Looking for BBB rated auto transport companies? A Better Business Bureau rating is worth checking, and it measures narrower things than most people assume. It grades how a company handles complaints and how transparently it presents itself. It does not grade the driver who turns up at your door, the price you were quoted, or whether the truck arrives on the day you were told. Knowing which questions the letter grade answers, and which it does not, takes about five minutes and makes it a genuinely useful filter instead of a badge to be impressed by.
What the Rating Actually Measures
The BBB grades on an A+ to F scale, and the inputs are largely about complaint behavior rather than service quality.
What feeds the grade is the volume of complaints relative to the size of the business, whether those complaints were answered and resolved, how long the company has been trading, whether it is transparent about who owns and operates it, whether it holds required licensing, and whether any government action has been taken against it.
Read that list again and notice what is on it. A company earns a strong grade largely by responding properly when something goes wrong. That is worth knowing, and it is not the same as nothing going wrong.
Accreditation Is Not the Rating
This is the part that is routinely misunderstood, and it is the single most useful thing on this page.
BBB accreditation and the BBB rating are two separate things. Accreditation is a voluntary program that a business applies for and pays annual dues to maintain. The letter grade is calculated separately, and a company can carry a strong rating without being accredited at all.
So “BBB Accredited” on a website tells you the company chose to join a paid program and met its standards. It is not a synonym for an A+ grade, and neither one is a guarantee about your particular shipment. Look at the actual profile rather than the badge on the marketing page.
What a Rating Cannot Tell You
Most companies arranging car shipping are brokers, and this matters for how you read a rating.
A broker’s BBB profile reflects the broker’s own conduct: its quoting, its communication, how it handled disputes. Your car is physically carried by a trucking company the broker dispatches, and that carrier has its own safety record and its own insurance. A strong broker rating is not a statement about the driver who arrives.
The rating also says nothing about price, nothing about transit time, and nothing about whether a truck is available on your lane this week. Those are separate questions and you have to ask them separately.
Read the Complaints, Not Just the Letter
The complaint record on a profile is more informative than the grade sitting above it, and almost nobody scrolls down to it.
Look at how many complaints there are against a company of that size, and then read a few. What you want to know is the pattern. Complaints about a quote rising after booking point at a pricing practice. Complaints about pickup dates slipping repeatedly point at a company promising windows it cannot cover. Complaints about damage claims going unanswered point at what happens on the worst day.
Then read the responses. A company that answers specifically and resolves matters is behaving well. Boilerplate replies, or no reply, tell you what to expect when you need something.
Pair It With the Federal Check
The BBB tells you about reputation. It does not tell you whether a company is legally permitted to arrange your shipment, and that is a different register entirely.
Every company arranging or performing vehicle transport for money must be registered with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and that record is public and free to search by company name, MC number or DOT number. Confirm the authority is active rather than pending or revoked, confirm whether it is broker or carrier authority, and confirm the registered name matches the name on your quote.
Run both checks. Reputation without authority is a company that may not be permitted to do the job; authority without reputation is a company that may be permitted but unpleasant to deal with.
Red Flags Worth Walking Away From
Some signals are worth more than any rating.
A company that will not give you its MC number when asked has answered the question. A large deposit demanded before a carrier has been assigned puts your money against a truck that does not yet exist. A quote well below every other number usually means the load will not be covered at that price, so it sits unassigned until the rate is revised, and your planned pickup date passes. And terms that exist only in a phone call are terms you cannot hold anyone to.
The Five Minute Check
In order, because each step narrows the field before the next one:
- Look up the company on the BBB site, note the grade, then read the recent complaints and the responses.
- Look up the same company on the FMCSA site and confirm the authority is active and the name matches.
- Read the one and three star reviews elsewhere, not the five star ones, and look for repeated patterns rather than individual bad days.
- Call and ask directly whether they are a broker or a carrier, when payment is taken, and what the delivery window means.
- When a carrier is assigned, ask for its certificate of insurance and check the cargo limit against what your vehicle is worth.
Ship A Car, Inc. holds an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, and we would rather you ran these checks on us than took our word for it.
Common Questions
Does an A+ rating mean my car will not be damaged? No. It reflects complaint handling and transparency, not the conduct of the carrier that hauls your vehicle.
Is accreditation the same as an A+? No. Accreditation is a paid voluntary program. The rating is calculated separately and a company can hold one without the other.
Whose rating am I even reading? Usually the broker’s. The carrier that collects your car is a separate company with its own record and insurance.
What is more important, BBB or FMCSA? They answer different questions. FMCSA tells you the company may legally do the work; BBB tells you how it behaves when something goes wrong.
Where do reviews fit? Use them for patterns. One angry review means little; the same complaint appearing twenty times means a great deal.
Get a Quote
Call Ship A Car, Inc. at (866) 821-4555 and ask us anything on this list, or price your route with the instant calculator.
