Seasonality greatly affects Miami car shipping quotes, overall cost, and level of service. Here is when to ship a car to Miami. Depending on the season, your approach to shipping your vehicle to Miami should change.

We include in this blog tried and true tips and strategies that will help you have a successful experience. We think we know the best way to ship a car to Miami, Florida in all four seasons.

OUR METHODOLOGY:

Direct Express Auto Transport has over twenty years of experience shipping cars to Miami, Florida. We track daily the number of single-vehicle Sedans, SUVs, Pickup Trucks, and Vans system-wide that are available to ship on an 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 Miami, and we share the past year’s results in this blog.

Key Takeaways: 

• Car shipping to Miami is affected by the seasons.
• The highest vehicle shipping cost to Miami is around the Christmas and New Year holidays during the snowbird Winter season.
• The cheapest auto transport quotes to Miami happen just four months later in the Spring season.
• The late Summer season collides with college student auto shipping, and for a while, costs rise.
• The Autumn season is an ideal time to ship your car to Miami.

We start with the hard part first, shipping a car to Miami 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 Miami, 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 car 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 auto 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. 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 Miami. There is very little freight leaving Miami. Because there are so many competing car transport carriers swarming to Miami, 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 Miami. He doesn’t have the luxury of transporting cheap orders. 

A good rule of thumb is to book your vehicle shipment to Miami 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. 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 Miami. 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 Miami 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 Miami 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 Miami during the four seasons. We are advising you on the best strategy during each season. 

In the Spring Season shipping a vehicle to Miami, 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 Miami and the rest of Florida. And then there is May.

And then there is May, which is ridiculously advantageous for shipping a vehicle to Florida. The cheapest auto transport pricing of the year to Miami 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 Miami for the winter and are returning home to the north. With so many leaving Miami, and so few coming, the reverse route to Miami becomes incredibly cheap. Enjoy it while you can. 

In May, car shipping quotes from Miami 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 Miami, which drives down the price. Therefore, May is the cheapest time of year to ship a car to Miami. 

Auto transport to Miami in the Summer Season is busier than the Spring or Autumn seasons, but not nearly as hectic as the Winter season. Auto 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, car 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. 

There is a very discernible car 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 Miami 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. 

Auto transport to Miami in the Summer Season is fairly steady and predictable because there is parity between the number of vehicles shipping from and to there. Auto transport costs remain stable throughout most of the summer.

The only blips on the screen when it comes to vehicle shipping to Miami 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 Miami that are usually overcome within a week after the event. 

At the end of November comes Thanksgiving. Like everybody else, auto 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. 

The Autumn Season is perhaps the best time of year to ship a car to Miami, or anywhere else for that matter. 

When is the best time to ship a car to Miami? 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 Miami goes, some seasons are much easier than others. The Winter season is by far the toughest, especially around the auto transport snowbird migration to Miami in late December and January, as shipping costs soar. 

The Spring season is a good time to ship a car to Miami, especially in May when snowbird backhaul prices plummet to Miami. 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 Miami, 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.