Hello. We also live in Colorado and are getting our RAV4 Prime from the East Coast as well. I agree with your sentiments about needing a good car for winter. If you had your car shipped, who did you use?
How fortuitous my "if all goes well" comment was in the first post. I still don't have my car. New scheduled delivery is this Saturday.
I used Ship A Car Direct. They pretty quickly found a carrier. The carrier was based in VA right outside of DC. When I called on the scheduled delivery day just to see if it was on-track, I was told the "truck had hydraulic issues". Ok, so where is the truck? I mean, they had had the car for 8 days by then. The car was at their headquarters in VA. It hadn't moved a foot. I'm confident the truck didn't have issues, they thought they could fill a truck headed west and it didn't pan out.
I will say that Ship A Car Direct did a decent job recovering. They found me a new carrier and the new carrier is now delivering it. I've been in close contact with the Ship A Car Direct Ops Manager, and he's very communicative and understands what a colossal nightmare this has been. Pretty much every broker is the same. All they do is list the car on Central Dispatch and a subcontracted carrier picks it up. In my case, the first carrier was terrible. The second carrier seems to be better (of course I still don't have my car). So in terms of who to ship with, I don't have any recommendations for or against Ship A Car Direct or any other broker. The company actually moving the vehicle is really what matters and that can be a flip of a coin. Maybe having a broker that will stand by their commitment is a plus? I just wish it hadn't taken 8+ days to realize the original carrier had no plans of moving the car.
