Needing to ship my car cross country, looking for shipping company recommendations
 

I'm returning to the States from an overseas assignment and I'm need to ship a couple of my toys to my next assignment. One of those toys is my W212 e63. This is my first time doing this so I'm naturally hesitant to just go with any company.

Have any of you shipped your car cross country before? Who did you use? How was your experience with them? Would you use them again?

Thanks in advance.

*EDIT* I've gotten alot of recommendations to either ship by train or have someone else drive them. Unfortunately, neither of those are viable options. I have to use an auto transport company.

Do NOT use CFR AutoDirect at all costs. Drove over 200+ miles on my new S-Class. I heard Reliable Carriers is a great company. Good luck. I am now paranoid for life from my experience with shipping my new car.

I Used JANA Transportation(based in Philadelphia) .
No issues, Driver inspected the car for 30 minutes before loading on truck.
Very thorough
2016 MB E400 coupe
NJ to San Diego
$1250 door to door
Picked up Monday 11am NJ
Arrived Friday 6pm San Diego
Same Week.

If you have time - put it on the train.
The safest way is also the cheapest,

Unfortunately, that won't be possible. They're both going to have to be picked up from a storage site. I won't have the time to be able to pick them up upon my return either.

check who those auto auction houses use and maybe hemmings...

Enclosed? Open trailer? It's a crapshoot, rolling the dice. Most companies you call will broker to a secondary carrier that you have little or no control with. Barrett-Jackson, Mecon, etc typically have the top tier carriers tied up with transport for their sales/consignments. When I sold the 73 bug (restored), for good money, the buyer didn't really find a comfort level with anyone to take it from TX to MT. He wound up buying an enclosed trailer and picked it up himself.
I've been lucky, bought 2 cars on the internet a few years ago, they were delivered on open transport set up by seller, no problems. But we examined them carefully against pre-load pics. But "yesterday's" good experience doesn't mean a lot due to ever changing secondary carriers "today".
IMO do as much research and verification as you can, take a million pics on day of loading so they are dated at same day the car heads out. Have driver inspect and sign off on condition and any existing defects. In case of claim be prepared for a lot of maneuvering from the transport company.

I don't know what is your time-frame, but I've been buying MB all over the country and avoiding 4-digits shipping cost was always good incentive for me to take short vacation and drive.
I love driving and additional bonus was driving via Chicago, where Polish beer and kielbasa are so much cheaper than in California, that loading the car with them paid for fuel and hotels on the way.
One time took wife with me as air tickets were around $100 and we had short vacations together.
There is so much to see in this country.....

Time frame for me is non-existent. If they don't get shipped prior to my return, they'll sit in storage at a cost greater than or equal to what it's looking like it would cost to ship them. It'sa military move and my time is extremely limited. They also are not paying to ship these cars.

Do you trust anyone well enough to have them drive the cars for you? Many (well, very many) years ago, I was in Army tech school and obtained permission to have a car on post. The only problem was that the quote for shipping the car to Ft. Sill, OK, was more than the car was worth. I convinced my dad to take a long weekend and drive the car out to OK. I just bought him an airline ticket back home.

His only concern was, "This car has 95,000 miles on it. What should I do if it stops while on the road?" I told him to keep a screwdriver under the seat. If the car stopped, just take off the license plates and hop the next Greyhound back home. Car did fine - for another 50K miles plus.

Unfortunately, this is also not a viable option for me.

My experience in getting quotes so far has been extremely spammy. I'm contacted 5 brokers for a quote only to be emailed and texted by 50+ carriers and other brokers each time with a range of quotes for open hauling between $650-$1200 just for one car.

This tells me a couple of things:
1. Broker is not the way to go. There's definitely no shortage of shippers from my route and destination.
2. There's alot of room for negotiation. After trying to get an estimate from 5 brokers online, I received damned near 200 quotes (not including duplicates) .
3. Based on what I've received so far, the shippers themselves offer the most competitive pricing and are offering more definitive pickup/delivery windows
4. The companies that have their own fleet have provided the most detailed quotes.

what did you end up with? what was the experience?