About PAX
PAX Pet Transport provides private, door-to-door ground transport for pets across the continental United States. We focus on careful planning, clear communication, and a higher standard of care from pickup to delivery.
As a founder-led company, PAX is built around accountability. When you book with us, you know who is responsible for the trip, who is coordinating the details, and who you can reach if something matters.
TTAGGS + Dashing Pets, now one company
Pax Pet Transport unites TTAGGS and Dashing Pets — two established ground transport operations with 17 years of combined road experience — into a single company. Same drivers, same standards, same vehicles, now under one name.
Founder
I'm Ian, the founder of PAX. This is a family company — my parents have worked in pet transport for over a decade — and I started it to make long-distance pet transport more personal, transparent, and accountable, and to bring the customer closer to the driver.
That means taking better care of pets, communicating clearly with families, and treating drivers with respect. In this industry, customers are often charged add-ons for gas, tolls, difficult routes, or pets with special care needs — but those fees do not always reach the person actually doing the transport.
PAX is built differently. When a trip requires more work, more responsibility, or more planning, our drivers should be paid for that. We believe better pet care starts with a better standard for the people providing it.
Ian
Founder
Our Story
I'm Ian, and Pax is a family company. My parents have worked in pet transport for over a decade, so I grew up seeing what good care actually requires: planning, communication, patience, and drivers who understand they're responsible for someone's pet, not just another route. I also saw the industry's biggest flaw up close — layers of brokers and dispatch apps standing between the family paying for the trip and the person actually driving it. I started Pax to close that gap and bring the customer closer to the driver. I'm an economist by training and have lived in Southern California, Washington DC, rural Germany, and Spain — today I split my time between Argentina and Northern Virginia, which means Pax was built from the start to run as a tightly coordinated operation across distance and time zones.
We didn't start Pax because the market needed another transport company. We started it because the animals being moved by the existing ones deserved better. Most pet transport companies are logistics businesses that happen to move animals. We think that's backwards.
A dog or cat in transit doesn't read the signs or understand the itinerary. They only know everything familiar is gone, the ground is moving, and the humans in charge are strangers. Group transport is cheaper for the operator. It is not better for the pet. We run private and small-group transport so each pet's environment is something we actually control.
The single biggest variable in a pet transport job is the person behind the wheel. Most companies dispatch a local rideshare driver for last-mile and post-flight work. That driver hasn't been trained to recognize heat distress in a flat-faced dog, doesn't know what an anxious cat looks like ten minutes before they bolt, and hasn't been vetted the way the person carrying your animal should be. We hire and train our own drivers, and we stand behind every one of them — with a real operations team, not a dispatch app.
If you have a French Bulldog, Pug, Boston Terrier, Persian, or any other flat-faced breed, you've probably been quoted a "brachy surcharge" by someone who can't really explain what they're doing to earn it. We charge a brachycephalic premium because we actually run a different operation: routes planned around heat windows, attentive cabin climate management, rest stops scheduled for breathing recovery rather than just bathroom breaks, and drivers briefed on the specific early signs of respiratory distress.
We built our operations to support the driver in real time so you never get a surprise call. Weather-aware routing, continuous communication, defined protocols for the situations that actually come up on the road. You should know where your pet is and how they're doing at every stage. We built the system to make sure we always do.
Your pet rides like family, not freight.
— Ian, Founder
What we do
We're not an airline cargo shipper. We're not a gig-driver marketplace. We're a private, USDA Class T registered pet transporter operating across the 48 contiguous United States, with a small team of drivers we know personally and a single point of accountability from pickup to drop-off.
Every PAX trip is:
Safety philosophy
Anyone who drives for a living understands that the road has a small but real failure rate. The job of a careful operator is to lower that rate as far as it will go and to be ready when something does happen.
We do that in a few specific ways. We plan routes around weather, traffic, and rest stops, not just mileage. Our climate-controlled pet transport vehicles are inspected before every long-distance trip. Drivers carry Red Cross animal first aid certification. We carry medical coverage on every trip, and we communicate with you directly throughout — text updates, photos, and a call from me if anything changes.
The result is a calm, predictable trip — and a clear plan for the rare moments when calm and predictable aren't enough.
Transparency
Your pet is family, and you should know exactly who's in the vehicle with them.
Have a question we haven't answered? See our FAQ, send a message through our contact form, or reach me directly at ian@paxpettransport.com.
Ready to talk?
If you're considering PAX for a long-distance pet transport — a cross-country move, a military PCS, a senior pet, a brachy breed, or a multi-pet household — the next step is simple. Tell us about your pet and the route, and we'll come back with a real plan and a real price.
