucks for a 'winch fee'. Extortion! Eventually settled on $50. The painter and his crew helped push the car onto his trailer, which was full of wrecked cars, and in the process, the painter screwed up his shoulder and the car
was damaged on the front lower bumper when it scraped on the ramp of his trailer.

The painter called and told me when he was on his way. He also told me that this driver was not a good person, was very hard to work with, and acted like he was the only human involved in the transaction. Now, the painter's a great guy, so for him to talk bad about someone means the guy deserved a lot worse.

Eventually the car shows up at my house ( an hour later than scheduled ) . I mention that the painter called and told me about the damage and Bryan told me that inoperative cars were not covered on insurance. He'd even written that on the bill of lading . I wouldn't sign it until he had agreed to note the damage on the bill of lading.

So that's taken care of, and then we start unloading the car. The trailer it's on is one of those triple-decker trailers with a power-lift for the floor that allows the floor to move up and down for clearance as needed. Bryan promptly moved the floor my car was on up- right into the cross beam supporting the floor above it. Didn't phase him, though.
I hadn't noticed the damage at this pioint, and he never mentioned it.

He had to park his truck at the end of the street I live on, and we had to push the car down the back alley into the driveway. I didn't notice the damage on the roof at all during the push, I have no idea why. But I didn't. We pushed the car into the garage, he
turned around and walked away, and I went inside for a minute, and came back out and saw the damage. He was still on my street. Refused to stop when I tried to flag him down. This guy is a sorry excuse for a person and a serious waste of human skin.
I called ADL less than 5 minutes after I noticed the damage, and they tried to give me a run-around.
Eventually, I got hold of David Gravel at ADL. He told me to send him all the photos and other evidence I had and he would submit it to his insurance claim. He never did submit to ADL's insurance carrier. They submitted to Bryan's carrier.
Now, these peolple do this for a living, so they know the deductibles and costs involved. This incident occurred on December 1st.
By December 3 I had 2 written estimates to repair the damage in hand, and had sent them to David. He kept telling me he was 'trying'. I got NOWHERE with him, ever. Eventually, on December 23, I got a call from an Tammy Miller at Ameririsk, Bryan's insurance company. She told me she would email me as soon as she got back into the office the day after Christmasand we could staret processing things.

Lots of conversation attempts with David Gravel, Tammy Miller, the Better Business Bureau, and Bryan Mahaffey himself took place between Dec 27 or so and January 27th, a full month, before I heard from ANYONE. Ameririsk sent a nice appraiser out to view the damage, Clay Willilams, who's a great guy.
Tammy emailed me and told me her client's deductible was more than the claim , and she said if anyone was going to pay me it would have to be the driver.


We're talking a thousand dollars here, folks. And a guy who willfully, carelessly, and thoughtlessly damaged my car TWICE in transit, took no responsibility for it, and never even expressed regret or remorse.

And an insurance agent that could have cared less, and yet still kept me on the hook for two months.

AND a brokerage service that basically collected their deposit and washed their hands of the transaction.

Do NOT do business with these people:

Bryan Mahaffey at Jazz Trucking of Joplin , MO
David Gracel of ADL Logistics of Fort LAuderdale FL
Tammy Miller of Ameririsk

The following people let me down, which led to my calamitous experience:
Mike at the Toy Hauler of Springfield, MO
Al at A+L Custom Carriers

I don't trust uShip any more at all, because they were nice about the cancellation but still wanted to keep $75 as a 'store credit' for me, instead of issuing a full refund. That took a week to hammer out.

So there you go, my sob story. Car's still damaged 4 months later. I'm taking donations

[Mick_D]

THIS IS NOT AN OFF TOPIC DISCUSSION DAMMIT! I PUT THIS IN THE TECHNICAL FORUM!
I did that on purpose. If other members can ASK about uShip, I can TYELL them about it.

[Mick_D]

WEll, thabnk you for YOUR support, Pelican. People can post about engine rebuilding in the turbgocharing/supercharging forum, but I can't talk about shipping my PORSCHE in the PORSCHE tech forum? THat's very selective enforcement and is very poor performance.

[Mick_D]

I'm going to demand more thorough enforcement of rules, if my posts get moved to the graveyard.
A MODERATOR just posted in the technical forum about a sale on Oil. How is THAT Technical info?
My attitude is pretty much ruined now.

[Gogar]

Off topic is a vibrant forum full of lots of nice people. And some poopyheads. You get to pick which one you are. You're off to a bad start.

Sorry about your car.


All you have to do is watch one episode of "Shipping Wars" and that's all you need to know about uShip.

[72doug2,2S]

I wouldn't think of searching off topic for car transport. Maybe cats in a blanket, but not something so important to all of us needing this service.

Thanks for posting this.

I've had good luck with Reliable.

[cashflyer]

Uship referred me to a guy named Kevin Hamblin out of NC.
He hauled two trucks for me and did an excellent job, even going out of his way to accomodate my schedule. If anyone needs a vehicle hauled on an open trailer in the south-east US, I highly recommend him. His email is wldranger at aol.com

[Arizona_928]

I think you got the short end of the stick from the broker.
With due diligence. Comes due diligence.

I've used u ship. The cheapest route is not usually the best in my experience.

[greglepore]

U ship is a lottery. I've been lucky, but know that I was... .

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Mick_D

I'm going to demand more thorough enforcement of rules, if my posts get moved to the graveyard.
A MODERATOR just posted in the technical forum about a sale on Oil. How is THAT Technical info?
My attitude is pretty much ruined now.

Wow. I figured you just had a run of bad luck, until you started getting pissy about the moderators.

[Mick_D]

I tell you what, go ahead and use these people.
Gogar, **** off. I'm not here by choice.

[Mick_D]

Yeah well I'm pissy because the moderators aren't consistent ab out it. ****it.

[Don Ro]

I used U-Ship twice...once was not good, the other was superior.
The "not good" one arrived in an enclosed trailer but then transferred my pristine motorcycle to a pick up truck and left it sit outside in an Oregon winter rain storm.
What if it hailed that night? Sub-optimal sensibility.
.
Too many responsible shippers out there to be using U-Ship...IMO.

[stevej37]

OP is p-offed...left another bad one on the tech forum.
I don't quite understand what happened with his original post.

[RKDinOKC]

UShip makes me think of that TV show Shipping Wars, that supposedly is associated with UShip. They seem to NEVER transport ANYTHING without some sort of damage.

[asphaltgambler]

They are not the only ones from my experience. Who / method I use depends on the distance and value of the vehicle. For something that you just spent $$$$ having painted and going that distance - I would have directly hired ( and have) flat bed tow truck 1 way back from someone reputable that your painter knows in his area.

Most of these are in the $2 -3 dollar range per loaded mile. While that may sound pricey - my piece of mind is worth it. Most good paint job's today hover in the $7-10k range so damage free trust worthy transportation is just an added ( minor) cost.

[t-tom]

Originally Posted by Mick_D

I tell you what, go ahead and use these people.
Gogar, **** off. I'm not here by choice.

Don't be a dick!

[Gogar]

YEAH! I also want to enforce a more thorough enforcement of rules, and I want to note that Mick_D used profanity in his post, which is not allowed. Back to the technical forum, you!

[flipper35]

Originally Posted by t-tom

Don't be a dick!

Too late.

[stevej37]

Yep, they removed his post on the tech forum where he said he was going to take his thousands of dollars elsewhere, instead of PP!