Dependable Auto Shippers Review: What Happened to DAS

Dependable Auto Shippers, the Texas car hauler better known as DAS, no longer has a working website or any active federal operating authority in its own name, so there is no current DAS contract to review. What remains is a public record, and it answers the questions people still search for. On 9 October 2026 we checked what the dasautoshippers.com address does today, read FMCSA’s SAFER snapshots (data as of 7 October 2026) for the three registrations in DAS’s name, queried FMCSA’s census, licensing, insurance and revocation datasets, read KAR Auction Services’ SEC filings on buying DAS and DAS’s own 2011 SEC notice, and read archived copies of two DAS pages from 2018 and of the contract on the site DAS’s address later led to. We requested no quote, entered no details, and have no commercial relationship with DAS, its former owner or any car shipper.

Is Dependable Auto Shippers still in business?

Not in any form we could find. A car-shipper review should start with the shipper’s own terms, and on 9 October 2026 there were none to read. Here is what we tried, in order:

• The robots.txt file. We read a site’s crawler rules first. On dasautoshippers.com the request, over http and https, comes back as a permanent redirect (HTTP 301) to https://www.carsrelo.com, from a Microsoft Azure gateway. So did every other path we tried.
• The address it forwards to. www.carsrelo.com points to an Azure host name that the internet’s directory reports as nonexistent (“NXDOMAIN”). A reader service on a different network, r.jina.ai, gave the same result: the domain “could not be resolved.” The bare address carsrelo.com answers with a server error (HTTP 502).
• The www address. www.dasautoshippers.com points to the same nonexistent Azure host, so it does not load either.
• The security certificates. The certificate dasautoshippers.com still presents was issued to “Adesa Inc.” of Indiana, valid from 6 January 2022 to 6 January 2023. It expired 3.8 years before our check, by our arithmetic, so a browser that visits the https address should show a security warning before the redirect. The certificate at carsrelo.com, also issued to Adesa Inc., in Carmel, Indiana, expired on 2 March 2022.
• Search results. A Google results page for “dependable auto shippers”, read through a data provider on the same day, held 9 ordinary results and no result from dasautoshippers.com or carsrelo.com. Two of the local listings were businesses called “Dependable Auto Transport,” in Maine and California, which are not DAS.

A failed address can be a bad afternoon rather than a closure, which is why we checked from a second network and set the address beside the federal record below. The two agree. Our data script re-checks the redirect, the DNS answers and both certificates on every run.

The Internet Archive tells the same story over time. Its capture index lists a full DAS site in 2016. By December 2019 the DAS home page led to carsrelo.com (see below), captures from 2022 on record it as a redirect, and its capture of 16 March 2026 shows the www address as a bare directory listing (“Index of /”), not a car-shipping website. In 2024 it also logged requests for unrelated paths, such as Portuguese-language news headlines; we read nothing from them.

What DAS was: a carrier with its own trucks

DAS is remembered as a company that hauled cars on its own trucks rather than a broker, and the federal record bears that out for its working years. FMCSA’s census row for USDOT 517538, legal name DEPENDABLE AUTO SHIPPERS INC, records:

• A carrier, not a broker. The record is classed “AUTHORIZED FOR HIRE,” first added to FMCSA’s census on 24 March 1993.
• Its own fleet. 63 power units on the last update, which the census splits into 19 owned trucks, 42 owned tractors and 2 term-leased tractors (the same 63, by our arithmetic). It also listed 44 owned and 2 term-leased trailers, 46 in all.
• Its own drivers. 56 of them.
• Real miles. 9,017,409 miles reported for 2014.
• A safety rating. Coded “S,” dated 18 April 2011, after a review on 15 April 2011. Of the three ratings federal rules define (49 CFR 385.3), only Satisfactory begins with S; it means “adequate safety management controls” were in place.
• What it carried. General freight, household goods and motor vehicles.

That last update was filed on 4 November 2015, 10.9 years before our check by our arithmetic. FMCSA’s census marks the record inactive, and SAFER answers a search for USDOT 517538 with “Record Inactive.” SAFER’s own legend says a USDOT number goes inactive when the “biennial update of MCS-150 data” is not completed.

