The cost to ship a car from Lakewood to Los Angeles is typically $900 to $1,200 on an open trailer, and takes about 3 days in transit time over 1,110 miles. Long Beach and Pasadena sit at the same figure; Irvine and Riverside run $925 to $1,225. Expect the upper end for a big vehicle, a single fixed pickup day, or a hillside address at the California end.

Two things, and neither is a trick. I-5 is one of the busiest car-hauling roads in the country, running loaded in both directions all year, so your car takes a space on a trailer that was going anyway rather than starting a trip of its own. And Southern California is the busiest inbound market on the coast, so a driver dropping there has a full board for the way back and does not have to cover empty miles in your price.

About three days on the road once the car is loaded, two overnights, straight down I-5. Ahead of that sits your collection window: six days standard, three expedited. On a lane this short the driving behaves itself and the window is where nearly all the variation lives.

Yes, and at the same price. The Lakewood office is nine miles from downtown Tacoma and covers the whole area, including JBLM, DuPont, Steilacoom, University Place and Puyallup. South Tacoma, the Tacoma Mall area and anywhere near I-5 load at the curb without trouble. The North End, the Stadium District and Proctor are the streets where we meet at a nearby lot instead.

A large share of this lane is exactly that, and the base is next door to our Lakewood office. The single most useful thing you can do is give us the earliest and latest date your orders allow rather than one fixed day, because the car then usually leaves sooner and for less. If the report date moves, one call on 253-200-5645 rebooks it.

Yes, and plenty of families do. Delivery can go to a spouse, a sponsor or an agreed spot nearby, and the address can still be changed while the car is on the road. Nobody needs a lease signed to get a vehicle moving, which matters when housing and orders are running on different clocks.

Dates, not an hour. Six days standard, three expedited, running from the day you pick. The reason is that nine or ten cars share the trailer and a single route has to serve all of them. A call comes the evening before with a real time. A wider spread is precisely what lets a driver drop your car into a run already taking shape.

More than on most, and that is unusual enough to say plainly. Expedited halves the collection window from six days to three and does nothing to the drive, since driving hours are federal. But the drive here is only three days, so the window is most of your timeline rather than a small slice of it. On a coast-to-coast run the same money buys you proportionally much less.

Offer a spread of dates rather than one. Flexible timing is worth more here than on any other lane we run, because so many trucks pass that there is nearly always a driver with a last slot to fill. A three or four day window is what puts you at the bottom of the range. A standard car and an address a trailer can reach do the rest.

We do, and it is one of the few lanes where that is true. Lakewood is at 5607 Boston Ave SW on 253-200-5645, and Los Angeles is at 5111 Harold Way, Suite 301 on 213-766-0064. Both are offices rather than yards, so your car is collected from your address and delivered to theirs and never parked with us. What it buys you is a shorter distance to somebody who can fix a problem, in your own time zone at both ends.

It does not, and neither office could hold it. They are where the people who booked your transport sit. Your car goes from your address straight onto the carrier and comes off at the delivery address, with nothing in between.

Across most of the region, easily. The Valley, the South Bay, Orange County and the Inland Empire are all straightforward. It gets harder on the hillside streets above Hollywood and Silver Lake, on older blocks around Santa Monica and Venice, and at buildings where the parking is underground and a trailer simply cannot get in. There we meet you a short distance away, at no extra charge.

In one place only. Siskiyou Summit at the Oregon and California border is the highest point anywhere on I-5, and it is where this route meets winter. Chain controls go up a few times between November and March, usually for hours rather than days. Everything north and south of it runs low and flat, so this lane keeps its schedule far better through winter than anything heading east out of Washington.

Los Angeles to Lakewood has its own page and we would rather send you there than guess here. A reverse lane does not automatically inherit the price of the outbound one, because what a driver can load at each end is different in each direction. Ask for the live figure on the calculator or over the phone and you will get the current number rather than an assumption.

The carrier hauling it. The cover is Carrier Cargo Insurance, held by the trucking company rather than by us, and it rides with the truck for all 1,110 miles. The certificate reaches us when the order is accepted and we pass it on whenever you want it. To check for yourself, the FMCSA publishes a free lookup called SAFER that reports any carrier's authority and insurance from a USDOT number. Ours is 2887232, MC 969368.

No. It is loaded once in Lakewood and unloaded once in Los Angeles by the same person. Nothing is set down in Portland or Sacramento and no other firm ever takes the keys. With one driver across the whole trip there is no point at which responsibility for the car changes hands.

Open for almost every vehicle, and it underpins every figure here. It is the trailer dealerships take new stock on. Enclosed runs about 80 percent more, because a hard-sided trailer carries two to six cars instead of ten. Where it earns that is a classic, an exotic, fresh paint, or a car that sits too low for an open ramp.

Usually yes, within reason. Most drivers will take a few things as a courtesy. Keep it under about 100 pounds, pack it neatly, and keep it out of sight from outside the car. Think a few boxes in the trunk rather than a carload. The one thing to know is that you are paying to move the vehicle, so the carrier's insurance covers the car itself. Keep anything you would hate to lose with you.

Yes, provided the wheels turn, the steering works and the brakes hold, and provided the trailer has a winch on it. No set surcharge, but budget $200 upward of the running price. Flag it when you ask for the quote so we send a winch truck rather than find out on the driveway.

Wash it, so the driver can see what he is writing down. Run the tank down to about a quarter. Fold the mirrors, take the roof bars off, empty the cabin. He needs one key and nothing else. Take your own photos before he pulls up, which is two minutes well spent. Say at booking if the car sits low or has been modified.

A deposit when you book, and the balance to the driver at delivery by cashier's check, money order or cash. Clearing the whole amount on a card up front works too. An order still waiting on a carrier can be changed at no cost. Once one has accepted it, tell us as early as you can and you will have more options.

No. Using the quote form does not put you on a call list, and your details are never passed to anyone who would ring you. Once a shipment is actually booked you will hear from us and from your driver about the pickup and the delivery, because there is no way to arrange those without talking to you. Want to talk it through now instead? Lakewood is on 253-200-5645 and Los Angeles on 213-766-0064.