In the summer of 1934, a twenty-three-year-old out-of-work teacher named Harold Getz needed to get from Chicago to Los Angeles. He had about four dollars in his pocket and no realistic prospect of affording a train ticket. What he had instead was a classified ad he'd clipped from the Chicago Tribune, placed by a businessman who needed his Buick delivered to a dealership in Pasadena. Harold called the number. Three days later he was driving west on Route 66, sleeping in the car, spending almost nothing, and seeing the country in a way that most Americans of his generation never got to.
Harold wasn't an anomaly. He was part of a quietly thriving Depression-era travel ecosystem that almost nobody talks about today.
How the System Actually Worked
The driveaway arrangement — as it came to be known — emerged from a simple collision of needs. On one side: people who needed cars moved across the country. Wealthy families relocating to warmer climates. Businesses transferring vehicles between locations. Dealers who'd sold a car to a buyer in another state. On the other side: people with time, a driver's license, and absolutely no money.
The mechanics were refreshingly simple. Car owners or dealers would place classified ads in newspapers specifying the origin city, the destination, and the basic terms. Drivers would respond, show up, and after a minimal vetting process — often nothing more than presenting a driver's license and making a reasonable impression — they'd be handed the keys. The car owner covered the gas, or at least the first tank. The driver provided the labor and accepted responsibility for delivering the vehicle in good condition within a specified timeframe.
The arrangement required almost no infrastructure. No company, no app, no formal organization. Just classified ads, telephone calls, and a handshake. In the depths of the Depression, when millions of Americans were looking for any angle that opened a door, word spread fast.
The Classified Ad as a Travel Agency
Through the 1930s and into the 1940s, the driveaway system grew substantially more organized — though it never quite lost its improvisational character. Dedicated driveaway companies began appearing in major cities, acting as matchmakers between car owners and drivers. They kept files of available vehicles, maintained loose records of drivers, and charged modest fees for the service. Auto Transport and Driveaway Company, founded in Chicago in the 1940s, became one of the more prominent operations, eventually expanding to multiple cities.
But even within these more formalized structures, the spirit of the thing remained wonderfully low-tech. Travelers still found rides primarily through newspaper ads and word of mouth. A person who wanted to get from New York to Florida in February would scan the classifieds, make a few calls, and often have options within days. The whole transaction could be completed in an afternoon.
For Depression-era Americans who had grown up in an era of genuine geographic constraint — where most working-class people lived and died within fifty miles of their birthplace — the driveaway system represented something almost intoxicating. The country was suddenly accessible. All it cost was the willingness to show up and drive.
The Riders Who Saw America
The people who used driveaway arrangements in the 1930s and 1940s cut across a surprisingly wide demographic. Unemployed workers drifting toward rumored job opportunities. College students heading home for breaks. Writers and artists who couldn't afford conventional travel but needed to move. Young couples eloping across state lines. Veterans returning from the Pacific who weren't ready to stop moving yet.
What they shared was a particular relationship with improvisation. Driveaway travel required flexibility — you went where the cars were going, not necessarily where you'd planned. A driver hoping to reach San Francisco might end up in Denver because that was the available vehicle. A trip planned for a week might stretch to two if the car needed a repair in Amarillo. The journey was, by design, partly out of your control.
Many of the people who used this system in its Depression heyday later described it as one of the more genuinely educational experiences of their lives. Not because they were seeking education, but because being dropped into unfamiliar places with limited resources and no fixed itinerary has a way of teaching things that planned travel doesn't.
The Part Nobody Tells You: It Still Exists
Here's where this story takes a turn that most people find genuinely surprising. The driveaway system never actually died. It evolved.
Today, companies like Auto Driveaway (one of the oldest, tracing its lineage back to mid-century operations) and iDriveaway still operate legitimate driveaway programs across the United States. The model is essentially identical to what Harold Getz stumbled into in 1934: a car needs to get from one city to another, and you can drive it there for free or near-free in exchange for delivering it on time and in good condition.
The modern version has acquired some additional friction — background checks, deposit requirements, age minimums, insurance verification — but the fundamental economics remain intact. Drivers typically receive the vehicle with a full tank of gas, are given a reasonable delivery window, and often cover only their own food and lodging along the way. On a long route, the savings compared to conventional travel can run into hundreds of dollars.
The listings aren't on any single platform. They're scattered across the websites of individual driveaway companies, some regional classified boards, and occasionally travel forums where people share tips. Finding them takes a little digging, which is probably why most people have never heard of the option. But the option exists.
The Enduring Appeal of the Accidental Road Trip
There's something in the driveaway model that maps oddly well onto how a lot of people want to travel now — loosely, cheaply, with some element of the unexpected built in. The Instagram-ready itinerary has its appeal, but so does the version where you end up in Tucson in October because that's where the car was going, and it turns out Tucson in October is one of the better things you've ever accidentally encountered.
Harold Getz made it to Los Angeles. He got a job teaching at a school in Pasadena, stayed for two years, and later said the whole thing started because he answered a classified ad on a Tuesday morning with nothing better to do.
The classified ads look different now. But the cars still need delivering.
