The Real Cost of Vehicle Transportation for Dealerships

Five expense meters that start running the moment you click “Buy”

Most managers see a broker quote, say $1,125, and call it good. They may never realize only about $800 of that total actually reaches the carrier. On top of that, four more cost meters start spinning before the truck even leaves the auction gate. Let’s put real numbers on each one and then show an example of how a direct-carrier marketplace like Auto Hauler Exchange (AHX) can save you money without adding work to your day.

Transparent vs. hidden fees

Brokers quote a single “all-in” price that conceals a 20-30% skim. Most brokers hand you one figure “$1,125, door-to-door” and leave it at that. Behind that number they do three things you never see:

1. Reverse-auction the load. They post your VIN on the same load boards you could use yourself, then grind carriers down until one bites at, say, $800.
   
   
2. Pocket the spread. The $325 difference (20-30% on most lanes) is the broker’s margin, but it never appears on an invoice line, so you can’t benchmark or negotiate it.
   
   
3. Hide fallback costs. Because the carrier rate is low, a driver may cancel for a higher-paying load, forcing the broker to repost—and forcing you to eat more auction-storage days and floor-plan interest.

Auto Hauler Exchange flips that script. Your confirmation shows the fees separately. Seeing the split unlocks leverage. If carriers routinely accept $800 on that lane, you’ll know instantly because the rate is right there on your dashboard. It also simplifies accounting: your team books the carrier payment to COGS and the platform fee to “transport services,” instead of guessing how much of an all-in quote was brokerage skim.

Transit time is a capital productivity killer

The first killer is longer transit that results in higher interest expense

Your floor-plan line is a running tab that starts the moment the hammer falls at auction, whether the unit is 20 miles away or 900.

Suppose you bought a vehicle for $90,000 on a floorplan with a 7.3% interest rate. Your interest per day is: $90,000 × 7.3 % ÷ 365 ≈ $18/day.

Now suppose you used a broker and the vehicle arrives 12 days after your purchase. That’s $216 in interest paid. Compare that with a typical 4 day transport with AHX, which is $72 in interest.

Cutting 8 days off of the trip leaves $144 more gross in that single unit before it even hits recon. 

Slow transit also throttles how many cars you can cycle on the same credit line

Think of your floorplan limit as garage space on a revolving carousel: each slot can hold only one VIN at a time. The faster a car moves on-lot, through recon, and into a retail deal, the sooner that slot is free for the next buy.

Example:

• Floorplan line: $2 million (typical independent-dealer facility)
  
  
• Average acquisition cost: $18,000 per unit → capacity ≈110 cars
  
  

On-lot cycle time: 25 days (recon + retail)

Because transit makes up about a third of the total retail cycle, every 10% cut in transport days yields roughly a 3% boost in the number of cars you can move on the same floor-plan line. In our case, a 58% reduction in transit time translated into a 23% increase in annual turns, which is about 250 extra units without raising the credit limit.

Arbitration windows and why “late” can cost thousands

Most auctions follow the NAAA rule: sale day is Day 1 and the buyer has 7-10 calendar days to file a claim. Miss that window and you own every undisclosed frame kink, engine knock, or odometer surprise. Typical out-of-pocket after the window closes:

• Average post-sale inspection repair: $1,500–$3,000
  
  
• Transport back to seller: $400–$800
  
  
• Lost gross while the unit is grounded: $800+
  
  

Add those to the cost stack above and one late truck can erase a month of used-car profits.

Manager time is the stealth overhead

Working a load board means: create the post, field 10 calls, copy insurance, check SAFER, chase updates, cut checks, reconcile GL codes. Dealers who timed it hit 40–60 minutes per VIN. AHX automates insurance verification, paperwork storage, GPS tracking, and ACH payment in one dashboard. That drops the human time to ≈10 minutes and often shaves a full day off pickup because carriers book loads in under 24 hours.

The takeaway

Freight is never a simple ‘$1,125 all-in’ line item. It’s carrier pay plus hidden margin, interest, storage, risk, and labor. A direct-carrier marketplace cuts each of those layers, saving 15-20% in hard cash and freeing credit capacity to retail more cars—while giving you back dozens of manager hours every month.

Run the math on your own data in 10 minutes

We built a free, two-tab Google Sheet that auto-calculates delivery days, cost-per-mile, floor-plan interest, and your potential AHX savings for every VIN you paste in.

Grab the template and walkthrough here → “How to Audit Your Lanes in One Coffee Break.”

Ready to see what that looks like on your ledger? Post the next load on Auto Hauler Exchange and watch the five silent meters slow to a crawl.