hittheroad.ca<--- Anyone?

[Kunman]

anyone used this website before?? basically its an agency to link travelers up with car owners to help the owners ship their cars, while the traveler gets to the destination for free + compensations for gas and etc.

Seems like a very cheap way to see Canada if you camp along the way/sleep in the car +cook your own food with portable stove and food from supermarkets.

Anyone have experiences doing this?

[pumpi134]

The guy that runs it, is very dis-organized (Dave). He left me hanging on a trip. We set up up a departure date and then as that date was coming closer he would not return any emails. I had to change all my travel plans at the last second. I was quite flexable with my dates but just didnt hear from him. Very dissappointing.

[Kuurgen]

Maybe it's the worrywart in me, but driving a stranger's vehicle across the border does not sound appealing to me.

[HitTheRoad]

Hello.

My name is David Smaller. I run HitTheRoad.ca (http://www.HitTheRoad.ca)

I would like to offer my answers to any questions you may have.

Also, I would like to direct anyone to the travel blogs of some recent HitTheRoad.ca drivers. They have shared some of their own experiences from their HitTheRoad.ca road trips. They offer a great opportunity to hear some first hand HitTheRoad.ca experiences.

Avid Traveller Marisa recently drove from Florida to Ontario for us. Her HitTheRoad.ca blog article can be found at CleverTravel.ca (http://clevertravel.ca/an-inspiring-way-to-travel/)


Travel Writer Carolyn B. Heller drove one of our cars from Vancouver BC to Southern California. She writes about her HitTheRoad experience at Wanderlust and Lipstick (http://wanderlustandlipstick.com/blogs/wanderfood/2012/05/15/wanderfood-wednesday-want-to-take-your-own-hit-the-road-hungry-road-trip-heres-how/)

Kuurgen, you will see that both of the above trips crossed the Canada / US border - and without problems. We are US and Canadian Customs recognized. When we send cars across the border, we know what we are doing. We make sure that everything is done completely safely and legally. I would not send a car that I would not drive myself.

PUMPI134, I am sorry that you left with a bad taste in your mouth. It is a little difficult for me to reply to an anonymous, vague allegation. I am really not sure about the circumstances that you allude to. If you would like to provide more information, I would be happy to respond. I might ask that we try to keep the discussion professional, respectful and that we avoid personal attacks.

If anyone has any questions, I would be happy to answer. I welcome any reader of this who is interested in a road trip to please consider applying to drive with HitTheRoad.ca - we are always looking for new drivers.


David Smaller

[Kunman]

^ wow thanks dave, its pretty awsome to have the owner here to answer my question lol

my question is that I am a university student, been driving 4 years, was rear ended so had not at fault accident, and a minor ticket two years ago( not speeding )

would i be eligible to drive with my family friend?

[thepersianguy]

if i want to drive from toronto to saskatchewan and back sometime next week is that possible?

[Kunman]

if i want to drive from toronto to saskatchewan and back sometime next week is that possible?

likly not

http://www.hittheroad.ca/htr/roadtrips.html

[thepersianguy]

likly not

http://www.hittheroad.ca/htr/roadtrips.html

oh thanks, i didn't notice the schedule on the site

[Kunman]

bump

[Kunman]

2nd bump.....

[HitTheRoad]

Hello Kunman

We would really need to see your driving history on that. Also, for the vast majority of trips, drivers must be 25 years or older. There are some exceptions. However, these are rare.

Thank you for posting the link to our Available Cars Page (http://hittheroad.ca/htr/roadtrips.html). Trips from Toronto to West are common this time of year ( Spring and Summer ). However, most trips - especially round trips - would require some flexibility on the part of the driver.

We have several trips available East / West right now!


David Smaller
HitTheRoad.ca

[HitTheRoad]

Hey thepersianguy

We might have a trip to Saskatoon available. Not confirmed yet. But possible.
Interested?
Please see the application process at HitTheRoad.ca (http://hittheroad.ca/htr/apply.html)
Looking forward to hearing from you.

David Smaller
HitTheRoad.ca

[Jyeatbvg69]

What happens if you get into an accident with someone else's car?