Other public documents fill in the picture. In August 2011, DAS filed a Form D notice with the SEC for a private offering: a Texas corporation in Mesquite, first sale on 1 August 2011, $5,400,000 offered and $5,400,000 sold to 2 investors. When KAR Auction Services bought DAS in 2017, its quarterly report described DAS as providing “vehicle transportation services for corporate and personal vehicle transportation needs.” DAS’s own archived pages, covered below, describe terminal-to-terminal and door-to-door service.

Why the model mattered: with a carrier, the company you book is the one whose driver, insurance and bill of lading cover your car. A broker, by federal definition, “arranges, or offers to arrange, the transportation of property by an authorized motor carrier” (49 CFR 371.2), and someone else hauls. Our guide to car shipping companies explains the difference, and our Sherpa review reads one broker’s federal record.

DAS’s three FMCSA registrations

Search FMCSA’s census for the legal name and three registrations come back as DEPENDABLE AUTO SHIPPERS INC: the carrier record and two broker records. A fourth result, THE DEPENDABLE AUTO SHIPPER LLC of Homestead, Florida, is a separate company with its own MC number, city and e-mail domain, and nothing in FMCSA’s files ties it to DAS. Of the three DAS records, only the carrier record lists a contact e-mail on the dasautoshippers.com domain.

The “ACTIVE” on two of those snapshots trips people up. SAFER keeps two statuses. The USDOT status only says “The entity’s US DOT number is active.” The operating-authority status decides whether a company may arrange or carry shipments for pay across state lines, and for both DAS broker records it reads “NOT AUTHORIZED,” which SAFER defines as an entity that “does not have any operating authority and/or is not authorized to engage in interstate, for-hire operations.”

FMCSA moved registrations to a new system, Motus, in May 2026, and its published Motus tables hold no row for any DAS registration. The history below comes from FMCSA’s older licensing datasets, last refreshed on 14 May 2026, and the census file.

How DAS lost its federal authority, 2013 to 2016

FMCSA’s datasets record what happened to each registration and when. They do not record why, beyond the type of order, so we set out the sequence and stop there. In date order:

• 2005 and 2009: “involuntary revocation” actions on the carrier record, served 5 October 2005 and 8 September 2009, were each marked “discontinued” within weeks.
• 6 November 2013: the same kind of action on broker record MC-491106, discontinued the next day.
• 9 December 2013: the New Jersey broker record, MC-191780, is revoked by involuntary revocation, after an order served on 4 November 2013. It had held broker authority since 1987, 26.6 years by our arithmetic.
• 17 November 2015: broker record MC-491106 is revoked (order served 15 October 2015). Its insurance history shows a trust fund cancelled on 11 November 2015 and new surety-bond filings from 10 November.
• 14 December 2015: MC-491106 is reinstated, 27 days after the revocation.
• 9 November 2016: the last surety bond on MC-491106, from United States Fire Insurance Co., effective 9 February 2016, is cancelled.
• 15 November 2016: MC-491106 is revoked again, 6 days after the bond was cancelled, by involuntary revocation (order served 13 October 2016).
• 10 December 2016: the carrier’s liability insurance filing, from Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Co. and in force since 1 November 2008, is cancelled.
• 19 December 2016: the carrier record’s common, contract and household-goods authority is revoked by involuntary revocation, 9 days after the insurance filing was cancelled. The order had been served on 14 November 2016, 35 days earlier.

The insurance link matters because it is the price of authority. FMCSA’s guide says a property carrier “must file proof of public liability” to hold interstate authority, and federal law says the Secretary of Transportation “shall immediately suspend” a broker whose $75,000 bond or trust fund falls below that amount. FMCSA’s records show DAS’s liability filing and broker bond ending days before each revocation. They do not say whether DAS stopped trading or moved its business to another registration, and we found no document that does.

It was a long run: contract-carrier authority from 22 April 1992 to its revocation, 24.7 years by our arithmetic.

