Cross-country car shipping

Why long routes are cheap per mile

Loading and unloading are the expensive parts of a carrier’s day. Once a hauler is full, each additional mile costs only fuel and driver time spread across every vehicle on board. That is why, in our model, a Los Angeles to New York move costs about 1.4 times a Los Angeles to Dallas move despite 2.0 times the distance.

The main transcontinental lanes

Super Dispatch’s State of Auto Transport report (June 2026) names New York to Miami as the highest-grossing route on its platform in 2025, and long-haul moves over 1,000 miles grew 42% that year. Endpoints near the main east-west interstates (I-10, I-40, I-70, I-80) usually see more trucks; endpoints far from them (northern New England, Montana, the Dakotas) can add days and, in our model, up to $175 per end.

The coast-to-coast lanes each have their own monthly price page: California to New York and New York to California, California to Florida and Florida to California, and Chicago to Los Angeles.

How the coast-to-coast transit estimate is worked out

Federal hours-of-service rules let a truck driver drive up to 11 hours within a 14-hour window after 10 hours off duty, with a 30-minute break after 8 hours at the wheel. Our transit model turns that into about 450 miles a day: spread over 11 hours of driving, an average of roughly 41 mph, which leaves room for traffic, city streets and mountain grades. Los Angeles to New York is about 2,885 road miles, which divides into 7 driving days once rounded up. That is the fast end of the range.

The slow end adds 3 days on a trip this long, for the other cars the truck picks up and drops off along the way, weather and breakdowns, giving 7–10 days on the road; an enclosed truck adds 1 more day at the slow end, because fewer of them run the lane. Before any of that comes a 1–5 day pickup window while a carrier fills its trailer, so door to door the model expects 8–15 days. One of the longest runs in the lower 48, Seattle to Miami at about 3,224 miles, works out to 8–11 days in transit and 9–16 days door to door. The transit time estimator runs the same arithmetic for your ZIP codes.

What goes into the coast-to-coast price

For October 2026, our model builds the Los Angeles to New York estimate in a few steps. The base is $0.57 per mile over 2,885 miles, $1,642 for an open, running sedan. October sits at the baseline of our seasonal index, so there is no seasonal adjustment this month; a July pickup would add about 10% to the base. The diesel index adds $23, for the gap between the current EIA diesel price and the price the model was calibrated on.

The total is rounded to a midpoint of $1,665, and the published range runs from 10% below it to 12% above: $1,500–$1,865. Other inputs move it from there: enclosed adds 42% ($2,130–$2,650), a full-size SUV adds 20%, a non-running car adds $150, and an address far from a carrier hub adds up to $175 per end. These are estimates; the broker your request goes to confirms the actual price, which depends on the carrier that accepts the load.