Car Hauling Loads
Open And Enclosed Auto Transport

Insurance decides what you can book

A loaded nine-car open carrier is carrying a quarter of a million dollars of somebody else's property, and an enclosed carrier with classics or exotics on it can be carrying several times that. Cargo insurance requirements in this segment are correspondingly higher than in general freight: $250,000 is a common floor for open carriers and enclosed work regularly requires far more. Brokers will check the certificate before they tender, and a limit that is too low simply removes most of the board from you.

Read your own policy for the exclusions as well as the limit. Damage during loading and unloading, and the exact definition of what counts as in your care, are where car hauling claims are actually argued.

Open against enclosed

Open carriers move the overwhelming majority of vehicles in the country. They are cheaper, they hold more, and everyday cars do not need protection from weather they were designed to be driven in. Enclosed carriers move classics, exotics, prototypes and anything where the customer is paying for the car not to be seen or rained on. Enclosed rates are substantially higher per vehicle, and so are the standards, the insurance and the customer's expectations.

A third category worth knowing about is single-car and hotshot auto transport, one or two vehicles on a gooseneck or a wedge trailer. It serves the moves a full carrier cannot economically make, and it is where a lot of operators start.

Who ships vehicles

• Dealerships, moving inventory between stores and taking delivery from auctions.
• Auctions, which generate a large and steady share of the volume and run on tight collection windows.
• Manufacturers and their logistics providers, moving new vehicles from plants and ports.
• Rental and fleet operators repositioning cars seasonally between regions.
• Private customers relocating, and snowbird traffic north and south with the season.
• Insurance and salvage operators moving damaged and non-running vehicles, which need a winch and pay accordingly.

Note the seasonality: auto transport has one of the clearest seasonal patterns in freight, with heavy southbound movement into the Sun Belt in autumn and the reverse in spring. Planning a year around it matters more here than in most segments.

Fraud, and why verification matters here

Vehicles are the most attractive freight in the country to steal, and auto transport attracts a disproportionate share of double brokering and identity fraud. The pattern is familiar: a load offered well above market, a carrier profile that does not quite match the authority, urgency applied to stop anyone checking. Verify the MC number against federal records yourself, check that the contact details match the registered ones rather than the ones in the email, and treat an unusually generous rate as a reason to slow down rather than to hurry.

The full set of warning signs is in how to spot a double-brokered load. Every broker posting on this board has their MC number checked against federal records before their loads appear.

Every auto carrier load on this board shows its rate before you call, and posting is free for brokers and shippers, which is why the freight is here. See how it works for carriers.