The KAR years: bought in 2017, gone from filings by 2020

Five months after the carrier authority was revoked, by our count of calendar months, DAS changed hands. KAR Auction Services, the wholesale car-auction group that then owned ADESA, reported in its quarterly filing for the period to 30 June 2017 (filed 9 August 2017):

• The deal. “In May 2017, the Company acquired Dependable Auto Shippers (‘DAS’).” The filing describes DAS as providing transport “for corporate and personal vehicle transportation needs.”
• The price, but not separately. KAR gives one figure for the two businesses it bought in the first half of 2017, DAS and a data company called DRIVIN: approximately $47.0 million, net of cash, with aggregate goodwill of $35.6 million recorded in its ADESA Auctions segment. It called the financial impact “immaterial.” No separate price for DAS is published.
• The size. KAR’s 10-K for 2017 left DAS and three other 2017 acquisitions out of its internal-control assessment while it integrated them, and put their combined revenue at 0.4% of KAR’s total for the year.

KAR’s 10-K for 2019, filed on 19 February 2020, is the last SEC filing that names DAS: a full-text search of EDGAR returns DAS’s 2011 Form D, KAR’s 2017 quarterly reports and its 10-Ks filed in 2018, 2019 and 2020, and nothing later. Searches for “CarsRelo” return nothing. That 10-K describes KAR’s transport business only in general terms, “utilizing our own equipment and personnel as well as licensed and insured third party carriers.”

The Internet Archive shows where the DAS address went. Asked for DAS’s FAQ and home pages, it followed recorded redirects to carsrelo.com captures of 12 July and 16 December 2019. The December page was headed “CarsArrive Auto Relocation” and signed “A KAR Auction Services Company (NYSE:KAR),” with an office in Mesa, Arizona. It offered “Carrier Direct Service” plus service-center and door-to-door options, and claimed “98% On-time delivery” and a “14-day Delivery window.” So by then the DAS address pointed at a KAR relocation brand, and the brand kept DAS’s words: its 2022 FAQ answers “What is Door to Door service?” almost exactly as DAS’s 2018 service page did, down to “our larger car transport truck.”

That brand’s parent is on the federal record. FMCSA lists CarsArrive Network Inc (USDOT 2228831, MC-425006, Mesa, Arizona) as “AUTHORIZED FOR: Broker of Property (Except Household Goods),” with a $75,000 BMC-84 bond from RLI Insurance Company effective 8 October 2013, broker authority active since its reinstatement on 9 April 2004, 0 power units, and a contact e-mail on the openlane.com domain. In other words, the business the DAS address led to by 2019 is a broker, not a carrier. Whether CarsArrive still offers the relocation service we cannot say: by 14 December 2024 the archive’s copy of www.carsrelo.com was an Indonesian-language page advertising online slot games, carsrelo.com was dead on 9 October 2026, and KAR’s 10-K for 2022, which says “the ADESA U.S. physical auction business was sold to Carvana” in May 2022, does not mention DAS or CarsRelo. KAR now files as OPENLANE, Inc. under the same SEC registration.

Other companies with “Dependable” in the name

Search results for DAS are full of similar names. On 9 October 2026, FMCSA’s census held 25 active USDOT numbers whose legal or trade names begin “Dependable Auto” or “Dependable Car.” Two are DAS’s own broker records, both “NOT AUTHORIZED” on SAFER. The other 23 are different businesses, from auto-parts, auto-care and auto-sales businesses to car shippers, and 9 of those 23 are registered as brokers or as broker-carriers. Among them:

• The Dependable Auto Shipper LLC (USDOT 2372536, MC-810024), Homestead, Florida, trade name “A-Lot Lizards”;
• Dependable Car Shippers, LLC (USDOT 2912380, MC-981407), Florida;
• Dependable Auto Move LLC (USDOT 2930192, MC-989266), Utah;
• Dependable Auto Transport Inc (USDOT 3568334), California.

We name these only so you can tell them apart from DAS; nothing is implied about any of them, and an active USDOT number does not by itself mean a company holds operating authority. None of the 23 shares a USDOT or MC number with DAS or lists an e-mail on its domain.

Federal rules work against blurred names: a broker may not offer its services “in any name other than that in which its registration is issued” (49 CFR 371.7). The legal name on your contract should match the registration you look up; our guide to looking a shipper up walks through the check.

