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title: "Montway Auto Transport: America's Largest Auto Shipping Broker — A Dealer's Review" description: "Comprehensive analyst review of Montway Auto Transport, the largest US auto shipping broker. Covers carrier network (15,000+), pricing, GPS tracking, and how Montway compares to Acertus, Ready Logistics, Central Dispatch, and Autosled for dealership vehicle transport." slug: "montway" date: "2026-06-11"

Montway Auto Transport: America's Largest Auto Shipping Broker — A Dealer's Review

Overview

Montway Auto Transport is the largest auto shipping broker in the United States, moving more than 250,000 vehicles annually through a network of over 15,000 vetted carriers. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois, Montway operates under the leadership of CEO Mike Mihaylov, who built the company from a regional logistics outfit into the dominant force in consumer and commercial vehicle transport. The company is privately held, with estimated annual revenues north of $100 million.

If you run a dealership — particularly a franchise store moving 50 to 500 vehicles a month — you already know that transport is one of those operational headaches that never quite goes away. Every trade-in that needs to go to auction, every out-of-state buyer who wants their new Tahoe delivered to Phoenix, every dealer trade that requires a car hauled from Wichita to Waco — each one of those moves costs money, takes time, and carries risk. Montway exists to take that problem off your plate.

The critical thing to understand about Montway is the broker model. Montway does not own a single truck. It does not employ a single driver. What it does is aggregate, vet, and dispatch independent carriers across all 50 states — and then handle the customer-facing side: quotes, tracking, billing, and claims. This distinction matters more than most dealers realize, because it shapes everything from pricing to reliability to what happens when something goes wrong.

Montway claims a carrier network of 15,000-plus operators, each of which must pass CDL verification, DOT safety record checks, and maintain a minimum of $50,000 in cargo insurance and $1 million in general liability coverage. Those numbers are meaningful — plenty of smaller brokers operate with lower insurance minimums, and the difference shows up when there is a claim.

For dealerships, the value proposition is straightforward: one point of contact, one invoice, instant pricing, and a carrier dispatched faster than you could do it yourself. The question is whether that convenience holds up under the volume and time pressure of real dealership operations, and whether the broker model produces results that are competitive with the alternatives — some of which take a very different approach to the same problem.

Product & Services

Montway's core offering is door-to-door vehicle transport, covering both open and enclosed carriage. Open transport is the standard — your cars go on an eight- or ten-car hauler, exposed to weather and road debris, which is how roughly 90 percent of all vehicles in the US are shipped. Enclosed transport uses single- or double-stack enclosed trailers, which is what you would choose for high-value units, collector cars, or anything a customer is especially anxious about.

The company also offers terminal-to-terminal shipping, where vehicles are dropped at a Montway-affiliated terminal and the buyer picks them up on the other end. This is a lower-cost option that mostly appeals to individual consumers rather than dealers, but it is worth knowing about if you have customers who want to save a few hundred dollars on cross-country delivery.

Real-time GPS tracking is included on every shipment, and this is one area where Montway has invested more than many competitors. Dealers get a tracking link they can share with customers, which means your salesperson is not fielding "where is my car" calls three times a day. The tracking updates through the carrier's dispatch systems, and Montway's portal surfaces location, estimated arrival, and any delays in a single dashboard.

The instant online quote tool is another practical feature. You enter origin and destination ZIP codes, vehicle type, and whether you want open or enclosed transport, and Montway returns a binding price in seconds. For dealerships moving volume, this beats calling three brokers for quotes. The quote engine pulls from real-time carrier availability and fuel surcharge data, so prices reflect what carriers are actually charging that week, not a stale rate card.

Montway also handles what it calls expedited shipping — basically priority dispatch for vehicles that need to move today. Expect to pay a 30 to 50 percent premium for that, but when a customer is flying in tomorrow from three states away and the car you promised them is sitting at another dealer's lot, that premium starts looking like a bargain.

Claims processing is another service Montway provides on behalf of the dealer. If a vehicle arrives with damage, Montway manages the claim against the carrier's insurance. The company's stated target is 15 to 30 days for resolution, which is faster than what most dealers experience going directly to a carrier's insurer, but the actual timeline depends heavily on the specific carrier involved and the complexity of the damage.

Where Montway falls short relative to some competitors is DMS integration. The platform is primarily portal-based: you log in, get your quotes, book your shipments, and track them. There is no deep API integration with CDK, Reynolds, or Tekion that would let you initiate transport from inside your deal workflow. Competitors like Autosled have invested in exactly that. For a dealership running 200-plus shipments a month, that manual data entry adds up.

