Christina Allen: from pet owner to pet transporter on CitizenShipper

Before Christina Richelle Allen ever bid on a shipment, she was on the other side of the transaction, nervously handing her pets off to a driver she’d never met, refreshing her phone for updates, hoping everything would go smoothly. That experience stuck with her. When she eventually signed up to drive for CitizenShipper herself, she already knew exactly what pet owners were feeling, because she’d felt it too.

How a cross-country move led to a new career

Christina moved to Florida in 2023 with her three kids and two dogs. For years, she’d had a clear goal in mind: build a business centered on animals. She just hadn’t found the right path yet.

She’d first come across CitizenShipper back in 2021 as a customer, using the platform to have her own pets transported to her. The process made an impression. When she was browsing online one afternoon and the platform came up again, she didn’t close the tab. She signed up to drive instead.

“I absolutely love being a driver,” she says. “I love that I’m able to work with all different types of animals.”

That crossover from customer to driver gives her a frame of reference most new transporters don’t have. She’s sat in the waiting-and-wondering position. She knows what a reassuring update feels like when you’re worried about your pet, and she knows what silence feels like too. That’s shaped how she operates.

What Christina actually does on a transport run

Christina drives a 2022 Toyota Prius and focuses mostly on southern routes. Snow, she admits, makes her nervous, so she sticks to the warmer regions where the roads stay predictable. She transports dogs primarily, though her goal is to work with as many different species as she can as her business grows.

She prices her routes based on mileage and bids only on VIP shipments. On CitizenShipper’s bidding system, where drivers submit competitive offers on listed shipments, she says consistency and communication are what separate a successful bid from one that gets ignored.

During a transport, she texts updates to the pet owner every hour. Not when something notable happens, every hour. She also uses Life360 for real-time GPS tracking, which she shares with clients so they can see exactly where their pet is at any moment.

“Even when I have no service, it still shows my every move,” she says of the app. For a pet owner sitting at home trying to picture where their dog is on the highway, that kind of transparency matters more than it might seem.

Wondering what verified drivers in your area charge? Check real transport costs and get quotes from background-checked drivers like Christina without any commitment upfront.

The thing she says most drivers underestimate

Christina is quick to talk about safety and logistics, but what she comes back to most is something less tangible: anxiety. Specifically, the anxiety of a pet owner handing their animal to a complete stranger.

“You are a stranger to every person you come in contact with,” she says. “That can be super anxious for them, handing their babies off to someone they don’t know. Being attentive and easing their anxiety is what’s really made me build a trusting relationship with every client I come in contact with.”

She approaches each transport with that in mind from the very first message. Clear communication before pickup, consistent updates during the drive, and a genuine effort to make owners feel like they still have eyes on their pet even when they’re hundreds of miles away.

For the animals themselves, she makes sure each one has a cozy, comfortable space for the trip. She carries a first aid kit, water, and food, so she’s prepared if a dog needs something unexpected on a long stretch of highway. She checks her CitizenShipper profile and performance metrics every day, treating it less like a side gig and more like a business she’s actively managing.

CitizenShipper drivers go through a background check process before they can bid on shipments. If you want to understand how the platform screens and verifies drivers, the Trust and Safety Hub lays out exactly what’s involved.

The coaching call that sharpened her approach

Christina participated in CitizenShipper’s driver coaching calls after joining the platform. She didn’t go in with major problems to fix, she describes her experience before the call as going well. But the calls gave her something more specific to work with.

The biggest takeaway was paying close attention to each animal’s individual needs. Dogs are not interchangeable. A nervous rescue behaves completely differently from a dog who rides in cars all the time. An older pet has different comfort requirements than a puppy. Christina says the coaching reinforced that reading each animal individually, rather than applying a one-size approach, is what keeps transports running smoothly.

She recommends the calls to any new driver without hesitation. “Putting the client and fur baby first,” she says, is the framework she came away with.

Her advice if you’re thinking about becoming a pet transporter

Christina’s advice for new drivers cuts straight to what she sees as the core of the job: ease people’s anxiety. It sounds simple, and in some ways it is, but it requires sustained effort over every single transport.

That means answering messages promptly, sending updates before the client has to ask, and remembering that the person waiting on the other end is probably checking their phone every twenty minutes. It also means getting the operational details right, understanding what’s required to operate as a certified animal transporter, knowing your route, having supplies, and not improvising the basics.

For anyone curious about what the financial side looks like before committing, CitizenShipper’s driver profit calculator lets you estimate earnings based on your routes and costs, which is worth running before you take your first booking.

Christina’s longer-term goal is simple to state and harder to execute: build a consistent customer base and take her business as far as she can. She checks her metrics daily, responds to reviews, and is already thinking about expanding the types of services she offers. This isn’t a job she fell into, it’s the thing she’d been working toward for years before she found the right vehicle for it.

Thinking about starting your own pet transport business? See how drivers like Christina get set up on CitizenShipper and what it takes to start bidding on your first shipments.

Why she keeps doing it

Ask Christina what the most rewarding part of the job is and she doesn’t mention the income or the flexibility, those things are real, but they’re not what she leads with.

“Being able to work with animals and being able to give every single one of them extra love and attention,” she says. That’s it. That’s the answer.

For a person who built her professional life around a long-held goal of working with animals, getting paid to spend hours with dogs in the back of her Prius, updating their owners every hour, making sure they have water and a soft place to lie down, is not a compromise. It’s exactly what she was aiming for.

If you’re looking to ship a dog and want a driver who already knows what it’s like to be in your position, browse available dog transporters on CitizenShipper and find someone whose approach matches what you need.