There aren’t many recent and comprehensive Carrier Direct experience posts on here, so I thought I’d create a thread to share my experience and some tips. Just got the car today, so I figured I’d post while it’s still fresh!

Carrier Direct is an option to have a third-party carrier deliver your car if you live more than 250 miles away from a delivery center. It costs $750 plus tax, and Tesla coordinates with the carrier after everything is situated and the car is ready to go.

Carrier Direct WILL change your EDD to TBD before your VIN, despite Tesla swearing up and down that it shouldn’t make a difference. We had it on our account for about a month from January-February, but decided to get rid of it to see if it made a difference, and an EDD range showed up almost immediately afterwards.

What I recommend doing is setting your profile to pick up the car at your closest delivery center until you get a VIN. You have until your car arrives at the delivery center to decide. In order to switch, you need to call/text Tesla or your SA and ask to switch. You will then get an email from the delivery center with information on Carrier Direct, and ask you to accept (note: they will reimburse you I think $150 to come down and pick the car up instead of doing Carrier Direct). Once you accept and you have a VIN, they will send you paperwork to sign via FedEx or UPS (overnight, with a pre-paid overnight return envelope). Your Delivery Date will be updated to the date they expect the car to be ready to be scheduled for pickup. It’s exciting to see that date, but that is likely not the date that you will actually get the car.

You will need to return the paperwork, provide proof of insurance, and pay (via Plaid or loan check from the lender) before the carrier is scheduled, so while you can wait until the car gets there, if you want it ASAP I would recommend starting the process once you get a VIN.

We got our VIN April 27th. Switched to Carrier Direct on 5/2. Received paperwork on 5/4 and signed/returned the same day; paperwork arrived back at the delivery center on 5/5. Car arrived at the delivery center on 5/9. Delivery date was set to 5/11 but all actions on our end were completed by 5/6.

Once the car is ready and you’ve completed all pre-delivery tasks, they will contact the transporter to coordinate pickup. The transporter will then be in contact with you to provide you with a delivery date/time. Mt. Kisco officially told us that the transporter would call to give us a 7-day delivery window, but unofficially said it’d be more like 2-3 days.

Mt. Kisco let us know on 5/9 that they received the car that day, and that they’d be queuing it up for pickup by the transporter on the evening of 5/10. We got a call from the transporter on 5/12 letting us know that he had the car and was going to be delivering it the next morning. Actual delivery was 7:30am on 5/13, and I got a heads up he was on his way via text at 6:20am. The guy was very nice, and it was a quick drop-off. He had a 3-car open carrier and apparently it was his fourth trip up here this week. We never heard from Mt. Kisco that it was being picked up.

So, to build off my previous comment about scheduling, what really happened was the car was ready for pickup the evening of the 10th, but then it sat there waiting for someone to pick it up. The transporter then is going to deliver ASAP, because what are they going to do, let it sit on a truck in a parking lot for 5 days? If they have a truck and driver, they’ll deliver it as soon as they can. Just one thing to note: once it hit May 12th the app deleted the May 11th date and switched to saying they’d contact us when the car was ready for delivery. Ignore that, especially if you know that the car is ready to go.

If you have a trade-in, you’ll need to be home for them to pick up the car you’re trading in. If not, they will just drop it off in your driveway. You do not need to be home (but, let’s be real, you WILL be home staring out the window waiting for that carrier to arrive). Like at the delivery center, you will have to accept the terms in order to get into your car.

In terms of the car, it looks pretty good. Don’t see any damage from being on the open carrier besides some pollen on it (I’m sure it helped that the weather is nice and it’s not the winter). The biggest issue is that I wasn’t immediately able to accept delivery, but Tesla sent a text at 9:43 asking me to accept delivery. We also needed to sign a delivery declaration and some state registration forms to send back to Mt. Kisco to file with the state. Car came with plates and a temporary registration on it, so it was good to go besides the temporary app issue!

Just as a disclaimer, I had as much information as I did regarding the status of the car because I texted the Tesla number a lot (the messages were sent to Mt. Kisco) and they usually answered my questions within a day or two.

I know a few others have gotten/are getting deliveries via Carrier Direct around now/soon (including Pantha, whose white car is the one pictured on the carrier), so feel free to chime in with your experiences!