I've mentioned this in other posts, but, repeating myself, it's difficult to find a single carrier that is good, reliable, and consistently reasonable in price. The price will vary greatly depending on where it is going / coming from. The other issue is if you directly book with the carrier, you'll most likely need to use their insurance, which sucks badly as its calculated by weight somehow.
So I've found after researching this to death, to use a broker. I like freightquote the most. Uship is another. The broker will be your intermediary to the shipper. You just set up an account online, and run a search of the location your going to / coming from. If its dropped off at a terminal, goes residential, goes to a commercial dock, will greatly affect price. Residential is 50% more generally. Pickup at the terminal saves a little money usually over delivery to a business. The website will list a bunch of options/shippers, usually 10 or so, if you see a carrier you like and it reasonable, great. I usually then call my freightquote rep and see if they can find me a better deal, they have their ways of sometimes making it cheaper (it has to do with how full the truck is, then they can negotiate a lower price.) Sometimes that phone call saves me 20% or so.
Then you have the option to buy direct insurance from the broker, which is way better than the shippers insurance. The only unfortunate thing about the brokers insurance is the high deductible - $500 (freightquote and uship). I find the insurance usually costs me about $35 for a pump. Like I said the shippers insurance (not broker) is really just a joke, hardly any coverage at all.
Speaking with my broker rep, it seems that things go wrong about 3% of the time, so beware its a gamble you take. I usually ask the broker if they have had problems with the shipper and that helps me choose which one I choose. The other nice thing about brokers is that you call them if there is a problem, and they have more leverage than you individually do.
So anyway, that's how I do it, that and I build killer crates that can take a beating, also that can be lifted safely with a fork lift. Have had good luck so far, I had a restored pump go missing for two months but eventually got it there safely! (BTW, Beltman never comes up as an option for me, I might check them out sometime, anytime I've called shippers directly they have been too expensive so far.)
Last edited by Paul Bell; Sun Nov 14 2021 07:51 PM.
