What is auction car shipping and who is it for?
Auction car shipping moves your winning bid from the auction lot to your dealership, your lot, your shop or your buyer's driveway. We pick up from auctions regularly and work around each auction's own schedule instead of expecting the auction to work around a truck.
You're rarely shipping this car for yourself. You're a dealer restocking inventory, a reseller working one lot number, a rebuilder picking up a title-branded car for repair, or a wholesaler consolidating several wins from the same sale. Your booking differs from a retail one in the information we need before a truck can move: your lot number, the buyer or member number tied to your win, and confirmation the auction has marked the vehicle released. A retail shipment needs none of that.
A retail booking needs a VIN and two addresses. Yours needs those plus a lot number and a buyer or member number - the auction's own identifiers for your win - because we can't match the vehicle to a release record without them.
What does auction car shipping cost?
The transport leg of an auction pickup is priced like any open or enclosed shipment, by distance and vehicle type, not by where you bought the car.
Reference price ranges by distance band are on how much does it cost to ship a car. Those ranges leave out auction-context prices, because a Copart lot pickup isn't automatically the same price as a retail door-to-door move at the same distance. The auction's own fees and clock are separate charges, billed by the auction and not by us, and they are covered further down.
We don't have a reliable auction-specific price range yet, so we point you to the general range instead of guessing at one.
How does the pickup process actually work, step by step?
Before your car can be loaded, payment clears, the lot shows released, you send us the gate pass and the carrier shows its own credentials at the gate, while the storage clock runs the whole time.
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How does an auction pickup get coordinated?
We have no agreement with any auction house. We pick up from and deliver to auctions regularly and work around each one's own schedule, not the other way around.
Every auction sets its own payment-clearing window, release process and storage clock, and those rules belong to the auction, not to us. The gate pass is always issued by the auction to you, never to us directly. You send it to us, we hold it against your shipment, and after dispatch it goes to your assigned driver so he isn't turned away at the gate. If you run past the auction's pickup deadline, storage is billed by the auction house directly to your account - never a charge from us.
Auction car shipping vs. a standard order
Your auction booking needs the lot number and buyer number before we can dispatch a carrier, and it runs against a storage clock the auction controls. A standard order needs neither.
| Standard car-shipping order | Auction car shipping | |
|---|---|---|
| Who books it | The vehicle's owner or a household member. | You, as a dealer, wholesaler, reseller or rebuilder acting on a specific win. |
| What identifies the vehicle to us | VIN, pickup address, delivery address. | VIN plus the auction's lot number and your buyer or member number. |
| What starts the pickup clock | The pickup date you choose. | The moment the auction marks your lot released, which itself waits on payment clearing. |
| The fee most likely to add cost before transport even starts | A non-running vehicle or a delivery address a full-size carrier can't reach. | Auction storage, billed directly to your account by the auction house, not a charge from us. |
When auction car shipping is NOT the right choice
If your vehicle isn't running, the questions are what equipment loading it needs and what that adds to the price. Non-running car shipping covers both.
A large share of salvage buys from Copart and IAAI specifically are non-running or damaged. That changes the carrier and equipment we need, not the auction paperwork. See non-running car shipping for how that surcharge works. If your vehicle is moving between two dealerships rather than off an auction lot, dealer auto transport is the closer match: it covers trades and out-of-state customer deliveries billed to a dealer account, neither of which applies to a single auction pickup. And if the car is simply yours and never touched an auction, open car shipping or enclosed car shipping is the ordinary booking, with none of the lot-number or gate-pass steps on this page.
What we do and don't do
We're a broker that arranges transport through a network of vetted carriers rather than running our own trucks; we don't have an agreement with any auction house and we don't get gate passes from an auction on your behalf.
We have no agreement with Manheim, Copart, IAAI, ADESA or any other auction house. We pick up from and deliver to major auction locations regularly and work around each auction's own schedule, and we don't obtain the gate pass ourselves. You provide it; we hold it against your shipment and, after dispatch, hand it to your assigned driver so he and the carrier can collect your car. Once payment clears and the lot shows released, we typically get a carrier to the gate within 24-48 hours of your win, faster for an urgent situation at a major auction. That is a typical pace, not a contract. The exact window still depends on carrier availability on your specific route, which we confirm once you book. We also arrange both open and enclosed transport (enclosed is worth it for higher-value inventory), and we can move damaged or non-running vehicles with specialized equipment, which may add a fee. See broker vs. carrier for what a broker does and doesn't do.
Auction car shipping FAQs
- Do you handle the gate pass for an auction pickup?
No. You provide the gate pass the auction issues. We hold it against your shipment and, after dispatch, hand it to your assigned driver so he reaches the gate with what it needs. We have no agreement with any auction house and don't get passes on your behalf.
- What information do you need to book an auction pickup?
Your VIN plus the auction's own lot number and the buyer or member number tied to your win. A retail order never carries either of the last two, because there's no auction record to match the vehicle against.
- Who pays the auction's storage fee if a carrier is late?
You do, or the dealer account on file with the auction - not us. Storage is billed directly by the auction house and isn't folded into any car-shipping price on this site.
- How fast can you pick up a car from an auction?
Once payment clears and the lot shows released, we typically get a carrier to the gate within 24-48 hours of your win, with faster pickup available for an urgent situation at a major auction. That is a typical pace, not a guaranteed window.
- How much does it cost to ship a car from an auction?
The transport leg is priced the same as any open or enclosed shipment, by distance and vehicle type - see how much does it cost to ship a car for current reference ranges. What's different is the auction's own fees, set by the auction and billed directly to your account.
- Can you ship a non-running or salvage vehicle bought at auction?
Yes, using specialized loading equipment, which may add a fee - see non-running car shipping. This comes up often on salvage buys specifically, since a large share of them are non-running or damaged.
- What happens if the auction's storage clock runs out before a carrier arrives?
That risk sits between you and the auction house, not us - each auction sets its own consequence for a vehicle left too long. Getting payment cleared and your lot released quickly is what keeps that clock from becoming a problem, so we lead with that sequence rather than a pickup-time promise.
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