How to search boat shipments

Now that we got you interested, below are some of the first steps that you will need to take in order to get notified of any motorcycle shipments listed in your area. 

1. Head to your account settings and add boats to your list of categories. To add boats just click in the ‘Boats and Water vehicles’ tick box.
2. Revisit your city and state notifications, and consider expanding your area of operation in order to cover more “surface”. The general rule of thumb is to include all states that are within 150 mile radius around your city of residence. Some examples are illustrated below: 

If your settings indicate you live in Chicago, IL, you’ll receive notifications for listings in Chicago and any other job in Illinois. That means that you will receive notifications of jobs with pickups that are more than 200 miles away (for instance, Springfield IL) and not ones that are closer in the states of Wisconsin and Indiana.

For someone living in Newark, NJ the situation is a bit different - your state might not be big enough for you to just focus on shipments originating from it. By following the “150-mile radius” rule, anyone living in New Jersey should consider adding Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Delaware, and Washington D.C. as their preferred job search locations.

In case your current residence doesn't fit the examples above, the next part of this lesson is ever more critical for you, as we dig deeper into the topic of how to use our search tool!

From your Dashboard on the CitizenShipper site, you should be able to see the search bar in the upper left corner of your screen. If you're on a mobile device, the search bar should appear near the top of your screen:

Simply click "Search shipments" to open the Shipment Search Tool, which allows you to set the parameters of your search by pick-up address, delivery address, date, and most importantly for you - category and the ability to filter shipments by weight and distance:

In case you are subscribed to receiving notifications for multiple categories on CitizenShipper, you want to make sure that when you use the search tool, it will remember your default settings, and therefore if you are interested only in boats, you will need to deselect all other categories within the search tool: 

At this point, I recommend trying out the Shipment Search Tool to see what shipments are going out of your state. As you can see in the picture above - we can input the Pickup location and leave the Delivery address blank; this will let us see what shipments start in your desired pickup location and vise versa with the delivery. 

Additionally, you can also use the search tool for regional searches by specifying multiple states of/and pick up and delivery you're interested in:

Now that you’ve learned how to transport boats and find requests from customers on CitizenShipper, the last part is to set your rate and expectations!

How much can I earn shipping boats on CitizenShipper?

For new boat transporters, this is the most important question. What you can charge will depend on four main factors: 

1. Distance – How far is the boat going?
2. Boat size – Size is also indicative of weight, putting a strain on your vehicle as well as limiting your route to roads wide enough to support your load.
3. Permits – These depend on boat size and weight.
4. Equipment – Will the customer provide a trailer or do you need your own?

You can charge more for bigger boats that need to go further. You can multiply the number of miles by your desired rate to get a ballpark figure.

When providing a quote, consider adding in your insurance costs. Even if your customer has boating insurance, the conditions of extended shipping likely aren’t part of their coverage. You’ll need a base insurance policy for transportation, and cargo insurance is also very helpful. 

Here are some recent examples of boat transport quotes on CitizenShipper, charging roughly $1.50 to $3.00 per mile, depending on the factors outlined above.

And with these examples, we conclude the lesson on how to find shipments to bid on. We strongly suggest you to check out the last lesson of the guide which includes some "Pro Tips" that will help you win these shipments and build a successful career as a carrier on CitizenShipper!

Happy Shipping!