A new ‘freight matching’ website has burst upon the Boat Transport scene, making a splash in the person-to-person boat shipping marketplace. Touting itself as “…the Ebay of Shipping”, boats from all over the US, Canada and even foreign countries are listed on www.UShip.com - looking for a suitable hauler. However, what works well for internet buyers of hard-to-ship items, may have hit its limitations when it comes to providing a viable matching service for overdimensional boats…
Say you just bought your first motorcycle on Ebay, its 500 miles away, and your only other vehicle is a small sedan. Buy a plane ticket and fly to your new bike? Borrow a friends truck and roadtrip? How about listing your shipment on UShip and let small independent haulers compete for your business? This scenario has been played out with great success for shippers in recent years - everything from household goods to pianos, horses to Corvettes have found their way from Point A to Point B - thanks to Uship.
Enter the complex world of transporting overdimensional boats - boats wider and taller than the US DOT allows on public highways without special routing, escort cars, permits, and licensed, properly insured boat transporters. Not your average 18′ to 21′ runabout or ski boat rolling on its own trailer, but a 28′ to 48′ (or bigger) cruiser or sailboat, anywhere from 9′ to 14′ feet wide (legal max width is 8′6″), sometimes nearly 15′ tall (legal max height is 13′6″), and weighing 12,000# to 24,000# - looking for a lowboy semi to get safely and legally from Florida to Vancouver, BC Canada - crossing 11 US states, for example.
The most difficult aspect of using UShip in cases like this is the inability for shippers and haulers to communicate directly during the estimation and bidding process, or easily and quickly exchange detailed information about the boat to be hauled. Haulers may post questions, shippers can answer them, and vice versa, but these exchanges can take place over days instead of minutes. No phone contact, email or direct information exchanges outside the UShip Q&A may happen before the Shipper actually accepts a Hauler’s bid. To further complicate matters, the hauler’s bid must be ‘all inclusive’ per UShip rules - described on their site as a “fixed, binding estimate” before the boat is even loaded and measured on the hauler’s equipment, before the DOT has issued and has charged for permits, before escort cars and their drivers have been hired.
The myriad details of big boat preparation, marina schedule coordination, trip route planning, permit applications involved are very difficult to accomplish thoroughly in the simplistic Q&A forum UShip offers. Combine this with the distraction of reverse-auction style bidding from unscreened, often times unlicensed haulers coming at new shippers to the venue, and Its a formula for missed communications, missed expectations, and soon to be broken deals.
So why do boat sellers and buyers continue to flock there? We suspect it is the lure of ‘Cheap’ that is promised at every turn. Some of the online advertisement even hints that the service is ‘free’ *** As we all have learned, we usually get what we pay for in business.
Over the last three years, MREMarine has participated actively on UShip hauling boats both big and small, moving ~50 boats while receiving a 100% positive feedback experience rating from our UShip matched customers. We are being contacted with more frequent regularity by unhappy UShip shippers suffering from ‘mismatches’, caused most often when oversize boat transports are bid and accepted by uninsured, inexperienced, or underequipped haulers - many deals matched at thousands under market price for these services.
This summer alone, we have hauled two overdimensional boats for former Uship shippers that have had their shipments delayed after accepting low bids from a ’Cheap Hauler’ promised by UShip’s pervasive online ad campaign. One of these two recent customers lost his entire $3000 deposit to a fraudulent UShip hauler, never to see or hear from them again. The customer then contracted directly with MREMarine, we later picked up the boat on his schedule in Michigan and delivered it to his Seattle destination without further incident. Even though our price for shipping was nearly 30% higher than the matched price at UShip, the customer was happy to have the boat delivered in a professional manner - and on his schedule.
*** - Shippers are actually charged an 12% ’deposit’ matched with a hauler by accepting their bid. This ‘match fee’ (as it is referred to by UShip in hauler communications) is deducted from the amount paid from the shipper to the hauler. UShip refers to it only vaguely a ‘deposit’ to shippers (implying that it will be paid to the hauler, or refunded to someone, eventually) and is so protective of this fee that even mentioning it as a shipper in the Q&A forums is grounds for suspension from the site.
At the root of this growing problem is the unwillingness by UShip to restrict bidding on specialized overized loads to only authorized (i.e. US DOT legal and insured) transporters. This allows literally anyone to bid on transporting any boat, of any size or dimension, without proof of cargo insurance, previous overdimensional experience, and in some rare cases - a deliberate plan to defraud unsuspecting and trusting shippers. This unwillingness to screen haulers is based in the belief that UShip must remain a ‘neutral venue’ between Shippers and Haulers. In their capacity as a freight matching service, UShip walks a narrow line from the definition of a freight broker, who are licensed and regulated by the US DOT, and must screen all haulers for their required authority to haul goods for hire, maintain record of their cargo insurance, etc. before they can accept commissions for brokering freight.
At MREMarine, we see both sides of the coin. There is little reason to belabor a one-time transaction resulting from a private party sale of a legal dimension boat with the overhead of a commercial transportation contract. If a third party wants to hook the boat to his pickup and haul it for hire, so be it. The equipment and necessary experience are reasonable for the task. However, when that same guy in the previous example buys a truck and trailer with the intent of going into business, and begins to bid on oversize loads - without the requisite cargo insurance or US DOT authority, this is clearly a problem waiting to happen, and not to the benefit of the boat owner.
Request by MREMarine and other companies for UShip to segregate boats into ‘legal’ and ‘overdimensional’ catagories have not been acted upon. In the mean time, the number of problems continues to rise with the increased popularity of the site.
Our goal at MREMarine is to help educate the new ‘big boat’ owner here, and on UShip Q&A forums to help them select the right hauler for their needs. We refer shipments to UShip every week, and believe in the value of the venue, especially for boat/trailer combinations less than 24′ LOA and 8′6″ or less in width (beam). For overdimensional cruisers 26′ and greater, and beams 9′ and over - there is no substitue for a licensed, properly insured professional boat transporter.
Pick up the phone and call us at 612.578.6355. Our advice is person to person, unrestricted - and its truly free!
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