Motorcycle Shipping & Transport

Neptune arranges motorcycle shipping door to door in all 48 contiguous states, on open trailers or fully enclosed. Every bike travels upright in a wheel chock on soft straps, with crating available for machines that warrant it. What it costs comes down to distance, the bike itself, your dates and the trailer you choose, and a specialist prices your exact lane rather than quoting from a table. Request a free quote or call (929) 566-5872.

Motorcycle transport done properly

A motorcycle has two wheels, a high center of gravity and delicate bodywork, so it cannot simply be strapped down like a car and sent on its way. Get it wrong and the damage shows up in the places that cost the most to put right: fork seals, fairings, exhaust, chrome and paint.

That is why the carrier match matters more here than it does on a car. The truck needs a wheel chock, soft straps and a secure mounting position, so the pool of trucks that can take your bike is smaller than the pool that can take a sedan. Sorting that out before dispatch is most of the work, and it is the difference between a motorcycle that arrives the way it left and one that does not.

How your motorcycle is secured

The bike is rolled into a wheel chock that captures the front wheel and holds it upright without a kickstand. Soft straps then go over chosen contact points, usually the lower triple clamp or the frame, and the suspension is compressed just enough to keep the machine settled without leaving the forks bottomed out for days. No hard chains touch the paint.

On high-value, custom and vintage motorcycles, crating adds a second shell around all of that. Your specialist recommends chock-and-strap or a crate based on the bike, the trailer it is going on and how far it is traveling. Either way the motorcycle is photographed at pickup and again at delivery, and both sets of photos sit alongside the Bill of Lading.

The same securing problem, and the same solution, applies to golf cart and ATV transport, which we handle on a separate page.

Open, enclosed and door-to-door motorcycle transport

Open motorcycle transport

On an open trailer your motorcycle rides secured in a chock alongside cars, exposed to the same weather and road spray any bike sees on a ride. It is the more economical option and it usually moves sooner, because open carriers run on every lane in the country. It suits daily riders, commuter bikes, dirt bikes and any move where the price matters more than a wash on arrival.

Enclosed motorcycle transport

An enclosed trailer puts walls and a roof between your bike and the road. No weather, no stone chips, no eyes on it at truck stops. Enclosed rigs typically carry lift gates and far more tie-down hardware, which is why crated and collector bikes travel this way. It costs more and there are fewer trailers, so book earlier. If you are weighing the two, our guide to open versus enclosed transport applies the same way to motorcycles.

Door to door, not terminal to terminal

Neptune ships door to door. The carrier collects the motorcycle from your home, storage unit, dealership or shop and delivers it to the address you name. We do not run terminal drop-offs, so you are never riding a bike across town to a yard and leaving it there. Where a full-size truck cannot legally or physically reach the address, on a narrow street or under low wires, the driver arranges a nearby meeting point such as a shopping center lot.

How much does it cost to ship a motorcycle?

There is no flat rate, and any company quoting one before it knows your lane is guessing. Motorcycle transport is priced per move, because what a carrier will accept for your bike depends on where it is going, what else is on the truck and what that lane is paying this week. Rather than publish a number we cannot stand behind, here is what actually moves the price.

The same forces set car shipping prices, and our breakdown of what it costs to ship a car works through them in more depth if you want the longer version.

How and when you pay

Nothing is charged before a driver is assigned to your motorcycle. Once a carrier is booked you pay a reservation fee by credit card, PayPal or Zelle, and the balance goes to the driver at delivery in cash or by Zelle. Card and PayPal payments carry a 3% transaction fee. There is no separate fuel or insurance line added at the end.

How long does motorcycle shipping take?

Two clocks, not one. The pickup window runs from booking to collection and is normally 2 to 5 business days on standard service. Transit starts when the bike is loaded. A loaded carrier covers roughly 400 miles on a typical day, because federal hours-of-service rules cap driving time and the driver still has the rest of the load to deliver.

Your delivery date is the pickup date plus the transit days, which is why we quote the two separately instead of promising a single arrival time. Because a motorcycle needs a truck that is equipped to carry it, a wider pickup window helps more on a bike than it does on a car. For a fuller picture of what stretches a schedule, see how long vehicle shipping takes.

