We start with the hard part first, shipping a car to Los Angeles 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 big reasons. It is hectic, expensive, and stressful during the holidays shipping a car to Los Angeles. 

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

We omit here 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 the story of car shipping to Los Angeles, and we share the past year’s California results in this blog. 

Here is what typically happens to the sheer number of vehicles car shipping to California on any given day in the Winter Season from December to February.

If at all possible, you should avoid the last two weeks of December and the first two weeks of January to ship a car to Los Angeles. 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 car 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. What matters to them is 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. 

Fortunately, as you may observe from the ratios in the Winter Season table, there is near parity with the number of vehicles coming and going in California. That helps keep pricing and timeframes stable in Los Angeles.

A good rule of thumb is to book your vehicle shipment to Los Angeles 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 auto transport market pricing. If it’s high, then there’s no way around it, you gotta pay it to get your car shipped. 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 Los Angeles. 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 Los Angeles during the busy season are sometimes frustrated 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 is to ship your car with the higher Rush or Expedited rates. 

Almost all of March is kind of slow shipping either to or from Los Angeles. But starting in late April, and throughout all of May, significantly more vehicles are shipping from Los Angeles than to it. Well then, the auto transport cost becomes lower to Los Angeles in the Spring Season and it is a great time to ship there. You picked a good time to ship a car to the City of Angels.

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

Auto transport to Los Angeles in the Summer Season is far busier than in the Spring Season. The ratios can be deceiving relative to the volume of activity. The reason there appear to be fewer cars on any given day being shipped to Los Angeles in the Summer is only because what becomes available doesn’t stay on the load board very long. 

Because there are often two or three times more cars shipping from Los Angeles in the Summer, it creates a high demand for vehicles shipping there. Rest assured that there are still plenty of orders being placed every day in the Summer to Los Angeles and gobbled up quickly. 

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 Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles 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 car shipping spike every year in the late Summer Season shipping from California. While California has many popular universities and colleges that attract students from all over America, still there are far more California college students leaving the state for universities out-of-state.

That helps make car shipping to California in late August both cheaper and faster.

Auto transport costs to Los Angeles in the Summer Season are less than from Los Angeles. It occasionally costs about 20-30% more to ship from the entire state of California in the Summer Season than it does going there. 

Vehicle shipping to Los Angeles in the Autumn Season is the only time of year when slightly more cars are being shipped to there than from there. In every other season, it is either the opposite or at minimum, parity. 

Autumn is generally considered a slow time of year in the car shipping industry. Auto transport costs remain relatively stable and more affordable throughout most of the Autumn Season. It is a good time of year to ship your car to Los Angeles. 

September, October, and the first half of November are fairly tranquil months for car shipping services just about anywhere in the country. That certainly holds for Los Angeles.

However, toward the end of November comes Thanksgiving. Like everybody else, auto transport carrier drivers would 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 one week afterward for the vehicle shipping system to recover and return to equilibrium.

Other than the New Year’s holiday, the most prolonged and toughest time of year for auto transport pricing to Los Angeles, California occurs in the Autumn Season. 

In Autumn, more vehicles are shipping to Los Angeles, and fewer leaving. October and November are the only two months in the year when it is harder and more expensive to ship a car to Los Angeles.

When is the best time to ship a car to Los Angeles? Probably the Spring and Summer seasons. Car shipping quotes tend to be lower and service faster. The Autumn and Winter Seasons are more costly. 

As far as car shipping to Los Angeles goes, some seasons are much easier than others. The Winter season is the hardest and most expensive around the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays. The Spring Season is an ideal time for vehicle shipping to L.A. 

The Summer Season is a difficult time shipping from Los Angeles, but that makes it ideal for transport to Los Angeles. Finally, the Autumn Season is good for car shipping to Los Angeles at the beginning (in September) and at the end (November), but is more expensive in October.

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 Los Angeles, CA.

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.