Enclosed Auto Transport

Enclosed auto transport means your car travels inside a covered trailer instead of on an open deck. Neptune is a broker: we book a vetted enclosed carrier for your route, and the carrier's driver picks the car up at your door and delivers it to the address you give us, anywhere in the 48 contiguous states.

When enclosed is worth paying for

Open carriers move most cars safely, and they cost less. Enclosed transport earns its price when the car's finish, value or ride height makes road exposure or a steep ramp a real risk:

• Exotic and luxury cars, where a stone chip or a scraped splitter is expensive to fix.
• Classic and collector cars, especially with original paint, a soft top or a fresh restoration.
• Low or lowered cars that need to be loaded level on a liftgate.
• Cars headed to a show, an auction or a buyer, where they need to arrive clean.
• Winter moves on roads treated with salt or brine.

For an everyday car, open carrier transport is usually the sensible choice. If you want something in between, ask for a top-load spot on an open carrier: your car rides on the upper deck, so no other car is parked above it.

What you can ask for

Tell us what your car needs when you request a quote, and we book a carrier that has it:

• A hydraulic liftgate. The car is raised level on a platform instead of being driven up a ramp, so a low nose or splitter does not scrape.
• Soft straps. The car is tied down by its wheels with soft straps, with no chains over the body or frame.
• A single-vehicle trailer. An exclusive enclosed trailer carries your car and nothing else.
• A top-load spot on an open carrier. The lower-cost option: the upper deck, with nothing above your car.

How the car is checked at both ends

At pickup, the driver records the car's condition on the Bill of Lading, with photos, and does the same again at delivery. We can send you those photos. Before you sign at delivery, walk around the car and compare it with the pickup record: if anything changed on the way, that comparison is your evidence.

Insurance and carrier checks

Your car is covered by the assigned carrier's cargo insurance, not by Neptune: at least $100,000, usually $100,000 to $250,000, and for a more valuable car we find a carrier with higher limits. On luxury loads, which usually move enclosed, limits run up to $1,000,000. Amounts vary by carrier and load, so we send you the carrier's insurance certificate, and you can compare its limit with your car's value before pickup.

Before we assign a carrier, we check its operating authority, its insurance certificate, its safety rating and its Central Dispatch rating. If damage does happen, you file the claim directly with the carrier's insurance company, and we supply the Bill of Lading, the dispatch sheet and the contract to support it. Our guide to car insurance during transport explains how cargo coverage works.

What enclosed transport costs

We do not publish prices, because a quote depends on the route and the week. Enclosed costs more than open on the same route: an enclosed trailer carries fewer cars, so each car pays a larger share of the trip, and a single-vehicle trailer costs more again. Distance, the car's size, whether it runs, a liftgate request, how flexible your dates are and the season also move the price.

Request a free quote and an agent calls you back with a price for your route. Nothing is due until a driver is assigned to your shipment. Then the reservation fee is charged, by credit card or PayPal, both with a 3% transaction fee, or by Zelle, and the balance is paid directly to the driver at delivery, in cash or by Zelle.

Booking enclosed transport

There are fewer enclosed carriers than open ones, so a flexible pickup window gives us more of them to choose from. When you book, tell your agent the car's ride height, any front lip or splitter, whether it runs, and what you want: a liftgate, soft straps, or a trailer for your car alone. We book the carrier that matches that list.