Often, yes, and we would rather say so than take a booking you did not need. Las Vegas to San Diego is 332 miles on I-15, about five hours, one tank of gas and no passes to cross. If you are making the trip anyway and the car runs fine, driving is usually the better call. Shipping earns its place in four situations, and the next answer covers them.

Four cases. You would need a flight or a one-way rental to get yourself back. It is a second car that nobody is traveling in. You have two vehicles and only one driver. Or you bought it remotely and were never going to collect it in person. There is also a fifth that is particular to this road, which is the Sunday and holiday traffic back toward California.

The corridor between Southern California and Las Vegas carries very heavy weekend traffic, and the Sunday evening and end-of-holiday run back toward the California line is the stretch people plan around. Both states put out warnings before long weekends. If your trip lands in that window, putting the car on a truck and flying is a fair trade for your afternoon.

We do not publish a rate table for this pair, because we have not completed enough loads on it to call any figure measured, and on a 332-mile run a wrong guess is a big percentage. Honestly stated: it sits at the bottom of the national band, roughly $450 to $900 for runs under 500 miles. The calculator gives you the current number for your exact vehicle and addresses.

Because short lanes are the hardest to price from a distance. What a driver charges depends far more on what else is already on his trailer that week than on the mileage, so a number pulled from another route would be a guess dressed up as data. We have been caught by that before and would rather give you the band and a live quote.

One to two days. The drive itself is about five hours, but your car is not the only one on the trailer and the driver is collecting and dropping others along the way. Your collection window comes before that: six days on standard, three on expedited.

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 a long haul, which surprises people. Expedited halves the collection window from six days to three, and because the driving is only a day or two, that window is nearly your whole timeline. On a coast-to-coast run the same money buys proportionally much less. If a date is fixed, this is the lever that moves it.

Usually fast. I-15 is one of the busiest corridors in the country and carriers work it constantly in both directions, so a driver who has just unloaded in the Inland Empire or San Diego County can reach southern Nevada the same day. Short lanes are often slow to place; this one is an exception.

South on I-15 through the Mojave and past Barstow, then down into the Inland Empire. Most drivers pick up I-215 to skirt the worst of the Los Angeles basin before rejoining I-15 south through Temecula and Escondido into San Diego. There is no mountain pass and no seasonal closure anywhere on it.

Barely, and that is unusual. No snow, no pass, no closure, so the road itself is never the variable. The only timing worth planning around is the major holiday weekends, when the whole corridor is busy in both directions, and the start and end of the university year in San Diego.

Across most of the valley, easily. Summerlin, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Spring Valley, Enterprise and the newer communities have wide roads and turning room, and a full-size carrier usually needs no arrangement at all. Resort properties, high-rise condos and some older downtown blocks have garage height bars that stop a 75-foot trailer, and there we agree a wide spot nearby in advance at no cost.

Worth two minutes at your end. If the car has stood through a Las Vegas summer, check the battery and the tire pressures before the driver arrives. Heat is harder on a battery than cold is, and a vehicle that will not start at pickup can lose its place on the trailer.

In most of the county, without any trouble. Chula Vista, Carlsbad, Oceanside, Escondido, Poway, El Cajon, Santee and the inland suburbs are ordinary work. The narrow ones are La Jolla, Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach, North Park and Hillcrest, with parking both sides, and downtown and the Gaslamp where the garages are underground. A nearby lot handles all of it, agreed at booking.

The bridge is no problem for a carrier, but the island streets are tight and busy. We normally arrange delivery on the mainland side or at a wide spot on the island, whichever suits you better. It gets settled when you book rather than worked out on the day.

Both are served markets rather than staffed offices, so there is no counter to visit at either end and there does not need to be. Your car is collected from your address and delivered to the other one. The national line is 888-709-9078 and it is staffed for anything that comes up on the route.

Open for almost every vehicle, and it underpins the band quoted 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. On a five-hour run the weather argument is thin, so enclosed here is really about 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. On a short lane this is also the case where shipping clearly beats driving, since driving is not an option.

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.

The trucking company hauling it. The policy is Carrier Cargo Insurance, held by the carrier rather than by us, and it is in force from the Nevada driveway to the California one. The certificate reaches our file when the order is accepted and we will send it over on request. To check independently, the FMCSA's free SAFER lookup reports any carrier's authority and filed insurance from a USDOT number. Ours is 2887232, MC 969368.

No. The driver who loads it in Las Vegas is the one who unloads it in San Diego. On a run this short there was never going to be a depot in the middle, but it is worth knowing that no second company is involved at any stage.

Anyone you would trust with it. The document that matters is the condition report, signed at collection and again at delivery, so whoever stands there needs to walk the car over before putting a name to it. Add their name and cell number to the booking and the driver will contact them directly.