Motorcycles we ship

Different bikes need different handling, and the quote depends on knowing which one you have. Give us the year, make, model and any modification that changes the shape of it, and we will match the machine to a carrier set up for it.

• Cruisers and baggers. Wide bars, hard bags and floorboards eat deck width. Full dressers are the heaviest bikes most carriers see and are priced on the space they take.
• Sport bikes. Light and easy to secure, but the fairings are fragile and expensive. Where the straps go matters more here than on almost anything else.
• Touring motorcycles. Tall screens, top boxes and trunk racks often need to come off or be measured carefully against a low-clearance trailer.
• Adventure and dual-sport bikes. Long-travel suspension compresses further under straps, and aluminum panniers sit wider than the bars. Both change how the bike is tied down.
• Dirt bikes and off-road bikes. Light, inexpensive to move and often shipped several at a time. No plates or registration are needed to send one.
• Scooters and mopeds. Small and usually the least expensive two-wheeler to send, and easy to combine with another vehicle on the same booking.
• Trikes and sidecar rigs. Three tracks instead of one, so they load more like a small vehicle than a motorcycle. Flag one when you request the quote.
• Classic and collector motorcycles. Usually enclosed, often crated. The care that goes into classic car transport applies here too.
• Custom and one-off builds. Stretched frames, ape hangers, air ride and open primaries all change the dimensions and the tie-down plan. Send photos with your request.

Non-running, project and barn-find bikes

A motorcycle does not have to start in order to ship. It does have to roll, steer and brake, or the carrier needs a winch and a lift gate to get it aboard, which narrows the pool of trucks and changes the price. Tell us up front if the bike does not run, has no brakes, is missing a wheel or is already strapped to a pallet. It is a normal request and it is perfectly quotable. What is not quotable is finding out at pickup.

Why people ship motorcycles

Buying and selling at a distance. Most bikes are now bought sight unseen from a listing, an auction or a forum, and the buyer needs a way home that is not a 1,500 mile ride on a machine they have never sat on. We collect from private sellers, dealerships and auction lots and deliver to your door. Our notes on shipping a vehicle you bought online cover the paperwork side, which works the same for a bike.

Relocation. When the household move is booked, the motorcycle is usually the thing nobody has a plan for. Shipping it costs less than a professional ride-away and it arrives on the same odometer reading it left on. If a car is moving at the same time, say so, because a bike and a car on one booking often beats two separate ones.

Rallies, races and events. Riders send bikes ahead to the big rallies and racers move machines between rounds. Event moves have fixed dates at both ends, so they need booking well before the window rather than inside it.

Seasonal moves. Riders who winter south send the bike ahead in the fall and back in the spring. Booking both legs at once is the dependable way to hold a rate before snowbird season tightens capacity.

Dealers, shops and auctions. Repeat and multi-unit motorcycle movements for dealerships, powersports shops and auction buyers run through the same desk as our dealer and auction transport.

Military moves. A motorcycle is rarely covered the way a car is on a PCS, so service members often ship the bike privately alongside the household goods. Our military and PCS transport page explains how those bookings are handled.

Who you are actually dealing with

Neptune Auto Transport is a licensed transport broker, USDOT 3824247 and MC 1384866, founded in 2022 and based in Brooklyn, New York. We do not own trucks. What we do is vet and dispatch carriers, and on a motorcycle that vetting is the part that counts: before a carrier is assigned we check the operating authority, the insurance certificate, the safety rating and the Central Dispatch record.

Cargo insurance on your motorcycle is held by the assigned carrier, not by Neptune. We send you that carrier’s certificate before pickup so you can read the coverage yourself rather than take our word for it. If something goes wrong, the claim is filed with the carrier’s insurer and we supply the Bill of Lading, the dispatch sheet and the contract to support it. How transport insurance actually works explains the structure in more detail.

We are a BBB Accredited Business with an A- rating, and we hold a 4.9 average across 1,916 Google reviews. You can read those reviews, look through the wider shipping FAQ, or read more about the company before you commit to anything.