What is car shipping?

Car shipping is, in a simple definition, the act of transporting a car from one location to another. However, there are many nuances to shipping a car that many people are unaware of, and we’ll attempt to clear those up here. The first, and probably most major, is the idea of shipping your car on an open carrier, or in an enclosed carrier. Open carriers are just giant trucks with six to ten slots for vehicles (typically there’s ten slots) to fit into. This is called open transport. Enclosed transport is when your car is loaded into a giant container that protects it from inclement weather and different road hazards. Typically, your car is safe on an open carrier, and most car shipping occurs on these types of trucks.

Another distinction in car shipping is door-to-door shipping or terminal-to-terminal shipping, and we’ll break that down right now. Door-to-door shipping is when the truck will come straight to your house and pick up the vehicle, right in front of you. The vast majority of shipping happens door-to-door, and it is by far the safest and most convenient way to ship your car because you see the vehicle get onto the truck, whereas with terminal-to-terminal shipping, you drop your car off at (typically) a junkyard or open lot, and leave your car there until a truck can come pick it up – sometimes months later!

Car shipping is a relatively simple process, once you know some of the terms involved, and these two included here are the most important two terms you can know. You typically want to ship your car on an open, ten-car carrier door-to-door – which is something that most transport companies provide anyway. Always check quotes and shop before booking a shipment, though, and always check those companies out for their reliability before ever booking an order.