Enclosed Auto Transport

Jeremy Louisos, Senior Vice President at Preowned Auto Logistics, explains the difference between open and enclosed auto shipping, and he outlines situations where you should choose enclosed shipping for your vehicle.

I’m Jeremy Louisos, Senior Vice President at Preowned Auto Logistics, and I want to talk to you about open versus enclosed shipping, and shipping your vehicle enclosed.

The number one reason that most people will decide to ship enclosed, is that it really is the safest option. Our standard shipping is an open carrier. Those are those trucks you see going down the road with, you can actually see the vehicles through the encaged part of the carrier. It’s a perfectly safe option, but when you close the sides in an enclosed carrier, and you completely remove that possibility of any road debris or weather or dust getting on the vehicle, it’s going to be your safest option.

Now there’s not as many of these carriers available, it’s more of an elite or a higher end solution to shipping your vehicle, it’s going to be a little more pricey. But because there are fewer stops in these trucks typically, you might even get the vehicle a little more quickly.

Enclosed shipping is a great solution. I think we’ve had race cars, antique cars and classic cars, and exotic cars. The other thing you might want to think about if you’re shipping an exotic vehicle is, sometimes the clearance. Let’s say you’re shipping a Lamborghini or something like that, the clearance underneath the vehicle is usually just, we’re talking inches. So, unlike a regular open carrier, the enclosed carriers quite often will have a lift gate, and we can schedule this if you have a vehicle of this type.

A lift gate will go down and allow for lower clearance. Rather than having to drive up a ramp on the truck, you’re sort of driving onto a vehicle elevator. It requires no clearance at all. It’s less than a speed bump and it’ll bring your vehicle up horizontally to the ground and allow us to drive right into the vehicle and close it up. So, if you have a specialty vehicle, you’re a little worried about dust, any road debris, it needs to arrive in pristine condition, enclosed transportation is probably the best option for you.