[thepersianguy]

Hey thepersianguy

We might have a trip to Saskatoon available. Not confirmed yet. But possible.
Interested?
Please see the application process at HitTheRoad.ca (http://hittheroad.ca/htr/apply.html)
Looking forward to hearing from you.

David Smaller
HitTheRoad.ca

hey david,
thanks for the update but the thing i needed to drive over ended up being shipped on account so i'm not in urgent need anymore, however i may still be interested. i'll check the link you posted. any ideas about the way back? how would that work out?
thanks

[HitTheRoad]

What happens if you get into an accident with someone else's car?


Thank you for this question. We believe that there are "no accidents." However, all vehicles driven are covered by standard automobile insurance.
In the ( hopefully ) unlikely event of a collision, the drivers personal liability is limited to $500. Before you can HitTheRoad.ca all drivers must provide a delivery confirmation deposit of $500. At time of pick up and drop off at vehicle inspection is conducted. After the car is returned by the driver in the same condition that it was picked up, the driver has their deposit returned.

Fore more information, please see the HitTheRoad.ca FAQs (http://www.hittheroad.ca/htr/FAQ.html)

HitTheRoad.ca
Delivering your vehicle to you

[ercc]

Hello all,

Stumbled upon this thread.

I drove a car with hittheroad.ca from Toronto to Hallandale, Florida last fall. The experience was generally excellent. David explained the process well and the border was painless. The owner of the vehicle was an older lady who was kind and easy to deal with. I even received a text from her grandson wishing me happy holidays months after the drive.

There was a fair amount of preparation needed so you really need to be fully committed from the get-go. Everything is basically explained in the FAQ although I recommend getting further clarification of the exact border-crossing process which David has available in a seperate document.

Note that this is an experience for a specific type of traveller/situation. It's certainly not going to work for everyone. You can't be too fussy or demanding about anything as the vehicle owner is promised a certain level of driver competency (ie no major infractions) and exact delivery date. If you can't meet these standards it's probably not realistic to expect David, and by extension the owner, to change them for you. He did however allow me to leave one day later which greatly helped my situation.

If anyone has any questions about my experience I would be very happy to answer in this thread or via a PM.

[dahhunter]

Super Glad i found this..

I love driving..

and im signing up to be a drive right now..


Will post my Experience. when it happens..

:-)

[FunMonty]

Pumpi134 is pretty accurate in their general assessment of Hit the Road. If you're interested in a full review of what it is like to drive for hittheroad.ca and the good/bad that may come with it, read this:
A Word of Warning about HittheRoad.ca (http://redhunttravel.com/2012/02/travel-articles/road-trips/warning-about-hittheroad-ca/)

[coolspot]

Yeah - there are just too many variables involved in such a company. The blog posting from http://redhunttravel.com/2012/02/travel-articles/road-trips/warning-about-hittheroad-ca/ basically says it all.

[HitTheRoad]

There certainly are many variables to any kind of travel. That starts with the person doing the travel.

People driving for HitTheRoad.ca have had bad experiences, such as the one mentioned above who wasn't able to effectively look after the car in his care.

Please have had good experiences, such as ERCC and also the author of this HitTheRoad.ca review: http://clevertravel.ca/an-inspiring-way-to-travel/ (http://clevertravel.ca/an-inspiring-way-to-travel/).

What you get out of it is very much dependent on what you bring to it. Luckily the overwhelming majority have good experiences, or HitTheRoad.ca (http://HitTheRoad.ca) would not be in business!

[MJB]

Pumpi134 is pretty accurate in their general assessment of Hit the Road. If you're interested in a full review of what it is like to drive for hittheroad.ca and the good/bad that may come with it, read this:
A Word of Warning about HittheRoad.ca (http://redhunttravel.com/2012/02/travel-articles/road-trips/warning-about-hittheroad-ca/)


There certainly are many variables to any kind of travel. That starts with the person doing the travel.

People driving for HitTheRoad.ca have had bad experiences, such as the one mentioned above who wasn't able to effectively look after the car in his care.

