How much does car transporters make
Before making a decision of starting a new career or taking professional refresher courses, it’s very useful and important to know the potential salary. How much can you make transporting cars? This is the first thing you need to figure out before choosing to work in this industry. Of course. Every particular company has its own salary rates and conditions, but we considered the overall picture across the United States to save your time for the investigations.
Average in the country
How much does car transporters make fully depends on some essential factors. First of all, it is about the experience. Being a new driver, you should not expect to get the same salary as the colleagues who have been working for the company for years even if the title is the same. Also, you need to take into account that the contract can vary from company to company. For example, if you see a really high salary in comparison with similar competitors, it may mean that the fuel consumption will be covered from your pocket, which can lead to even lower than average salary.
So, answering the most basic question of how much does a car transporter make, in the USA it’s 22,479 dollars per year. Knowing this number, you can easily consider the offers you get in regards to their attractiveness.
But in the overwhelming majority of the job offers you can find not a yearly but an hourly salary rate. In this case, how much do car transporters make per hour? You don’t need to make difficult calculations – it’s around 11 dollars per hour. Basically, if you will check most offers, you will make sure that this number is pretty correct and fair.
Having the information about the whole industry, it’s also pretty easy to check how much do car transport drivers make in the worst and the best case. Thus, the lowest annual salary is just about 16,000 dollars which you can find among 4 percent of jobs as the car’s transporter. The highest rate in this regard is 26,000-28,000 dollars, but the percentage here is even lower – only 1 percent. Of course, basically there are no limits, and most probably there are some small amount of job offers with even higher salary, but this number is too small to consider it for the whole picture.
The highest percentage among all the offers in the USA belongs to the salary rates between 23,000 USD and 24,000 USD (19 percent).
Differentiation between the states
It can be surprising, but not only different companies but even different states have different salary’s rates. That is why, when particular drivers check how much do car transporter drivers earn in their hometown and in remote states, they can make a decision to move. Of course, relocation itself involves a lot of extra expenses, but as you will see below, it may definitely be worth it.
The reasons for the differences can be very different starting from not enough supply of the drivers and ending with some specifics of work.
Here we gathered the most attractive from the transporter drivers’ perspective cities in the USA to get the most competitive salary. On the first place is Sunnyvale in California with its average annual rate of 28, 403 dollars. It’s about 26 percent higher than the average rate which definitely makes this American city the most attractive spot for any driver.
Other examples are Santa Rosa, Cambridge, Vacaville, New York City, Fairfield, San Mateo, Lynn, Anchorage and Baltimore. The lowest average rate here belongs to Baltimore and means the salary of 24,994 dollars per year. Therefore, even in this case we have an hourly rate of 12,02 dollars.
Considering the states, the most attractive for the transport drivers are California, Massachusetts, New York, Alaska and Maryland.
Different professions
Working in transportation companies does not always mean driving cars. There is a great variety of jobs, even within a one particular transporter. And the salary definitely depends on the job level.
Thus, the highest salary in this sphere belongs to Car Insurance Sales with more than 100,000 dollars per year. Among the most attractive positions in regards to the salary rate in the transportation industry we can also name Car Owner Drivers, Car Managers, Car Haulers and finally Car Hauler Drivers. The last ones can make up to 80,000 dollars per year which is definitely a much more profitable option than being a standard car’s driver.
If you see yourself only at the steering wheel and not in the office, you can choose one of the rarest specialties for the truck drivers. Thus, ice-road drivers have one of the highest salary rates because this kind of driving is one of the most dangerous one. If you are ready to take such risks, you can expect to be paid for just 3-4 months of this season's job, the annual salary of ordinary truck drivers. Obviously, this job requires you to be located (or at least to move there on a temporary basis) in Alaska and some other Northern states, sometimes with driving to Canada.
Another popular option in this regard is delivering hazardous materials. The reason is the same – high level of danger.
In both cases, you will need to have a special certificate, but if you are really interested in these opportunities, it can provide you with a significantly higher level of earnings.
From the customers’ perspective
It can be interesting for the car’s owners how much to get a car transported they need to pay. The average price for the transportation service if we are talking about the across-the-country trips will take up to 1,000 dollars depending on a great number of details. First of all, the choice of the way of transportation is very important. Thus, many people can prefer to apply for a professional transportation carrier’s service when the car will be placed and delivered on or inside the truck (open and enclosed delivery accordingly). Also, they can hire a driver separately, which will cost less but you need to make sure you are ready to put all the miles between states on your personal car’s mileage. Trains, boats and even air freights – there are too many options to choose from to make the average price fair enough.
Besides that, various routes, different types of the car, seasonality – all of this will significantly affect the final price. The best choice in this case is to consider not the average cost in the whole industry but to compare different offers for your particular case. Even within the auto transportation companies you may get very different quotes.
Money you earn or spend should not be the most important part of the deal. There are so many additional aspects to pay attention to which will allow you to get a better experience. There are no universal conditions, so you always need to check all the details of the contract, either you are an employee or the client.
