When it comes to auto shipping, there are a lot of different ways that auto shipping companies go about actually moving the vehicles. For instance, moving a vehicle across the ocean isn’t nearly as simple as moving that same vehicle across the country. The logistics of auto shipping don’t all apply to the different places that the vehicles need to go; they require different solutions to the problems involved in the auto shipping process, and therefore their prices are also different depending on where you’re shipping to or what exactly you need auto shipping for. In this auto shipping article we’ll discuss the different ways vehicles are shipped depending on different variables.

The first way that vehicles are shipped are on open ten-car carriers across the country. These auto shipping trucks are your most basic form of auto shipping and cover most of the vehicles that actually are being shipped. Most customers are shipping from one city to another city within the United States, so open ten-car auto shipping trucks are the most common types of auto shipping vessels out there.

Another type of auto shipping is enclosed auto shipping. This is where your vehicle is loaded into an enclosed container and shipped via open road. Enclosed auto shipping trucks aren’t uncommon - they are just like the giant eighteen-wheelers that you see traversing the interstate highway system.

If your vehicle is too large to fit on an open auto shipping truck, chances are it will need a flat-bed auto shipping truck. These vehicles are no different than the giant flat-bed trucks you see hauling construction equipment around, and they are designed that way precisely to provide auto shipping for larger vehicles.

Another method of auto shipping is overseas auto shipping. The auto shipping companies that actually provide overseas auto shipping employ large barges to ship to and from Hawaii or Alaska or other countries (depending on the auto shipping company). There are very few port-based auto shipping companies, so this is perhaps the least common form of auto shipping, and there are even fewer international auto shipping companies out there.

When it comes to cross-country auto shipping, there are two main methods: door-to-door auto shipping and terminal-to-terminal auto shipping. Many auto shipping companies can arrange terminal-to-terminal auto shipping for you, but the most common - and, indeed, easiest - form of auto shipping is door-to-door. See, terminal-to-terminal auto shipping is where you drop your car off at a terminal or a lot or someone’s large yard in the middle of nowhere...and simply wait for an auto shipping truck to show up and pick it up. The problem with this method is two-fold: first off, most auto shipping terminals aren’t secured in any way, shape or form - they are simply open lots or fields, sometimes fenced, where you park your car. The second problem is that terminals aren’t lucrative pickup locations for carriers - they prefer to pickup right off the interstate.

So door-to-door auto shipping is what most auto shipping companies will pitch to you right off the bat. It is more expensive when compared to terminal-to-terminal auto shipping, but the fact remains that door-to-door is the fastest type of auto shipping as well as the safest.