We recently completed the transportation of a Mini Cooper from El Cerrito, California to Nashville, Tennessee. The trip entailed 2,018 miles of travel via open trailer and the fee amounted to $1,794.00, averaging to $0.89 per mile.
This vehicle was functional when picked up. This is actually our smallest vehicle to date and this presents a common query that we have to answer. Why would the Mini, which measures only a little more than twelve feet in length, cost less than a full-sized sedan?
The route
This race that runs from El Cerrito to Nashville covers the Great Basin and Rockies and the plains as well.
El Cerrito is located in the eastern part of San Francisco Bay north of Berkeley. In the beginning of the journey one gets to Interstate 80 east and travels via Sacramento and through the Sierra Nevada by Donner Pass and goes through Nevada by Reno and Winnemucca and Elko to Salt Lake City.
Then the journey follows southward and eastward via I-70 and runs through the Rockies of Colorado by Grand Junction and Denver. Next it runs westward to Kansas to Kansas City and further to Missouri.
The last part of the journey is southeastward via I-24 through Paducah and Clarksville to Nashville.
Why a small car does not get a small price
It is fair for the customer to expect price to correlate with size. That is correct; however, not in equal proportion. The Mini stands out in the extreme right end of the scale where the correlation ends.
The slot for the vehicle is a slot regardless whether it carries a Mini or a Camry. The carrier considers the load as slots in vehicles and not in inches. It makes no difference whether the load in that slot is a Mini or a Camry – it still requires a complete pick-up and complete loading/unloading and inspection.
That is why the cost savings are limited. The size difference between a Mini and a mid-size sedan is around four feet – which is not enough to open an additional slot for another vehicle on the trailer that will provide the carrier another fare.
However, the additional cost for the extra large cars is substantial because the full-size vehicle takes additional deck space and weight on axle capacity that could be allocated to another vehicle.
However, motorcycles are the actual exception here. A motorcycle actually occupies a small portion of a car spot, which is why three motorcycles can fit into the space of one car and cost proportionally less. This is actually a completely different vehicle type rather than a smaller car.
This is all that can be said about it in brief. Using a smaller car than a sedan will save you very little money. Getting a bigger car will require you to pay much more.
What $0.89 per mile reflects
There are two items behind this rate, and neither is the car size.
First is distance. The fixed cost of pickup, loading, securing and coordinating and delivering gets divided up at 2,018 miles. When this same amount is divided by a shorter distance, the cost per mile is nearly doubled.
Next is open transport. Open-bed trucks move a greater number of vehicles than enclosed trucks, and this factor is already figured in every quote.
This job is a combination of positives and negatives. The West Side of the Salt Lake area to Nashville is a pretty heavily traveled corridor on the I-80, as is the I-70 going across the country. But Bay Area to Nashville is not the busiest lane of the highway in the US. And this prevents us from getting into the seventy cent territory on some of our coast-to-coast jobs.
Open transport
The Mini was loaded on an open trailer, because most of the cars that are transported through this country are done using an open trailer.
This is a factory-coated production hatchback, and an enclosed trailer is only available for cars that have to worry about rock chips. An enclosed trailer will have cost us $2,018 more miles that we don’t need.
Ground clearance was never an issue. While the Mini may ride lower to the ground than many other cars its size, it is still well within what an ordinary ramp can handle, meaning that no liftgate was necessary.
Transport summary
- Origin: El Cerrito, CA 94530
- Destination: Nashville, TN 37210
- Distance: 2,018 miles
- Service cost: $1,794.00
- Cost per mile: $0.89
- Vehicle: 2011 Mini Cooper
- Condition: Operable
- Trailer type: Open
- Route: El Cerrito, CA → I-80 east through Sacramento and over Donner Pass → Reno and Elko, NV → Salt Lake City, UT → I-70 east through Grand Junction and Denver, CO → across Kansas to Kansas City → St. Louis, MO → I-24 southeast through Paducah, KY and Clarksville → Nashville, TN
