Truck or trailer?

So you’ve got a car that needs to be somewhere else, but for whatever reason, it can’t be driven. As I see it, you’ve got a couple of options – a car transporter trailer or a tow truck, but which is the best for you?

If you know someone with a transporter and a car with a tow hook, that’s always going to be the cheapest. You’ll be up for $20 or $30 in fuel, maybe a box of beer for the use of the trailer plus a couple of hours of your time, so the most it will cost you is $50 or $60 dollars. And if you’re anything like me, DIY is how you do things, so what’s not to like about that?

Unfortunately if you ask any insurance company about claims for cars on transporters, you’ll get another side of the story because damage to cars on transporters is pretty common. For starters, you need the right strops and ratchets. The kind of strop you can buy at Bunnings is pretty much designed to hold a lawnmower or a lounge suite down, not a couple of tons of car. Assuming you have decent strops and ratchets, you need to tie it down properly and I’ve followed a LOT of cars on transporters that are an emergency stop away from being a roadside ornament because they haven’t been tied down correctly.

I’m guessing you have the right strops and know how to tie down properly, so it should be fine. Unless some retard is too busy posting on social media to look at the red light. Then they slam into the side of the car you’ve just spent half your life and most of your money on. If, and it’s a big “if” your insurance covers your car when it’s on a trailer, odds are good the local Repco doesn’t sell what you need to fix it. 

Another solution is to hire a tow truck and typically it’s going to cost you between $150 and $200 for a reputable operator to do the job. For that extra $100 bucks you’re getting someone else to do all the work for you, but it’s more than just a time saver; your car is much safer on a truck.

For starters, that paint job you spent the GDP of a small African nation on is far less likely to collect stone chips by being a metre or so further from the road, if the idiot hits the truck, the truck takes the pain, not your car. And we’re 100% insured against anything that could happen, so you won’t get told “I’m sorry, we have to decline your claim…”.

I can’t speak for other companies, but at Ashley’s our custom made strops exceed the load demands for any car, van or light truck and are all regularly replaced before they fray and kept clean to avoid marking or damaging your car. It’s little touches like that that make the difference between Ashley’s and everyone else.