Hmmm, would it be expensive? I'm looking at a large car which has no engine in it, and comes with the original engine and a spare. Could I find someone to transport the whole lot from Carlisle to the Peterborough area? Would it cost an arm and a leg?
I had to transport a vehicle, I rented a Transit Pickup with tow bar for a day, £50, i then rented a heavey duty trailer for the same £50, it came with straps and bits n bobs to tie the car down, you shouldnt have to pay more than that, £100.
A couple of weeks ago I hired a 7.5 ton Leyland transporter from Tallis Hire near Hinckley, Leics. The rate is £100 per day, plus 7p per mile after the first 200 miles, plus fuel, plus VAT. It had proper car straps, good ramps and an excellent electric winch. I also enquired at a local garage who has a couple of those transporters with fully demounting bodies but he wanted £200 for fetching the car for me (170 mile trip) and wouldn't let me have one self-drive. It's worth asking around local garages as they just might be glad to get some use out of a static transporter. Offer cash of course!
Some interesting replies already to this one. A few more thoughts as there seem to be three options; hire a lorry; hire a trailer and something to tow it with; get someone like me to do it for you.
Apart from the fact that driving a 7.5 tonner or a transit with a big trailer isn't everyone's idea of fun, especially for long distances, more and more younger drivers will find their licence doesn't cover them. Transporter lorries aren't that easy to find for hire, so there could be a lot of wasted mileage, and these things do drink fuel. This particular journey is around 225 miles each way, which is a long distance in an unfamiliar vehicle, and a hell of a long day by the time you include loading and unloading. At the hire price quoted by Pete W, it would cost around £140 for the hire, plus, I'd guess, well over £100 for fuel - and that's assuming you got it done in one day's hire.
Transporter trailers are easier to hire, but there are almost as many ropey ones as there are Transits with towbars for hire. Most of the more reputable hire companies won't hire anything with a towbar unless you have your own business insurance for it, and the smaller outfits may well be more used to hiring to builders to tow a compressor, so will cheerfully give you something with a pin hitch and no working electrics, that isn't rated to tow the load you need - not much fun when you discover this on the way to collect your trailer at the start of a tightly-timed hire period. Reckon on £35-£50 for trailer hire, £50 (if you're lucky) to £85 for a Transit, and £75 for fuel. Again, this assumes you get it all done in a day.
The sting in the tail of the op's requirement, which applies however the car is shifted, is "has no engine in it, and comes with the original engine and a spare" The "no engine in it" isn't in itself a problem, though anyone doing the whole collection/delivery job will want to know how accessible the car is and how much manoeuvring it will need at each end of its journey. Is the gearbox in or out? If it's still in the car, is it supported enough to roll the car, or are there bricks under the bell housing? If it's out of the car, that means either even bigger lumps to load, or more of them, and neither your average transporter, nor your average trailer, is equipped to lift such large lumps. Even if you have engine cranes each end, both transporters and trailers are often quite tight for length with a big car, and could struggle for length and weight distribution to accommodate two separate engines. "Skeleton" transporters may need extra boarding, and an engine standing upright on its sump will need careful securing to keep it stable. A small engine crane may have neither the reach nor the height to load an engine onto a lorry.
I'd be happy to give Michael a quote for the whole job, but I'd need a little more info first. If it hadn't been for the loose engine business, a ballpark figure would be £250.
Thanks for all the feedback, folks. To be honest I would rather not do it myself with hired equipment, so paying someone else would have to be the solution. In this case I think it may not be worth the trouble and expense, what with there being two engines to deal with! As was rightly pointed out, that makes it quite a different game.
"Autolycus" wrote in news:ci3jbo$bc4$ snipped-for-privacy@news.freedomsurf.net:
In Taunton, there is a place which charges £20 a day for a Car trailer. I also got a year old Transit with towbar & electrics from a local hire company, although I think it might have just come off a contract hire as it didn't have their stickers al over it, just small labels on each wing. You're right though, none of the "major" hire companies will supply towbars.
Quite right Kev. I could add that a big consideration in my case was the very flimsy state of the car being transported; I reckoned that it would get a better ride with less chance of damage on a bigger vehicle with proper suspension. And driving an artic for a living, the 7.5 tonner wasn't a problem.
I've got a Volvo 740 estate with a towbar and access (I think - I'll have to double check now) to a six-wheeled car trailer. I've used it to move a Ginetta before and whilst I was towing with something rather more suitable than the Volvo - a Subaru Legacy with dual range box - it was a pretty painless affair.
IF the GTW isn't an issue, I could look into collecting said trailer, collecting car, and taking a run down to Peterborough. I figure that it's mostly motorway anyway and just holding a steady 50 should be no bother.
Alternatively if you wanted to hire a transporter in Carlisle, I'm happy to do the driving.
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