We start with the hard part first, shipping a car to Fort Lauderdale in the winter season. Specifically, over the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays. 

When we talk about seasonality in the vehicle transport industry, late December and early January are the big reasons. No other time is as hectic and stressful as that period. 

Direct Express Auto Transport has over twenty years of experience shipping cars to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We track daily the number of single-vehicle Sedans, SUVs, Pickup Trucks, and Vans system-wide that are available to ship on a popular auto transport load board. 

We omit in our study multiple vehicle orders, those that are anywhere from 2 to 10 vehicles on the car transport trailer because we are better able to assess market volume changes. The numbers tell a story and we share the past year in this blog. 

Here is what typically happens to the sheer number of vehicles shipping to Florida on any given day in the Winter Season from December to February. It is often called Snowbird season as well. 

If at all possible, you should avoid the last two weeks of December and the first two weeks of January. It is hectic for everybody. Just look at the chart and see how the number of vehicles available to ship skyrockets fourfold around the holidays. It is more than the car transportation system can handle. 

During the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays, the vehicle transport carriers and brokers, and most of all the customers, are stressed. The carriers and brokers understand what is happening … why some orders ship and others that are priced too cheap – don’t. 

But not all customers understand the auto transport industry, and why the order they placed weeks ago is still languishing in their cold driveway.

The auto shipping industry is not first come, first served. Once Christmas arrives, the vehicle shipping cost rises incrementally almost daily for four weeks. If a customer booked too early, he will likely have too low a price when the time comes to ship his car. He will have to wait. Or add money to rectify the dilemma. 

The carriers are not concerned with when any particular order was booked. They are only concerned with maximizing their profit, as anyone would be. The carriers quite naturally choose to haul the highest-paying vehicles available. For them, it is a feeding frenzy. Kind of like Piranha. 

The car shipping carriers have a dilemma to contend with once in Fort Lauderdale. There is very little freight leaving Fort Lauderdale. Because there are so many competing car transport carriers swarming to Fort Lauderdale, and elsewhere in Florida, in late December and all of January, chances are high that a carrier returns home with a half-empty trailer. That means he must make money on the trip to Fort Lauderdale. He doesn’t have the luxury of transporting cheap orders. 

A good rule of thumb is to book your vehicle shipment to Fort Lauderdale about 7 days before availability. The overwhelming majority of auto transport carriers will not commit to picking up a car shipment more than three days in advance of the vehicle availability. 

So why book much earlier than that? It is almost always best to have current vehicle transport market pricing. If it’s high, then there’s no way around it, you gotta pay. Because other cars will ship and yours won’t.

Direct Express Auto Transport uniquely has three levels of service on every route, including shipping a car to Fort Lauderdale. The customers who choose the highest Rush rate are typically happiest with the service. 

The customers who choose the Expedited rate are often satisfied with the results. 

Those who book the Standard rate to Fort Lauderdale during the busy snowbird season are frustrated while waiting their turn. 

We are writing this blog to give good advice to unaware customers. The smartest thing to do if you are in a hurry to ship a car is to go with the higher Rush or Expedited rates. 

When the Fort Lauderdale snowbirds return home in the Spring season, starting in late April, throughout all of May, and into early June, the above scenario repeats itself in reverse.

This blog, however, is about shipping a vehicle to Fort Lauderdale during the four seasons. We are advising you on the best strategy during each season. 

In the Spring Season shipping a vehicle to Fort Lauderdale, the volume of orders returns to normal. The Spring Season is nothing like the Winter Season. 

After the Winter Season, there are a couple of months of relatively normal vehicle shipping activity to Fort Lauderdale and the rest of Florida.

And then there is May, which is ridiculously advantageous for shipping a vehicle to Florida. The cheapest Vehicle Transport pricing of the year to Fort Lauderdale occurs in May. Why is that, you ask? In May, there are tens of thousands of snowbirds (retirees, college students, and many others) who hibernated in Fort Lauderdale for the winter and are returning home to the north. With so many leaving Fort Lauderdale, and so few coming, the reverse route to Fort Lauderdale becomes incredibly cheap. Enjoy it while you can. 

