How to Ship Your Family Vehicles to Your New Home

Moving your family to a new home is one of the most stressful things you can ever do in life. Not only are you physically relocating every member of your family but also everything in your old home, or at least the stuff that you decide is coming with you. What you need to remember is to bring along all your family vehicles with you. Fortunately, you don’t have to drive them all there, if you know how to ship your family vehicles to your new home.

How to Ship Family Vehicles

In terms of shipping your family vehicles to your next address, there are actually several ways to do it, according to Car Talk:

1. Air: If you want it done safer and faster than anything, then air is the way to go. However, it’s the least convenient in terms of arrangements, and it’s also going to cost you far more than you want to pay. If you’re someone of financial affluence looking to move a prized motorcycle as safely and quickly as possible, then maybe this is for you. If you’re just looking to keep your weekend motorcycle ride in the family, then keep moving down the list.
2. Boat: This is often used for intercontinental imports. However, if your move is taking you to Puerto Rico, Hawaii, or the Virgin Islands, then you might need this option to keep your motorcycle in the family. For that matter, it can also work if you’re moving to the continental United States from one of those locations.
3. Rail: Trains are fast and safe methods of moving vehicles. With the extra convenience comes extra cost. You won’t find as many train carriers as truck options, and the extra insurance involved can add to the cost. This is a possibility, but it’s not usually a top option for a family just moving their household.
4. Truck: This is the most frequently used transportation method in most cases. It’s certainly likely to be the one you use for shipping family vehicles. It’s generally the most affordable. You should be able to have your vehicles picked up from the home you are moving out of and have them delivered right to the home you are moving into. You can usually choose from enclosed trucks or open trucks. Open trucks are cheaper and far more widely available, although they offer your vehicle less protection. Enclosed trailers are more expensive and not as commonly available, but your vehicle would be more secure during transit.

Motorcycles Are Vehicles Too

If your family owns more than passenger vehicles, you might also need to look into motorcycle shippers who can get your bikes to your new home. You can choose one of two different options. The first is home-to-home delivery, which costs more but picks up at your old address and delivers right to your new one. The second is shipping from one distribution center to the next. This option is cheaper but would require you to drop your bike off at one place and pick it up from another.

Shipping a motorcycle is not that expensive, in fact, it’s often cheaper than driving it cross-country because you won’t have to pay for gas, food, or lodging. The average cost to ship a motorcycle is $480 to $1180, depending on the distance, size of the bike, and method of shipping. If you have multiple bikes to ship, you might be able to get a discount.

Advantages of Vehicle Shipping

Shipping your family vehicles with you makes a lot of sense. With so much going on in getting ready for your move, do you really have time to try and sell them before you leave? For that matter, do you want to get through moving to a new address and then suddenly have to buy replacement vehicles? Even if you did both of those things, how much would all that cost in terms of taxes, transaction fees, and all the paperwork? Even worse, you’d be without vehicles at a very delicate and stressful time.

Being Able to Move Around After You Move

There are so many changes involved with moving to a new home that you might want to minimize how many of them there are. When you can take all your family vehicles with you, you’ll automatically be able to get around town in the place you live while doing so in something known, comfortable, and familiar. That can take more stress out of this process than you might think.