Rail Car Shipping

The car shipping industry is fast becoming an indispensable industry in the United States. With so much development in communications and transportation, someone has got to move the automobile to catch up with its owner as he or she travels around the country in pursuit of the best home and most high-paying job.

Car shipping is more than that, though. It is also an integral part in the selling and buying of vehicles, which is a very lucrative business, around the country. To get the job done, there is truck car shipping and rail car shipping, the latter of which is less expensive and more eco-friendly.

According to a USA TODAY census study, more Americans have moved to another state in 2006 than in 1990. Almost 42 million 20-something Americans left to go to college, look for a job, or simply leave their childhood homes behind and start over. Eight million more Americans moved to another state from 2003 to 2006.

For whatever reasons, people are deciding to start a new life in Nevada, Alaska, Wyoming, Idaho, Arizona and Oregon, while not many are settling in Michigan, Ohio, and New York most likely because of the many layoffs in these areas. In all, about 50 million people or 16.2% of the country’s population changed residences in 2006.

With millions of people moving to a new area, someone has got to move the millions of family cars that need to go with their owners. This means millions have been spent in car shipping, which in turn means this industry is alive and well.

The most common type of car shipping is on board a truck or vessel, but more and more car owners have tried transporting cars by train. The limitation of this, however, is quite obvious – a railcar can only go to where the rail tracks lead.

This form of car shipping is perfect in cases when the final point of destination is very near a rail station. In the United States, the railroad system goes to all parts of the country and even to Canada and Mexico. Another limitation is that railroad companies such as Amtrak are more in the business of transporting people than anything else.

This means, Amtrak personnel will not be responsible over your car as would professional car transporters. This is why in rail car shipping, you should be there on the same trip so that you could drive your car on and off the railcar. The Amtrak Auto Rail Service ships cars from Washington DC to Orlando Florida and back.

Other rail companies servicing other routes include Union Pacific, Transportation Services.ca and Autolog, among many others, and are capable of shipping all forms of vehicles such as cars, motorcycles, vans, and trucks. Most of these companies also transport parcel, commercial items, and machines.

Finally, rail car shipping works best in relay, in which a car shipping company makes use of different modes of transportation such as trucks, ocean carriers and airplanes, alongside the train. This solves the problem of railcars being limited to its tracks.