Pricing Model

Montway's pricing follows a per-mile model that varies by transport type, distance, season, and fuel costs. For open transport, dealers should expect to pay between $0.80 and $1.50 per mile. Enclosed transport runs $1.50 to $2.50 per mile. These are broad ranges because vehicle transport pricing is genuinely volatile — it is a market, not a menu.

What drives that volatility? The US vehicle transport market is roughly $15 billion a year, and it faces a persistent driver shortage. The average car hauler driver is over 55 years old, and the industry is not replacing retiring drivers fast enough. When capacity tightens, prices rise. Seasonality adds another 15 to 25 percent swing between peak and off-peak periods. If you are shipping cars in January, you will pay materially less than in June, when snowbirds are moving vehicles between states and auction volumes spike.

Montway does offer volume pricing for dealerships. The exact discount schedule is not public — you negotiate it — but dealers moving 50-plus units a month can typically expect per-shipment rates 10 to 15 percent below the consumer-facing quote engine. Larger accounts with 200-plus monthly units can push that higher.

Expedited service adds 30 to 50 percent to the base rate and guarantees faster pickup — usually same-day or next-day dispatch instead of the standard three-to-five-day window. For a dealership, the math on expedited shipping is straightforward: if a delayed transport costs you a deal worth $3,000 in front-end gross, paying an extra $300 on shipping is an easy call.

One cost factor dealers sometimes overlook: fuel surcharges. Montway passes through carrier fuel costs, which means a spike in diesel prices translates directly to higher per-mile rates. In 2022, when diesel hit $5.50 a gallon nationally, transport prices jumped roughly 20 percent industry-wide. Montway's quote engine adjusts dynamically, so you are always seeing current market pricing rather than a rate that is two weeks stale.

There are no subscription fees or platform costs to use Montway — you pay per shipment. That makes it low-commitment relative to managed logistics services like Acertus, which charge monthly retainers or per-unit management fees on top of transport costs.

Compared to going direct to carriers through a load board like Central Dispatch, Montway's pricing includes a broker margin — typically 15 to 25 percent over what the carrier actually receives. Whether that margin is worth it depends on how much you value the vetting, the tracking, the single invoice, and the claims support. For most dealers, the answer is yes — but if you have a dedicated logistics person on staff who already manages carrier relationships, you might find Central Dispatch more cost-effective for routine moves.

Customer Segments

Montway serves a broad base, but the dealership segment breaks into a few distinct profiles with different needs.

Franchise dealerships are Montway's sweet spot in the commercial market. A typical franchise store — say, a mid-sized Chevy dealer doing 150 units a month — might ship 20 to 40 vehicles in the same period: dealer trades, auction purchases, sold-order deliveries to out-of-area buyers, and the occasional wholesale unit heading to a Manheim or ADESA sale. For these dealers, Montway's value is in consolidation: one vendor, one bill, one tracking dashboard, instead of a Rolodex of regional carriers who may or may not answer the phone on a Saturday.

Independent used-car dealers tend to source more heavily from auctions, which means they often encounter transport bundled through the auction itself. Manheim and ADESA both offer integrated shipping through their own logistics arms — Cox Automotive's Ready Logistics for Manheim, and KAR Global's partnerships for ADESA and OPENLANE. For independents buying multiple units per week at auction, the auction's integrated transport is often cheaper and simpler than engaging a standalone broker. Montway is more relevant for independents buying private-party or sourcing from non-auction channels.

Large dealer groups — the Lithias, AutoNations, and Penskes of the world — typically have in-house logistics teams or enterprise contracts with managed transport providers like Acertus. Montway does serve some of these accounts, but it is usually as a supplemental capacity provider rather than the primary logistics partner. The broker model works less well for groups that need storage, reconditioning, and multi-stop routing — services that fall outside Montway's core dispatch-and-deliver capability.

Online-only retailers and digital wholesalers — Carvana, CarMax, Vroom, and the various "sell us your car" platforms — represent a different customer segment entirely. These companies move enormous volume and typically negotiate dedicated carrier contracts directly, bypassing brokers. Montway competes for overflow capacity in this space but is not the primary transport provider for any of the major digital retailers.

The consumer segment remains Montway's largest by shipment count — individual people moving their personal vehicles for relocation, online purchases, or seasonal migration. That consumer volume is what gives Montway its massive carrier network, and the carrier density benefits commercial customers indirectly: the more carriers are already routing through a given corridor to serve consumers, the faster Montway can pick up a dealer's vehicle on that same route.