What DAS and its successor site promised: the archived terms

People ask a car-shipper review about the contract: payment, cancelling, dates, door or terminal service, damage cover and disputes. With both sites dead, the only documents left are Internet Archive copies. The archive refused most of our requests on 9 October 2026 (HTTP 429, “too many requests”), but five came through: DAS’s “Description of Services” page (captured 15 February 2018), a DAS article on brokers and carriers (captured 6 January 2018), and from carsrelo.com the “Contract Terms and Conditions” (“Ver. 18-08,” captured 13 August 2021) and the FAQ and options pages (captured 21 January 2022). Nobody can book under them today, but they show what the brand promised, and they matter to anyone holding an old booking.

Two clauses deserve a second read. The site’s options page (captured 21 January 2022) sold five tiers, from “Carrier Direct Service” with a 3- to 5-day pickup window to door-to-door, and framed the first days at a destination service center as “3 days of free storage.” The contract treats day 3 differently: if a car “is not claimed from one of the Carrier’s terminals within 3 days of its arrival,” the company “will seek legal title” and may sell it. And where the options page promised “if it comes back to you damaged, we’ll make it 100% right,” the contract caps liability and excludes undercarriage damage, fluid leaks, tires, rims, convertible tops, “diminished or loss of market value,” loss of use and rental costs.

The DAS article on brokers is DAS describing others, not its own terms: it called a broker “a company that resells your job” whose deposit is “generally nonrefundable.” DAS’s own FAQ page could not be read: the archive answered with a redirect to carsrelo.com, so we make no claim about it.

Where the documents and the record do not line up. Four more points, stated as the documents give them:

• The February 2018 page spoke of “our larger car transport truck” and “our open or enclosed car transport trucks,” 14 months after FMCSA revoked the carrier authority on DAS’s own registration. No record we read says which registration carried DAS shipments in 2018.
• The carsrelo.com contract defines “Carrier” as CarsArrive Network, Inc. together with “any third-party carriers,” and its FAQ speaks of “our larger car transport truck,” while FMCSA lists CarsArrive Network only as an authorized broker with 0 power units. Federal rules say a broker “shall not, directly or indirectly, represent its operations to be that of a carrier” (49 CFR 371.7). We make no finding.
• The same DAS page calls open transport “our most economical service” and terminal-to-terminal “our most affordable service.”
• The January 2018 article’s author note still called DAS “the largest privately owned auto transport company in the United States,” months after KAR, a company filing annual reports with the SEC, had bought it.

For how today’s brokers answer the same questions, our reviews of SGT, Montway and AmeriFreight read each contract, and our uShip review covers a marketplace where carriers bid. If you want a company that hauls on its own trucks, check its SAFER snapshot for an “AUTHORIZED FOR” line that includes Property, and for power units.

If your car was damaged in a DAS shipment

Federal law puts transit damage on the carrier, and a dead website does not change that. Under 49 U.S.C. 14706, the carrier that receives or delivers a shipment is liable “for the actual loss or injury to the property,” and “failure to issue a receipt or bill of lading does not affect the liability of a carrier.” A carrier may not set “a period of less than 9 months for filing a claim” or less than 2 years for suing, counted from the date it gives written notice that it has turned the claim down.

FMCSA’s claim rules say what a claim needs and how fast the carrier must answer:

• What to send. A written claim, filed with the carrier within the time limits in the bill of lading or contract, with facts that identify the shipment, a statement that the carrier is liable for the loss or damage, and a specified or determinable amount of money (49 CFR 370.3).
• Acknowledgment. The carrier must acknowledge the claim in writing within 30 days of receiving it, unless it has paid or declined it by then (49 CFR 370.5).
• Decision. It must pay, decline or make a firm compromise offer in writing within 120 days, and if it cannot, write to you with the status and the reason every 60 days after that (49 CFR 370.9).

