What Happens if the Delivery Contact is Unavailable?
Whether you’re a dealership shipping a car to a customer or a personally-owned vehicle is being sent to a student at college (or to a buyer in another state), ensuring the delivery contact is available for meeting the driver is critical. Carriers typically have several vehicles they need to deliver to different addresses timely, so they cannot wait long because a delay sets everyone back.
A delivery contact has 2 important tasks: Be as available as possible to receive the vehicle and do a thorough inspection during the walk-around, marking anything found on the Bill of Lading or BOL (Please refer to FAQs How to Do the Walk-Around with a Carrier and What to Do if There is Damage).
When a carrier contacts Team Alex for help with an unresponsive or unavailable destination contact, we must act quickly to find someone to receive the vehicle. We may ask you to reach out to the recipient, as you already have an established relationship (and they are more likely to pick up hearing from you). Too many times, we finally reach the destination contact and they did not pick up because they did not recognize the number from which the driver called.
If someone cannot be located within a reasonable amount of time, the vehicle will need to be dropped at a local tow yard with a vehicle storage lot. All tow yard fees will be the responsibility of the destination contact, as normally the carrier tried multiple times over multiple days to make delivery arrangements, with no response.
While this may not be ideal or convenient for the vehicle recipient, it is necessary, as we cannot ask drivers to wait for more than a reasonable amount of time for a contact to be reached. Occasionally, they can deliver to another nearby recipient and return, but that is not always possible if their next stop is another city or even another state.