Transport companies publish shipping quotes. Almost nobody prices the alternative honestly. This runs both sides — fuel, hotels, meals, wear, the flight home, and what your own days are worth — and tells you where the breakeven actually falls.
Run the cash costs alone and driving beats shipping on almost every route. A 1,500-mile trip in a 30 MPG car costs roughly $155 in fuel, and even with three hotel nights and four days of meals you're around $815. Shipping the same car runs about $1,250 plus a flight. On paper it isn't close.
The reason people ship anyway is that driving 1,500 miles costs you about 24 hours behind the wheel spread over four days. Price those days at anything at all and the comparison flips. At $25 an hour the breakeven lands near 1,500 miles; at $40 an hour it drops to about 1,000; at $15 an hour you'd have to be going past 2,000 miles before shipping makes sense. If your time is genuinely free — you wanted the road trip anyway, you have the days spare — driving stays cheaper right across the country.
That's the honest version of this decision, and it's why the input that matters most is the one transport companies never ask about.
Most bookings go through a broker rather than the carrier itself. The broker posts your vehicle on a load board and drivers bid on it, which is why two quotes for the same route can differ by hundreds of dollars and why a "guaranteed" price sometimes moves before pickup.
A few patterns hold consistently:
The driving estimate people carry in their head is usually just fuel, which is why shipping looks expensive by comparison. The full list is longer:
Shipping has hidden costs too: you're without the car for anywhere from a few days to two weeks, delivery windows are approximate, and carriers generally limit personal items to about 100 pounds in the trunk, uninsured.