How Long Does It Take to Ship a Car?

The timeline from booking to delivery

1. Booking. You get a quote, choose open or enclosed and a pickup window, and confirm. This takes minutes with the online calculator.
2. Carrier assignment. Under our terms a carrier is typically assigned within one to five business days of your first available pickup date for standard cars, SUVs and pickups, and within one to seven business days for heavy equipment, RVs, motorcycles, ATVs and other specialty units. This is the part that varies most.
3. Pickup. The driver contacts you, arrives within the agreed window, completes the inspection on the Bill of Lading and loads the vehicle.
4. Transit. The drive, including the carrier’s other pickups and deliveries along the route.
5. Delivery. The driver calls ahead, you or your representative inspect the car, sign the Bill of Lading and take the keys.

Transit time by distance

Once the car is on the truck, transit is mostly a function of miles plus the carrier’s other stops. Professional drivers are limited by federal hours-of-service rules, so a loaded truck covers a fairly predictable distance per day. As a working guide for domestic open or enclosed transport:

• Within a state or neighboring states: often one to two days.
• Regional, for example Texas to Florida or California to Washington: a few days.
• Half the country, for example Chicago to Phoenix: around four to six days.
• Coast to coast: usually about a week, sometimes a little more.

These are typical ranges, not promises. A carrier with several stops on the way can take longer than a direct run of the same distance, and the booking confirmation for your shipment is the figure to rely on. Our cross-country guide goes deeper on long lanes.

Hawaii and Alaska

Ocean routes add a vessel schedule to the equation. The vehicle is trucked to the port, waits for the next sailing, crosses, is processed at the destination terminal and is then released or delivered. The total depends on how your dates line up with sailings, so we quote specific sailing dates rather than a generic transit figure. See Hawaii car shipping and Alaska car shipping.

What causes delays

• Weather. Snow, hurricanes and flooding close roads and slow routes for everyone.
• Mechanical problems. Trucks break down. When it happens, the carrier or our team arranges a transfer or a new timeline.
• Inaccessible addresses. If the truck cannot reach the address and the meeting point is not arranged in advance, the driver loses time.
• Unreachable contacts. A driver who cannot reach the pickup or delivery contact may have to move on to the next stop.
• Vehicle not as described. A car booked as running that will not start, or a truck taller than booked, can mean a failed pickup and a new assignment.
• Remote pickups. Rural locations wait longer for a carrier whose route passes nearby.
• Peak season. Summer and snowbird months stretch carrier assignment on busy lanes.

Most of these are either outside anyone’s control or easy to prevent on your side. Our guide on preparing your car for shipping covers the preventable ones.

How to plan around the timeline

1. Decide the latest date the car can leave and the earliest date you need it. The gap between them is your planning window.
2. Give a first-available pickup date at the start of that window and a flexible range of a few days.
3. Add buffer at the delivery end if something depends on the car arriving.
4. If the window is too tight for standard service, consider expedited shipping with guaranteed pickup, which commits a carrier to a short pickup window but does not shorten the drive.
5. Keep your phone on. It is the single simplest way to avoid a lost day.

Staying informed during the shipment

We confirm carrier assignment, pickup and delivery, and the driver calls ahead at both ends. You can also check a booked shipment on our tracking page. If something changes, our team is reachable at (208) 500-0400.

Get a timeline for your route

Run your shipment through the instant quote calculator, then choose the pickup window that fits your dates. If you have a hard deadline, tell us when you book and we will say honestly whether standard service will meet it.