The hard part with DAS is finding someone to claim against. Three practical leads:

• The bill of lading. Federal rules require a carrier to issue one naming the shipper and receiver, origin and destination, and describing the freight (49 CFR 373.101). Whatever company and USDOT number it names is the carrier to write to, whether that is DAS or another hauler.
• The insurance on file for that date. FMCSA’s insurance history lists which insurer held each DAS filing and for which dates: the carrier’s last liability filing ran from 1 November 2008 to 10 December 2016, and cargo-insurance filings run from 1 May 2005, with a 2011 cargo filing still listed in FMCSA’s frozen table. A shipment after December 2016 falls outside every liability filing on DAS’s carrier record.
• The owner of the business. For a shipment after May 2017, KAR’s filings name it as DAS’s buyer.

This is what the records say, not legal advice on a particular claim; for an old or large loss, a lawyer who handles freight claims can say which deadlines still apply. Our car shipping guide covers damage claims with today’s brokers and carriers.

Dependable Auto Shippers reviews: what we could and could not check

Review sites. Pages that rank for the name hold old reviews, and the dates can mislead. Transport Rankings, a car-shipping review site whose terms allow fair dealing for research and review, lists 80 reviews for DAS. The one Google showed us first is dated 4 September 2025 on the page, but its text describes a pickup on 18 December 2013, 12 years earlier by our arithmetic, and mentions a “terminal to terminal” option. The page does not explain the gap. A recent date on a DAS review is not proof DAS was shipping cars that year.

BBB. bbb.org’s robots.txt closes its search pages to crawlers and no DAS profile turned up in our search check, so we use no BBB figure.

Trustpilot and Reddit. Left out of this review as a matter of policy.

Regulators and courts. We read no regulator release, complaint or court docket naming Dependable Auto Shippers, so we describe none; FMCSA’s revocation records are set out above exactly as the datasets give them. To report a shipper, FMCSA’s National Consumer Complaint Database covers brokers, carriers “and Auto Haulers.”

Before you book anyone using the DAS name

If you are shipping a car you have just bought, the shipment is a separate contract from the sale. See our guides to buying a car out of state, taking delivery of a car bought online and the pre-purchase inspection; auction buyers should add Copart fees or CarMax auction costs. For the dealer side, the FTC’s used-car buying guide applies.

Common questions

Is Dependable Auto Shippers still in business?

We found no sign of it. On 9 October 2026 its website address forwarded to www.carsrelo.com, which did not resolve, and FMCSA showed all three registrations in DAS’s name without operating authority: the carrier record inactive since its authority was revoked on 19 December 2016, and both broker records “NOT AUTHORIZED.” KAR Auction Services bought DAS in May 2017 and had folded the address into a CarsArrive relocation site by December 2019.

Was DAS a broker or a carrier?

Mainly a carrier. Its carrier registration, USDOT 517538 and MC-249800, listed 63 power units and 56 drivers on its last update in November 2015 and held common, contract and household-goods authority. DAS also held two broker registrations, MC-491106 (“DAS Specialized Logistics”) and MC-191780, both revoked.

What is Dependable Auto Shippers’ MC number?

The carrier’s was MC-249800, under USDOT 517538 in Mesquite, Texas. The broker records were MC-491106 (USDOT 2232484) and MC-191780 (USDOT 2213481, Linden, New Jersey). None has active authority, so none should appear on a booking today.

Who bought Dependable Auto Shippers?

KAR Auction Services, which reported acquiring DAS in May 2017 and now files with the SEC as OPENLANE, Inc. KAR gave one combined price, about $47.0 million, for DAS and a data company bought in the same half-year. By December 2019 the DAS web address forwarded to KAR’s CarsArrive Auto Relocation site, which is now dead too.

Is The Dependable Auto Shipper LLC the same company as DAS?

Not according to FMCSA’s files. The Dependable Auto Shipper LLC (USDOT 2372536, MC-810024) is registered in Homestead, Florida, with its own MC number and no e-mail on DAS’s domain. Check the numbers, not the name.

How do I file a damage claim for a car DAS shipped?

In writing, against the carrier named on your bill of lading, with facts identifying the shipment and a specific amount. Federal law makes the carrier liable for actual loss or damage and bars it from allowing less than 9 months to claim. The carrier must acknowledge within 30 days and decide within 120. For where the records point, see the damage section.