Cheapest Way To Ship A Car

Oct 20, 2021

There are a few different factors that can affect the cost of shipping your car within Canada. In this short article we will show how to ship your vehicle the cheapest way possible.

The Size Of Your Vehicle

The smaller (length and height) that your vehicle is, the cheaper it will cost to ship it.

The trailers that haul vehicles are designed to hold up to 9-11 cars and they have height and weight restrictions when they are fully loaded. For example, a trailer that can normally hold 11 cars could only hold about 6 trucks due to the limited amount of space on the trailer and the overall weight of the loaded trailer. If you have a big truck or a large cargo van with ladder racks, your vehicle could possibly take up 2 or 3 car spots, so the price could be more than double the price of a car. With large trucks and vans, there’s only a few spots that they can fit on the transport trailer. If they are very heavy, then they can’t be lifted and positioned by the hydraulic lifts as they normally could and this decreases the total available spots for other vehicles on the trailer.

Also, with Transport Canada’s height restrictions, adding even an extra few inches to the top of a vehicle, with ladder racks, suspension lifts etc, can impact the entire load significantly thus limiting the total number of vehicles that can be put on the trailer, thus increasing the cost of shipping.

The Value And Condition Of Your Vehicle

For most vehicles, train or open truck shipping is perfectly fine and the most cost effective option, but if you have a high end sports car that has a low ground clearance, the enclosed trailer mode may be your only option to safely ship your vehicle without the risk of damage. This could double the cost of shipping.

The cheapest car shipping option is enclosed train.

The Mode Of Shipping

The cheapest car shipping option would be by train. Second cheapest is by open truck. Enclosed transport is third cheapest, expedited truck is fourth cheapest and finally plane would be the most expensive.

Terminal To Terminal

The cheapest way to ship a car would be between the terminals of two large cities. You would drop off and pick up your vehicle at the terminals in both cities. Generally the best way to save money is to have your vehicle shipped between major cities as there’s more vehicles being moved between the largest cities, thus it’s more competitive and the prices are cheaper.

For example, if you are moving from London Ontario to Victoria, BC, the cheapest car shipping option would be to ship from Toronto to Vancouver as the car transport trains travel between those two cities. You could save at least a couple of hundred dollars just by delivering your vehicle to one of the terminals in a major city center rather than having us pick-up in another city or town.

The major car shipping hub cities are: Halifax, Moncton, Fredericton, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver

Shipping this way would also speed up the process as your vehicle would not have to be shipped to and from the main terminal locations.

Distance And Remote Delivery Locations

The further you ship the more expensive it will be, but generally the per km cost will be less for longer distance shipments than for shorter ones.

The cheapest mode of shipping is by train but train is also limited as there’s only a few cities that rail companies can deliver vehicles too. If you are shipping by train from Toronto to Vancouver, the cost per km would work out to be about .40 cents per km.

Comparatively, if you are shipping between Vancouver and Smithers, BC. Due to the remoteness of the delivery location and because we can only ship by truck to Smithers, the cost would be over $1.00 per km.

Summary

Choosing a reputable shipping company for your particular move should be more important than choosing the company with the cheapest price. Not all companies provide the same level of service so doing your research is important. Ask how your vehicle would be shipped across Canada and understand the advantages/disadvantages of each shipping method.