You Save a Ton of Time

One of the main reasons that shipping a vehicle makes your life easier is how much time you save. It can take hours or even days to drive your vehicle from state to state. This is especially true if you are traveling a very long distance such as across the country.
Keep in mind too that the distance you are shipping your car isn’t the direct distance in a straight line from one state to another. It will be longer than that because the roads that you take are not a direct line to that new state.
For example, the distance from New York to California is 2,451 miles in a straight line. However, by car, the distance is 2,912 miles. So, that is another 500 miles, which is another 20% of the trip added to the total mileage. You can avoid this by shipping your car and taking a plane yourself.
 

Less Wear and Tear on Your Car

Mileage plays an important role in the resale value of any vehicle, and the more miles you put on a car, the less value it’s going to have once you want to sell it. If you drive a vehicle for any length of time (say from New York to Miami) this not only puts on a lot of mileage but also wear and tear on the engine, body and wheels.
This will cause the car to need service sooner and likely more frequently in the future. It will also moderately cause the overall value of the car to decrease as well.
Shipping your car will prevent any of this depreciation of the vehicle’s condition or value from occurring.
 

Save Money

A lot of people think that shipping your car is much more expensive than driving it yourself. However, this is rarely the case. In fact, in many cases, shipping your car can actually save you money when you factor in variables such as the opportunity cost of missing work as well as the estimated service fees as a result of driving the car such a long distance.
The following are the factors that increase the cost of driving your car to your destination rather than shipping it:

• Gas – Gas can cost a pretty penny. This is especially the case if you are traveling during a time of the year when gas prices are higher such as during the summer. For example, if you were to travel from New York to California in a Toyota Corolla the cost of gas would amount to almost $250.
• Lodging – When you are taking a long trip you will need to stop and get some rest. So, the cost of hotels will burden you too. Continuing to use the above example of driving from New York to California, if you drove for a reasonable 8 hours or so a day, it would take between seven and nine days to reach California. So, you can assume it would be about 7 nights in a hotel. That can easily cost you over $700.

Wear and tear on your car – Wear and tear on your car is a little more difficult to calculate in terms of cost. According to itstillruns.com the Corolla in our example would have a wear and tear cost of seventeen cents per mile driven. So, for our 2,912 mile trip to California, the wear and tear would cost $496.

• The opportunity cost of not working – Taking an extra week off of work could really set you back. If you do not have the available vacation days, you will cost yourself a week’s pay. If you do have those days, you will cost yourself a week of vacation to spend driving across the country. Regardless, the value you are losing here can cost a weeks pay which can easily equal the cost of car shipping itself.
• Other amenities – Lets not forget things like food. If you bring some food to snack on so that you only need to buy food twice a day, that is still about fourteen meals that you will need to eat at diners or restaurants along the way. This can easily cost you over a hundred dollars during the trip.

Final word

The most common misconception about shipping your car somewhere is that it will always be more expensive than driving it yourself and that simply is not true. In fact, in many cases, you will end up saving money by shipping your car over driving it when you consider every factor such as the opportunity cost of missing work. When you ship your car you also end up saving an incredible amount of time and you avoid putting any unnecessary wear and tear on your vehicle.
In the end, it is you that decides whether you will ship or drive your car during a longer distance move. However, when you look at all the facts and all the time, energy and money you could save, it makes the most sense to choose to ship your car.