Ship a car from Boston to Florida

New England's snowbirds head almost entirely to Florida, and plenty of them are done with the two-day drive. The lane also carries people relocating after retirement and a steady stream of student cars. Boston's colleges bring in a lot of students from Florida, and some of those cars go home for the summer. Semester timing is covered on our college car shipping page.

Expect about 1,150 miles to Jacksonville and up to roughly 1,500 to Miami or Naples, with Cape Cod and southern Maine pickups adding a little more. That makes it one of the longer domestic lanes we run on the East Coast, and the length is the main reason enclosed transport gets a serious look here.

Once a truck is south of Washington, every Boston carrier is on I-95 to Florida. The interesting part is the first 300 miles. Carriers choose between three ways around or through New York City:

• I-95 straight through, via Providence and the Connecticut shore, the Cross Bronx and the George Washington Bridge. It's the shortest line and often the slowest.
• I-90 to I-84 through Hartford, then across the Hudson on I-84 or the Mario Cuomo Bridge on I-287, into New Jersey without touching the city.
• I-84 to I-81, down through Pennsylvania and the Shenandoah Valley, rejoining I-95 or I-77 in the Carolinas. Trucks with Gulf Coast cars or Mid-Atlantic stops often go this way.

Which route your car takes depends on the carrier's other stops, not on your preference, and that's a big part of why transit on this lane is a range. Read open vs enclosed car transport if you're deciding how the car should ride for those miles.

Southbound demand builds after foliage season and peaks between early November and mid-December. People tend to leave after Thanksgiving with family and before the first nor'easter. The return is mostly April and May, a little later than the Mid-Atlantic lanes, because spring takes longer to arrive up here.

• Start a month out for a November or December pickup.
• Leave room for weather. A snowstorm can push a pickup back a day or two, especially north and west of Route 128.
• Students: the weeks after spring finals in May are busy with student cars heading home to Florida, so book in April.

For a daily driver, open transport remains the default, and it's the quickest to book. Two things push more Boston owners toward enclosed than on shorter lanes. The trip is long, so more highway miles go under the car on an open deck. And early in the season the northern states are salting their roads. If the car is a collectible, a convertible you baby, or simply the nicest thing you own, enclosed auto transport keeps it out of the weather and road grit the whole way. For truly special cars, our classic and luxury car transport adds soft straps and, where available, liftgate loading.

Boston is not built for car carriers. Parts of it are hard even for a pickup truck. Here's what to expect:

• Storrow Drive, Memorial Drive and the state parkways ban trucks, and their low overpasses are notorious. Carriers stay on I-90, I-93 and the main arteries.
• Beacon Hill, the North End, the South End and Back Bay: narrow streets and resident-only parking mean the car comes to the truck, usually at a wide street or a lot near the Pike or I-93.
• Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline are similar. Meet on a main road like Mass Ave or Route 9.
• The suburbs (Newton, Wellesley, Needham, Lexington, Andover) are usually workable at or near the curb, though wooded streets with low branches may mean meeting at the corner.
• The South Shore and Cape Cod (Hingham, Plymouth, the Cape towns) are reached over the Sagamore or Bourne bridges. Allow extra time in summer.
• Rhode Island, southern New Hampshire and Worcester County pickups fit the same runs.

Boston cars land on the Atlantic coast more than anywhere else, in Palm Beach County, around Fort Lauderdale and in Miami, with a strong secondary group in Naples. Beachfront condos usually mean a street-side handoff. Gated communities may want the carrier's details for the gatehouse a day ahead. After four or five days on the road, give the car a careful once-over against the Boston pickup report before you sign for it.