Please have had good experiences, such as ERCC and also the author of this HitTheRoad.ca review: http://clevertravel.ca/an-inspiring-way-to-travel/ (http://clevertravel.ca/an-inspiring-way-to-travel/).

What you get out of it is very much dependent on what you bring to it. Luckily the overwhelming majority have good experiences, or HitTheRoad.ca (http://HitTheRoad.ca) would not be in business!

Mr. Smaller [AKA HitTheRoad] as a long time reader of RFD I politely suggest that you might make a much more appropriate response to the bad experience of Red Hunt and "A Word of Warning about HittheRoad.ca". Your comment above (i.e. wasn't able to effectively look after the car in his care) are not at all sufficient IMO.
But after reading his article, and seeing your response, I can only surmise that you ‘fleeced’ him. Who would do business with you, I would not.

P.S. I must admit that the other articles that Red Hunt has written are most interesting.

[HitTheRoad]

Hello
The driver in question drove for HitTheRoad in the spring of 2011. He drove twice. The first trip went without problem. He enjoyed it so much he quickly returned for another. During the second trip he caused some fairly minor damage for which he was charged $100. As previously discussed in this forum, the possibility of damage to the car is one of the reasons that we take the deposit. I am happy to say that drivers get their deposits returned in the overwhelming majority of cases. If you would like, please check in with any of the other drivers mentioned in this discussion - they all had their full deposit returned following their successful deliveries.

[djpositivek]

People driving for HitTheRoad.ca have had bad experiences, such as the one mentioned above who wasn't able to effectively look after the car in his care.


What did you expect him to do, sleep by the car so nobody bumped into it while it was parked in the secure parking lot? Sounds more to me like you were unable to effectively communicate and return his deposit or at least $400 of the $500.


Hello
During the second trip he caused some fairly minor damage for which he was charged $100.

You only returned $100 of the $500 deposit according to Red Hunt's recent post from a few days ago. That means you kept $400. If indeed you only provided $100 to the owners that means you pocketed an extra $300 for yourself.

[HitTheRoad]

Regarding the last statement, that is absolutely not what happened. He was charged $100.

[MJB]

Regarding the last statement, that is absolutely not what happened. He was charged $100.


This was posted by Red Hunt (from his website and I have copied it here (http://redhunttravel.com/2012/02/travel-articles/road-trips/warning-about-hittheroad-ca/))


Hi MJB,
Thanks for sharing that link, interesting discussion indeed. I don’t want to get into a chat on RFD as I’d just be re-hashing a lot of what I wrote here already. Feel free to advise people of my comments posted below.

A few comments on Mr. Smaller’s last post on that thread (posted on Jul 24th, 2012 12:34 AM):

“The first trip went without problem.”
If by me looking into renting a car to get home and being told the delivery vhicle was in the wrong city = no problems, I guess so. Had I charged HTR an hourly rate for my time lost, they’d owe me more than my deposit back! I returned for a second trip thinking it was a fluke – give them the benefit of the doubt that the issues were an anomaly (not so).

“he caused some fairly minor damage for which he was charged $100.”
After back and forth discussions, this ‘charge’ was not agreed upon. It was a loyalty offer he made with the client himself. Nor did ‘I’ create the damage to the vehicle.

HTR originally advised me to ‘talk to the client’ directly to resolve the issue. I did and they accepted it as no fault of mine. They signed the delivery agreement indicating that all was good. Deposit to be returned. End of story.

Despite that, Hit the Road feels otherwise for unknown reasons.

[TrevorK]

Pumpi134 is pretty accurate in their general assessment of Hit the Road. If you're interested in a full review of what it is like to drive for hittheroad.ca and the good/bad that may come with it, read this:
A Word of Warning about HittheRoad.ca (http://redhunttravel.com/2012/02/travel-articles/road-trips/warning-about-hittheroad-ca/)

Wow, this really seems to expose the major flaws around HitTheRoad because they require the driver of the vehicle to cover any/all damage up to the amount of the insurance deductible yet do not have to provide proof that a claim was ever made.