Competitive Positioning

The vehicle transport broker landscape has several distinct competitors, each with a different angle on the problem.

Acertus is the closest direct competitor for dealership business, but it plays a different game. Acertus is not just a broker — it is a managed logistics provider that combines transport with vehicle storage, reconditioning, title processing, and compliance services. A dealer group that needs a car picked up in Houston, stored for two weeks while title issues are resolved, detailed, and then delivered to a customer in Dallas — that is Acertus territory. It is also more expensive and requires a contractual commitment. Montway competes by being simpler, faster to engage, and cheaper on a pure per-mile basis.

Ready Logistics, owned by Cox Automotive, is the transport arm of the Manheim ecosystem. If you buy a car at a Manheim auction, Ready Logistics is the default shipping option baked into the checkout flow. That integration is powerful — it eliminates a step for the buyer. Ready Logistics also benefits from massive auction-driven volume that gives it competitive carrier rates. Montway competes by offering transport for vehicles that did not come through a Manheim lane, and by providing a more dealer-branded tracking experience since Ready Logistics tracking is auction-centric.

Central Dispatch is the industry's largest load board — a marketplace where dealers and carriers connect directly. It is owned by Cox as well through the Manheim parent, and it is essentially a self-serve tool. You post a vehicle that needs moving, carriers bid on it, and you pick one based on price, rating, and availability. Central Dispatch is cheaper per shipment because there is no broker margin — you pay a subscription fee to access the board, then negotiate rates directly with carriers. The tradeoff is time and expertise: you or someone on your team has to manage carrier selection, verify insurance, handle communication, and deal with problems directly. For a dealership with a dedicated logistics coordinator, Central Dispatch often makes more economic sense. For everyone else, Montway's full-service model saves labor.

Autosled is the most tech-forward competitor. Founded in 2015, Autosled positions itself as a digital transport platform with API integrations into dealer DMS systems, instant pricing, and automated carrier matching. If DMS integration matters to you — if you want transport initiated from inside your deal workflow without rekeying data — Autosled wins on that dimension. Montway has a larger carrier network and more scale, but Autosled is gaining ground specifically by solving the integration problem that frustrates high-volume dealers.

ShipYourCarNow is another broker, smaller than Montway and more consumer-focused, but it competes in the same space. It is worth mentioning primarily because it sometimes undercuts Montway on price for specific routes, though its carrier network is thinner and its commercial-dealer support is less developed.

The broader market context matters here. Total US vehicle transport is a $15 billion-plus industry facing structural capacity constraints. The driver shortage is not going away. Fuel costs are not going to zero. And as more dealerships sell vehicles to out-of-state buyers — a trend accelerated by digital retailing — transport volume per dealership is rising. Every broker in this space is competing for the same finite pool of roughly 40,000 active car-hauler drivers. Montway's scale gives it an advantage in that competition, but it does not make it immune to the underlying capacity problem.

Strengths

Montway's carrier network is its single biggest asset. With 15,000-plus vetted carriers, Montway can almost always find a truck faster than a smaller broker or a dealer working through a load board. For time-sensitive dealer trades or customer deliveries, that pickup speed translates directly to deal velocity. In an industry where a car sitting on a lot is depreciating, faster transport has real financial value.

Competitive pricing is the next major strength. The scale of Montway's carrier relationships means the broker margin — the gap between what the dealer pays and what the carrier receives — is narrower than at smaller brokers. Montway makes money on volume, not on margin per shipment. For a dealership comparing quotes, Montway consistently lands in the middle of the market — not the cheapest option since Central Dispatch direct-to-carrier will beat it, but cheaper than Acertus and comparable to Ready Logistics for non-auction moves.

Insurance verification is a genuine operational strength. The $50,000 cargo and $1 million general liability insurance minimum that Montway requires of every carrier is higher than the industry standard, and the company actively verifies those policies — including checking that they are current, not expired. When a vehicle shows up with damage, that higher insurance floor means there is actually money to collect. Too many smaller brokers let carriers slide with state-minimum coverage, and the dealer is the one who gets stuck when the claim exceeds the policy.

Brand recognition is a softer advantage that matters in practice. When your customer searches for Montway, they find a legitimate company with thousands of reviews and a track record. When you tell a buyer you are shipping their car through Montway, it sounds professional rather than like you are handing their new purchase to someone you found on a load board. That confidence matters for customer experience, especially on high-value deliveries.

