Texas to California Car Shipping

For a standard car on an open carrier, our own book since 2023 holds 19 Texas to California open-carrier car orders and the middle half of them ran $800 to $1,100. That is well under a dollar a mile for a 1,300 to 1,550 mile run, and noticeably below the California to Texas direction, because more cars leave California for Texas than the reverse and the westbound trucks have space to fill. Big pickups and SUVs, which Texas ships a lot of, land at the top of the band or past it; enclosed has run about a third more than open.

Westbound is the slower direction of this pair to get moving. On the car moves we have dispatched since 2023 the median was 8 days from booking to an assigned carrier, and a quarter waited 15 days or more, because fewer trucks head west out of Texas with room to spare. Once the car is loaded, 1,300 to 1,550 miles of Interstate 10 with other cars coming on and off works out to four to six days in most cases. That on-road figure is an estimate for the distance, not a number from our own records, which track assignment rather than transit.

Interstate 10 from Houston and San Antonio through El Paso, Las Cruces, Tucson and Phoenix into Los Angeles; from Dallas and Fort Worth the truck takes Interstate 20 west to meet Interstate 10 near Kent. San Diego deliveries leave Interstate 10 at Phoenix on Interstate 8. Bay Area and Sacramento deliveries continue north from Los Angeles on Interstate 5, or come across on Interstate 40 and Interstate 15 from the Panhandle side, and usually add a day either way.

Open, nearly always. Of the 14 Texas to California car moves we have dispatched since 2023, 12 went open and 2 went enclosed. A trailer adds roughly a third and earns it on a new car, a collector car or a low-clearance sports car facing five days of West Texas and Arizona sun; for the family pickup it is money you will not get back. Say what the car is and we will tell you which it needs, not which pays us more.

Because our Texas to California book is unusual. Of the 49 moves we have dispatched on this lane since 2023, only 14 were cars; 23 were golf carts, almost all on dealer orders out of Austin that travel enclosed by the trailer load, and 7 were pieces of equipment. If we quoted the whole lane, the enclosed share and the waiting times would describe a dealer’s business, not yours. Every household figure on this page was therefore computed from the 14 car moves and nothing else.

Houston is our most frequent Texas pickup for cars on this lane, with Dallas, Fort Worth, Round Rock, Colleyville and El Paso behind it. In California, San Diego is the most frequent delivery point, followed by the Bay Area around Danville, Sunnyvale and San Mateo, then Long Beach and the Inland Empire. Suburban Texas driveways usually take the truck; San Diego apartment blocks and Bay Area hill streets usually do not, and the driver agrees a nearby lot with you the day before rather than on arrival.

There is no single peak on this lane in our book: the car moves we have dispatched since 2023 are spread through the year, with April, June, July, August and October each carrying two. That is good news for you, because it means no month is a bad month to ship west from Texas. The one thing that consistently lengthens the wait is a fixed single-day pickup; give the driver a three to five day window and the westbound trucks find you.