It seems as if the driver has to hope to get lucky they do not become the victim of damage that is out of their control otherwise they are out their own money. It really seems like the $500 deductible should be covered by the company and not the driver as a cost of doing business.

[ThomasMagnuson]

I came across this thread through someone's comment about in on Red Hunt Travel's thread. I'd be very wary of HitTheRoad; after almost a year, I'm still waiting to get my $500 deposit back. I'd be happy to share more details about my experience with HitTheRoad with anyone who's interested, but here's the Coles Notes version.

The trip I went on was delivering a Mazda 3 from Vancouver to Dallas; the car's owner was a Canadian doctor who was going to fly down to work there for a year, and he was going to meet me at Dallas airport a week after I left Vancouver. That's an important detail, actually, since it turned out I couldn't drive the car across the boarder by myself since the car's owner hadn't yet taken up residence in the US (the US customs & immigration guys said that "property" [the car] couldn't go into the States ahead of the owner). This is something that David (hittheroad's owner) hadn't anticipated, and didn't have a solution for. I tried crossing the boarder twice, each time with same result (I'd been provided with a copy of the car owner's visa acceptance as well as David's blurb to give the boarder agents, but in the end the basic issue was that the owner wasn't yet a resident of the US, & therefore I couldn't take his property there ahead of him). With my vacation & non-refundable return-trip plane tickets at stake (I planned to come back through Vegas), and no solution forwarded from HitTheRoad, I came up with the idea of having the car's owner drive me across the boarder (which is perfectly OK) then take a bus back to Vancouver. David agreed to this as did the owner. The boarder stuff wound up delaying things for a couple of days, which was unfortunate. An aside to the boarder: the customs & immigration guys also told me that, legally, a driver delivering a car across the border had to be an employee of the vehicle delivery company. Since drivers for HitTheRoad aren't employees or subcontractors, that meant I very well could have been refused entry to the US even if the car owner had already taken up residency. The moral of this part of the story is that David should have been aware of these details but wasn't, and that put my trip at risk. Those delays aside, eventually my trip got underway and I delivered the car to Dallas. The car did get scraped along a bottom door panel, though, and I sent pictures to the owner and David as soon as I noticed it. Once at Dallas, the owner suggested he retain $100 of the $500 in cash he was slated to give me for the drive. I gave him my contact info and offered to pay for the repair, but the owner was satisfied as-is, and we happily parted ways.

Now the really bad part started after the trip was over. David had made it clear that I needed to send in signed copies of the Vehicle Delivery Agreement (between me & the car owner) - that was fine and I did that. It turned out that David also wanted me to "fill in" a receipt showing I'd received my $500 deposit >before< he'd actually return it. I felt uncomfortable with this since it was essentially fraud since I hadn't, well, 'received' anything. So I prepared the receipt but added a note to it to the effect that the receipt was for money yet to be received. Now David didn't like that, and it further turned out that by "fill in" the receipt he meant "sign" and "send by ground mail". A long story short, each time I complied with David's instructions, he'd change them. For instance, when I sent in the receipt that he wanted signed, David mailed me a different pre-filled in receipt and told me to sent *that* one in. I sent a scanned copy, and eventually hand delivered it to his office in Toronto - and yet no deposit's come back. At this point, despite following all of his instructions several times over, he still hasn't paid back my deposit. What's worse, he's got signed receipts from me that says he *has* returned my deposit.

I tried complaining about this to the Better Business Bureau as well as the Ontario Ministry of Consumer Affairs. Unfortunately, though, neither consider drivers for HitTheRoad to be customers or consumers as such, and since there's no commercial transaction that takes place (i.e. you don't buy anything), they won't process any complaints you make because it's "beyond their purview". Still, that doesn't stop David from using the BBB's name and logo on his site to imply that drivers have some form of recourse - in fact, though, they don't (note also that HitTheRoad is very emphatic about drivers not being employees, either, so you've got no recourse to labour organizations). Another way that drivers are open to exploitation is the Vehicle Delivery Agreement: it's between you & the car owner, and not between you and HittTheRoad. In other words, you've got nothing in writing that says why you're giving David your $500, and when he'll give it back.

