Auto transport quote widgets compared: four ways to add shipping to your site

A shopper who is two states away needs a delivered price before your car is a real option. How you supply that price decides whether the shopper stays on your page, whether someone else's sales team calls them, and whether you can tell what the feature is worth. This guide compares the four common setups, then lists the questions to ask any vendor, including us.

The four options

1. Link out to a shipping marketplace or transport company. Your page sends the shopper to another site to get a price. On a marketplace such as uShip, the shopper lists the shipment, and in uShip's words "carriers will start bidding"; the shopper then compares the offers and books there.
2. Lead form. The shopper leaves a name, phone number and route on your page, and the details go to one or more transport companies that follow up with a price later.
3. Embedded instant-quote widget. A script on your page asks for the route and vehicle, shows a price on the spot, and lets the shopper book.
4. Build on a quote API. Your developers request prices from an API and show them inside your own checkout, deal builder or app.

Side by side

• Link out: no price on your page; the shopper leaves to get one. Best fit when you want shoppers to compare offers themselves.
• Lead form: a price arrives later, by phone or email. Best fit when you run your own transport desk and want to quote every shipment yourself.
• Embedded widget: a price on your page in seconds. Best fit when you want the price next to the car with no development work.
• API build: a price on your page, in your own design. Best fit when you have an online checkout and developers to maintain it.

A few differences matter more than they look:

• Who talks to the shopper. With a link out or a lead form passed to outside companies, the next conversation happens off your site with someone else. With a widget or an API, the shopper sees the price while still looking at your car, and the company that arranges the shipment contacts them after they book.
• What you can measure. A link out gives you clicks. A lead form gives you leads sent. A widget or an API can count views, prices shown and bookings per page, which is what you need to decide whether the feature earns its spot.
• Setup and upkeep. A link or a form takes minutes. A widget is usually one script tag plus a few attributes. An API build is a development project that someone has to keep working when your templates change.

Questions to ask any quote widget vendor

These apply to every option above, including AutoTransportVehicle.com.

Who arranges the shipment?

Federal regulations (49 CFR 371.2) define a broker as a person who, for compensation, arranges or offers to arrange the transportation of property by an authorized motor carrier, and FMCSA requires brokers to register for operating authority. Ask the vendor which company is the broker or carrier of record for each shipment, get its USDOT or MC number, and look it up in FMCSA's public licensing and insurance system, as FMCSA's consumer advisory recommends. If a vendor cannot name the licensed company, keep looking. See broker vs. carrier for how the roles split.

Is the price live and bookable?

Ask whether the number shown is a bookable price or an estimate, how long it stays valid, and what can change it at booking (vehicle size, running condition, open or enclosed). A price that moves after the shopper commits costs you more goodwill than no price at all.

How is credit for a booking recorded?

Many referral programs credit the last link a shopper clicked, stored in a browser cookie. Safari has blocked third-party cookies by default since Safari 13.1 and iOS 13.4 (WebKit, March 2020), so a cookie set by a vendor's script on your page may never be read. Ask where the credit is stored and whether it survives a shopper switching browsers or clearing cookies.

What does it do to page speed?

Third-party content can slow a page in many ways, according to Google's web.dev guidance, which recommends deferring embeds until they are needed and reserving their space so the page does not jump. Google treats a page as having good Core Web Vitals when, at the 75th percentile of visits, Largest Contentful Paint is 2.5 seconds or less, Interaction to Next Paint is 200 milliseconds or less, and Cumulative Layout Shift is 0.1 or less. Measure your vehicle pages with and without the widget before you roll it out everywhere.

Who receives the shopper's details?

Ask who gets the shopper's name, phone and email, whether they are shared with anyone else, and what you see in return. A tool that shares contact details with several companies will generate more calls to your shopper than one that sends a booking to a single licensed company.

Can you test it safely?

Ask for a test mode that shows real prices without creating real shipments, so you can try placements on a staging site and train your team.

Does it fit your pages?

Check that it can take the year, make, model, VIN and your ZIP from the page so the shopper types as little as possible, that it can match your colors, and that it works on a phone and with a keyboard.

How AutoTransportVehicle.com answers those questions

• Who arranges the shipment: each shipment booked through the widget is arranged by AutoTransportVehicle.com's FMCSA-licensed fulfillment partner, which confirms the prices shown. AutoTransportVehicle.com is a referral source, not a broker, carrier or insurer.
• Price: the widget shows a live price with a transit estimate and the time the price expires, and the shopper can book it.
• Credit: your partner key is saved with each quote on our server, and the booking inherits it from the quote. The widget sets no cookies; it keeps one random session id in your site's own browser storage for 30 days to group page events. Details: how attribution works.
• Page weight: one script, loaded with `async`, rendered in its own shadow DOM so your styles and ours do not collide. Formats range from a full quote form to a one-line price strip and a button that opens the form only when clicked.
• Data: booking details go to AutoTransportVehicle.com and the fulfillment partner that arranges the shipment. Your dashboard shows counts for your account (quotes requested, bookings completed), not shoppers' contact details.
• Testing: a sandbox key returns real prices and simulated bookings that are never sent for fulfillment. See sandbox.
• Fit: prefill attributes for origin ZIP, year, make, model, VIN, vehicle type, open or enclosed and ship date; theme attributes for colors; keys locked to your approved sites. For a custom checkout, the quote API returns the same prices as JSON.

Which one should you pick?

If you already run a transport desk that quotes and books shipments for buyers, a lead form to your own team may be all you need. If you want buyers to collect and compare offers themselves, a marketplace link does that. If you want a delivered price next to the car, with bookings you can count per page and no development work, an embedded widget is the shortest path, and an API build makes sense once you have an online checkout to put it in.

To see placements that work on a dealer site, read add shipping quotes to your dealer website, or try the live demo.