Sunday, January 01, 2012

Careers in the Auto Shipping Industry

By Tom Kearns


Today, the auto shipping industry is rife with some very interesting career opportunities. The industry includes many various positions and the career opportunities are infinite. The industry is looking for full time and part time employees to fulfill a wide variety of job duties. As in all industries, they are constantly on the lookout for devoted, motivated, hard working and qualified people to fill many challenging and cutting edge positions in every corner of the business. While the auto shipping industry is rather new on the scene, it is quite advanced and continuously reinventing itself. Little wonder there are so many promising career opportunities here offering advancement even to the new, inexperienced jobseeker.

Finding a job in the auto shipping industry is no different than in any other industry. There are classified ads in newspapers, car dealers and online career sites. Auto shipping has a need for general and specialized types of shipping personnel for shipping of multiple or single vehicles, special shipping of traditional, vintage, collectible, and customized or sports cars among many other types of cargo. Everyone is relocating these days giving rise to the wide variety of jobs available in the industry. Among them are auto mover truck drivers, shipping dispatchers, customer service representatives, driver car hauler, commercial drivers, military-vehicle drivers and shippers, truck fleet managers, too many mechanic-type positions to mention here for all levels of experience, and many others.

Obviously, the industry hires truck drivers. In the auto shipping industry, however, this job is much more complicated and demanding of responsibility as the driver loads and unloads the vehicles, makes an inspection of all vehicles prior to delivery, communicates with the customers at pick up and drop off on top of the many miles of long distance driving over roads in all sorts of disrepair and possible inclement weather. All the time hauling valuable cargo which must be delivered punctually to many different destinations. The vehicles must be picked up and unloaded in varying states and across borders making each trip very lengthy, possibly many weeks to conclude. This is hard work. Not nearly the same as driving the local ice cream truck, but far more interesting and certainly far more remunerative.

A dispatcher is the "travel agent" who receives orders and communicates customer demands to the trucking company. Pick-up, delivery, transportation time and cost have all to be clearly established between the assigned truck driver and the customer though the dispatcher. The dispatcher participates in the planning of the customer vehicle's trip, which demands advanced organizational skills. Vehicles on any one truck may have to be delivered to widely different destinations and the planning of optimal cost-and-time effective all-round customer service with the means available to the company while maintaining profitable order influx is not a trivial task.

The client service representative does not have to get into the vehicle trip planning business, but this person must courteously deal with exacting customers and provide them with all the pertinent, detailed information required, to include quotes by phone or email. Then his duty is to place orders with the dispatcher, who then liaisons with the company.

It is quite possibly the diesel mechanic that is the most critical piece of the whole picture in the auto shipping industry. There can be no auto transport company without the services of such an employee. One of the mechanic's most crucial responsibilities is to thoroughly inspect and ensure the safety of all the trucks traveling under his jurisdiction. The job has high demands and requirements and is regarded with much respect and paid accordingly.

And lastly is the auto processor who operates the processing of the customer's vehicles through the many different company terminals.

Companies often offer certified courses in some or all of the basic positions. Training for other positions can be done at community colleges, vocational schools, or even on the job.




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