Anyways, I'm not sure whether David rips off all of his drivers or if he's selective about the ones he goes after. I was probably an easy mark, and it may well be the case that if you do decide to go ahead with a trip through HitTheRoad, you'll get your deposit back. That said, as Red Hunt's blog says, I'm not the only one this has happened to. If you do decide to take the plunge, I'd suggest making sure you have some form of contract between you & David that's very specific as to when you get your deposit back, as well as your exact role (i.e. - a customer, employee, or something else). Also, if the destination is in the US, make sure the car's owner will have taken up residence there by the time you go.

David's set up is really clever, actually, in that it exploits the grey area between customer & worker such that you don't have a pot to pee in if he does decide he wants to keep your money for whatever reason.

And David: I'd still like my deposit back.

[MJB]

Regarding the last statement, that is absolutely not what happened. He was charged $100.


<edit>...
And David: I'd still like my deposit back.

It seems there more of a pattern here Mr. David Smaller [AKA HitTheRoad] then you are willing to admit to.

Thomas Magnuson, thanks for your post, you reveals even more flaws HitTheRoad. From the way Mr Smaller does business it is not surprising that he specifically stays out of the signed agreement but holds on to the deposit. It allows him to keep the deposit or as much as he so chooses as he has done in your case and also did for an extended and unexplained length of time with Red Hunt.

It seems the deposit should really be paid to the car owner. So that when you drop it off you have the agreement and the car while the owner has the $500 and the ownership (of course). This scenario would help the driver and owner settle any disputes. The way Mr Smaller arranges it, allows you little to no recourse in a disputed transaction (even if the dispute appears to be agreed upon between the driver and the owner). It appears that Mr Smaller should charge a flat fee, as their is no need for him to be involved in the transaction after he links the driver and owner and supplies them with a 'standard agreement' that they could use for their transaction.

I resubmit to Mr. David Smaller... Who would do business with you, I would NOT.

[FunMonty]

We need Sean O'Shea, Mr Consumer SOS to crack this case!

[dahhunter]

I was starting to go through the process to do this..

However im glad i was to lazy to fill out his lame application form..

I wouldnt want to be stuck in the situation like any of these.

[matdwyer]

I can't believe how often people are getting scratches and dents on their cars. I know you're driving for a long time, but in all the trips to florida or long distance road trips across the US I've never had a scratch or dent, it seems like people are getting them left right and center when driving for these guys. Weird.

[HitTheRoad]

For those of you not overly jaded by some of the negativity on this thread ( negativity on internet forums, who knew?! ; ) ... please check out this CBC TV News segment (http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/Windsor/ID/2314445520/) about a HitTheRoad.ca (http://HitTheRoad.ca) road trip happening right now.

Alex Bushell is driving from Toronto to the San Francisco area right now. CBC Windsor found it pretty exciting. (http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/Windsor/ID/2314445520/) 'Hope that you will, too! The segment begins at 26:15

As happens in about 95% of HitTheRoad.ca (http://HitTheRoad.ca) road trips, Alex has been having a great adventure driving across North America. Offering fun road trip adventures to people like Alex is a big part of the reason that we do what we do at HitTheRoad :)

[steve-0101]

For those of you not overly jaded by some of the negativity on this thread ( negativity on internet forums, who knew?! ; ) ... please check out this CBC TV News segment (http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/Windsor/ID/2314445520/) about a HitTheRoad.ca (http://HitTheRoad.ca) road trip happening right now.

Alex Bushell is driving from Toronto to the San Francisco area right now. CBC Windsor found it pretty exciting. (http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/Windsor/ID/2314445520/) 'Hope that you will, too! The segment begins at 26:15

As happens in about 95% of HitTheRoad.ca (http://HitTheRoad.ca) road trips, Alex has been having a great adventure driving across North America. Offering fun road trip adventures to people like Alex is a big part of the reason that we do what we do at HitTheRoad :)

After reading this thread, I would never use your company.

Kudos to you for bumping this thread though, otherwise I would never have known to avoid it.