Compare Car Shipping Companies and Methods
Most shipments are settled by two or three either/or choices before anyone picks a company: open or enclosed, your door or a terminal, a broker or a carrier, and whether to ship at all. The pages below take one choice each. Facts about another company come from its own public pages, dated when we read them, and each page says where the other option is the better fit.
Which method fits my shipment?
- Shipping a car vs. driving it yourself: the per-mile cost of driving at the IRS rate, plus lodging, worked for a 1,000-mile trip so you can hold it against a real quote. Every route page runs the same math for its own distance.
- Open vs. enclosed transport: what each protects against, the usual price gap, and which cars justify enclosed.
- Door-to-door vs. terminal: where the handoff happens, when a terminal saves money, and when the extra trips and storage cost more than they save.
- Broker vs. carrier: the federal definitions, who holds what insurance or bond, and where our in-state-only booking sits.
How do we compare with the national brokers?
- Us vs. Montway Auto Transport: a large broker network with a 30-day price lock and nothing due upfront.
- Us vs. RoadRunner Auto Transport: another national broker, with online tracking and no deposit upfront.
- Montway alternatives: the other options if Montway is not the right fit, including when a large network is the better choice than us.
Both brokers cover interstate moves, which we do not book. If your trip crosses a state line, one of them, or a carrier that runs your lane, is the right call.
How to read any car-shipping comparison
Three questions separate most companies: who actually moves the car (a carrier the broker assigns later, or the company you are talking to), when payment is due (at booking, at carrier assignment, at pickup, or at delivery), and whose insurance covers the car in transit. Get dated answers to all three in writing. Then look the company up yourself: how to check a car shipper on FMCSA SAFER. To check a written quote line by line, use the quote checker worksheet.
What real quotes looked like
Comparisons of models only go so far. For what companies actually quoted for one car on the same trips in September 2026, including two in-state trips where one quote was more than double another, see car shipping cost.
Sources
- Montway Auto Transport, home page (https://www.montway.com/, read 2026-09-21).
- RoadRunner Auto Transport, home page (https://www.roadrunnerautotransport.com/, read 2026-09-21).
- Each comparison page lists its own sources with read dates.