The tracking portal, while not as integrated as some competitors' DMS APIs, is clean and functional. Customers get a link that shows real-time location, and it reduces the volume of status-check calls your sales team has to handle. For a salesperson working a 12-car month, that time savings is material.

Finally, the claims process — while dependent on third-party carriers — is at least managed by Montway on your behalf. You file one claim with Montway, and they pursue the carrier's insurer. It is not a guarantee of fast resolution, but it is better than the alternative of you chasing a trucking company's insurance adjuster in another state while your customer waits.

Weaknesses

The broker model is both Montway's strength and its fundamental limitation. Montway does not control the actual transport. The person who shows up with the truck, loads your vehicle, drives it across three states, and delivers it to your customer works for an independent carrier — not for Montway. Montway can vet carriers, but it cannot make every driver show up on time, handle vehicles carefully, or communicate clearly. Quality variability between carriers is the single most common complaint from dealers who use Montway at scale. One shipment goes perfectly; the next one arrives a day late with a driver who will not answer his phone.

DMS integration is Montway's most visible gap versus tech-forward competitors. Autosled in particular has built API integrations that let dealers initiate transport from within their existing deal workflow — no dual entry, no copy-pasting VINs and addresses between systems. Montway's portal-based approach works fine at 10 shipments a month, but at 100 shipments a month it creates real administrative drag. For a large dealer group considering Montway as a primary transport provider, this limitation often sends them toward managed logistics alternatives.

Claims resolution, while better than going direct to a carrier, is still fundamentally dependent on third-party cooperation. Montway's 15-to-30-day target is reasonable, but it is a target, not a guarantee. If a carrier disputes liability or drags its feet on documentation, Montway has limited leverage — it can drop the carrier from its network, but that does not get your claim paid faster. Dealers who have been through a major transport damage claim know that even the best broker cannot make insurance companies move quickly.

Customer service consistency is another variable that frustrates volume shippers. Montway's customer service team handles both consumer and commercial accounts, and the quality of support varies depending on who you get and how busy they are. During peak shipping season from May through September, response times degrade noticeably. Dealers with a dedicated account representative tend to have a better experience, but access to a dedicated rep typically requires meaningful volume commitments.

The single biggest structural weakness is that Montway competes in a fundamentally capacity-constrained market and does not control supply. When carrier capacity is tight — which it is increasingly as the driver workforce ages and shrinks — even a broker with 15,000 carriers on its roster cannot manufacture trucks that do not exist. Prices rise, pickup times lengthen, and the value of the broker's intermediation diminishes. In a tight capacity environment, the dealers who win are the ones with direct carrier relationships cultivated over years, not the ones routing through a broker.

Bottom Line / Verdict

Montway Auto Transport is the right choice for the dealership that wants to outsource vehicle transport to a single, reliable vendor and does not have or want to build in-house logistics capability. If you are shipping 10 to 50 vehicles a month, if you value not having to manage carrier relationships yourself, and if you are willing to pay a reasonable broker margin in exchange for speed, insurance verification, and a clean customer-facing tracking experience — Montway is the market leader for good reason.

For high-volume dealers moving 100-plus vehicles a month, the calculus shifts. At that scale, the lack of DMS integration starts to hurt, the broker margin adds up to real money, and the quality variability across carriers becomes more visible. These dealers should at least evaluate Autosled for its API integrations, and should consider whether a dedicated logistics coordinator using Central Dispatch could produce better results at lower total cost.

The comparison with Acertus is about scope: if you need storage, reconditioning, and title services bundled with transport, Montway is not the vendor for you. If you just need cars moved from point A to point B reliably, Montway does that as well as anyone.

A final point worth making: the vehicle transport industry is not going to get cheaper or easier over the next five years. The driver shortage is structural, not cyclical. Fuel costs are volatile. And as more dealers sell to out-of-state buyers — a trend that hybrid and digital retailing models are accelerating — transport volume per store will rise while carrier capacity remains flat or declines. In that environment, the broker with the largest carrier network and the deepest carrier relationships has a genuine competitive moat. Montway has both.

If you have not benchmarked your transport costs in the last 12 months, run 10 representative shipments through Montway's quote engine and compare the results to whatever you are paying now — whether that is through a different broker, a load board, or an auction's bundled shipping. Chances are you will find Montway competitive on price and faster on pickup. Whether the tradeoffs around integration and carrier quality consistency are acceptable depends on your volume and your tolerance for administrative overhead.

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