In May, auto shipping quotes from Fort Lauderdale usually skyrocket as demand for car transport carrier space is very high. Available carrier space is in short supply. The inverse is true. There is an overabundance of auto transport carrier space available to Fort Lauderdale, which drives down the price. Therefore, May is the cheapest time of year to ship a car to Fort Lauderdale. 

Auto transport to Fort Lauderdale in the Summer Season is busier than the Spring or Autumn seasons, but not nearly as hectic as the Winter season. Vehicle Transport quotes are fairly stable throughout the summer but rise significantly in August. 

The snowbirds finally return home at the end of May, with a few stragglers in early June. 

Like the rest of the country in the Summer Season, auto shipping traffic tends to be families and individuals relocating from and to other states. There are more vehicle shipments than in the slower months of February, March, and April. And considerably more than September, October, and November. 

Car transport carrier drivers enjoy being home as much as you do for the 4th of July festivities. The hometown parade. The barbecue with family and friends. A mid-summer rest with the people you love. 

That means fewer vehicles are getting shipped right in the middle of the busy Summer Season. Orders get backlogged. When the carriers get back to work in early July, they transport to Fort Lauderdale the highest-paying freight first with no regard to how long a customer has been waiting. For about two weeks thereafter, many customers find it both more expensive and frustrating.

The thing to do, and here is your tip, is to avoid vehicle shipping to Fort Lauderdale the last week of June and the first two weeks of July. That is not a good time to ship a car.

There is a very discernible automobile shipping spike every year in the late Summer Season. Florida has many popular universities and colleges that attract students from all over America. For many, it is an ideal place to go to college. 

Those Florida colleges on the semester system create a mid-August boost in auto transport to Fort Lauderdale that lasts until the end of the month. Of the nearly 800,000 Florida college students, roughly 17% are from out-of-state, which means tens of thousands suddenly require vehicle shipping services. 

Vehicle shipping to Fort Lauderdale in the Autumn Season is easy. It is considered a slow time of year in the car shipping industry. Automobile shipping costs remain stable and affordable throughout most of the Fall or Autumn Season. 

The only blips on the screen when it comes to vehicle shipping to Fort Lauderdale in the Autumn Season are hurricanes and Thanksgiving. And both are momentary. 

National weather forecasters can see hurricanes forming in the Caribbean or Gulf of Mexico days in advance. Car transport carriers know how long they have to get out of Florida, and they avoid entirely any route there. They wait it out, which usually takes but a few days, a week at most. 

September and October are the two most susceptible months for hurricanes, but of course, there are exceptions. Hurricanes create a backlog of vehicle shipments to Fort Lauderdale that are usually overcome within a week after the event. 

At the end of November comes Thanksgiving. Like everybody else, Vehicle Transport carriers like to be home for Turkey Day too. Because Thanksgiving is always the fourth Thursday in November, drivers are usually home by the Wednesday before and don’t return to the road until the Monday after Thanksgiving. Essentially a five-day break for many. It takes about a week for the vehicle shipping freight system to recover and return to equilibrium. 

When is the best time to ship a car to Fort Lauderdale? Probably the Spring,  Summer, and Autumn Seasons. Car shipping quotes tend to be lower and service faster. The Winter Season is far more costly.

As far as car shipping to Fort Lauderdale goes, some seasons are much easier than others. The Winter season is by far the toughest, especially around the auto transport snowbird migration to Fort Lauderdale in late December and January, as shipping costs soar. 

The Spring season is a good time to ship a car to Fort Lauderdale, especially in May when snowbird backhaul prices plummet to Fort Lauderdale. The Summer season is relatively fine. The Autumn season is ideal weather, and car transport quotes tend to be lower than average. 

Direct Express Auto Transport originated the instant car shipping quote calculator in 2004. It is still the best, most sophisticated, reliable tool available online. We offer three options that we call tiers of car shipping quote estimates to Fort Lauderdale, FL.

The Standard rate is the cheapest car shipping quote. Use the Standard rate if you can be patient. 

The Expedited rate, or tier as we call them, is the most recommended and best auto transport quote. We have countless satisfied Expedited rate customers because the vehicle shipping process tends to go quicker. 

The Rush rate is our highest level of car transport quotes and service, and many customers are glad they went with that method too. If in a hurry, go Rush rate.