I don't know if you've already done this, but I used google maps to find out that I was on the way.
http://maps.google.com/ For some weird reason, it only let me paste the map of how to get from Dayton to Columbus when I tried to post the map earlier, but you only have to enter Dayton, OH, as your starting point and New York City, New York, as your end point.
Edit: I've never done this before, either, but I think an example of how it could work would be if:
You drive them to Columbus, where we'd pick them up. Say another rat person happens to live around Wheeling, West Virginia. We'd drive them there.
The new person could drive them to around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and then the last person could drive them from Harrisburg to NYC.
(I'm just picking the examples of the cities that sit on the most direct route between Dayton and NYC.)