The State of Auto Transport 2026: What Moving a Car Actually Costs Now

Executive summary

Carrier pay per mile rose 22.8% in the first half of 2026, according to SGT Auto Transport shipment data. That followed 4 straight half-year periods with almost no change. The jump has a date: it starts in March, the month the Strait of Hormuz closed to shipping.

Here is what the data shows:

1. Carrier pay per mile rose 22.8% year over year. For the 2 years before that, it moved less than 3 points in either direction.
2. The rise starts in March 2026. Carrier pay ran 9.2% above last year in January and 11.7% in February. Then it hit 14.9% in March, 20.7% in April, and 34.7% in June.
3. Consumer prices rose 14.6%, about two-thirds as fast. Brokers absorbed the rest instead of passing it all on.
4. Repricing after booking rose 46%, and cancellations rose 24.8%. The main reason: the booked rate was too low to attract a truck.

Rising carrier costs drive most of what follows. Fuel was the trigger, but it landed on a cost base that was already stretched by insurance, equipment, and everything else a truck needs.

The 2026 rate break

Carrier pay per mile jumped 22.8% in the first half of 2026, and consumer prices rose 14.6%. Both had been flat for 2 years. Set the first half of 2024 at 100, and carrier pay reads 93.0, 96.0, and 94.4 over the next 3 periods. That is a range of barely 3 points. Then it hit 117.9.

The rise has a start date

The rise began in March 2026. It did not build slowly across the year. Half-year figures hide this, but monthly numbers make it plain.

Diesel in January and February 2026 was actually flat to slightly below the year before - $3.52 a gallon in January against $3.63 in January 2025. The 9% to 12% carrier increases in those months were not a fuel story. Fuel arrived in March, on top of costs that were already climbing. In 2025, the usual spring rise flattened out by April. In 2026, it kept going through May.

Why: the Strait of Hormuz

Fuel is the trigger. The Strait of Hormuz effectively closed on February 28, 2026, when US and Israeli strikes on Iran brought traffic to a near standstill. The IRGC formally declared it closed on March 2. About 100 ships a day passed through the strait in February. Between March 1 and March 8, that fell to about 6 a day. Retail diesel went from $3.72 a gallon in February to $4.92 in March - a 32% jump in a single month - and peaked at $5.60 in May. It has not come back down: July still averaged $4.96. Across the first half of 2026, diesel averaged $4.72 a gallon against $3.59 a year earlier, 31% higher. In August, the International Energy Agency reported that the Strait still had not reopened.

Diesel is the highest cost a car hauler can’t control. Most car haulers are small fleets and owner-operators. They have little cash to absorb a fuel spike, so the cost reached customers fast.

The timing lines up. Diesel and carrier pay peaked in the same month, May. Both eased slightly in June, and both are still far above where they started the year.

Fuel also hit carriers who were already stretched. The American Transportation Research Institute found that the average cost to run a truck hit a record $2.336 per mile in 2025, up 3.4%, with truckload profit margins under 1%. Its first-quarter 2026 data show fuel costs up 5.9% after holding flat through all of 2025, and insurance up 6.4%.

Carriers earning about a penny per mile could not absorb a diesel shock. In 2026, they stopped trying.

The rise was broad

Every distance band above 500 miles rose between 21% and 24%. That matters. If only 1 segment had jumped, the cause would likely be a change in the mix of loads or a regional quirk. A rise this even points to a cost that hits every carrier at once.

What it costs to ship a car

SGT Auto Transport data shows a short shipment costs about $2.04 per mile, while a cross-country shipment costs about $0.55. That is a 3.7x difference, and it is the single most misunderstood number in this industry. Over the last 12 months, price per mile fell 3.7 times from the shortest hauls to the longest, while the total bill only increased 2.46 times.

_{Per-mile figures are the average of each shipment's own price per mile. Average totals are the average of each shipment's total price. In the 100–499 mile band the two do not multiply together, because that band spans a 4x range of distances and short hauls carry a far higher per-mile cost. The wider the band, the wider the gap. Every other row reconciles within 1%.}

The reason is fixed costs. Loading, strapping down, inspecting, and unloading a car takes the same work whether it goes 300 miles or 3,000. On a short trip, that work is spread over far fewer miles. Short moves also compete poorly for space on a 9-car trailer heading across the country.

The enclosed premium

Enclosed car transport costs 32.3% more than open car transport. That sits inside the 30% to 60% range the industry usually quotes. It also shows that enclosed trailers are scarce, not just fancy.

The premium is not the same everywhere. It grows with distance, from 21.3% under 500 miles, peaking at 38.9% at 1,500 to 2,000 miles.

Supply explains the pattern. Enclosed trailers hold fewer cars than open ones, and there are far fewer of them on the road. On a short trip, an enclosed truck can take a small detour. Sending one 2,000-mile trip ties up scarce space for a week, and the price shows it.

The pressure inside booked shipments

Cancellations rose with 24.8%, and repricing after booking rose 46%. Both trace back to the same cause. When carrier costs rise faster than quoted prices, the gap has to go somewhere. In 2026, it went to two places.

Repricing. The share of finished shipments that ended above their booked price rose 46% year over year. This is not about how prices are set. It is about a market moving faster than a quote can predict. A price quoted in February reflected a truck market that no longer existed in April.

Cancellations. Bookings that ended in cancellation rose with 24.8%. The cause is clear. Orders canceled because the booked rate was too low to attract any truck rose from 1.45% of all bookings to 4.64%. That is more than 3 times higher in 12 months. Every other reason for canceling was mostly flat or falling.

What Americans shipped

SUVs made up 43.9% of vehicles shipped through SGT Auto Transport in 2026, up almost 4 points in 1 year. Sedans fell to 27.9% from 31.1%. Electric vehicles reached 5.5%.

The American car fleet has been shifting toward SUVs for a decade. What stands out is how fast that shows up in what people pay to move.

The pickup share is worth a closer look. At 8.4%, it runs at about half the rate reported from load board data covering dealer and commercial traffic. Consumer moves and dealer logistics are 2 different markets moving 2 different sets of vehicles. That difference gets lost when industry numbers are quoted without saying where they came from.

Electric vehicles reached 5.5% of vehicles shipped, up from 4.4%. Tesla alone made up 3.8%. That is ahead of the auction market, where Cox Automotive reported EVs holding just above 4% of Manheim volume in mid-2026, a share not seen before this year.

Pump prices may be part of the reason. Cox reported gas prices holding at $4.50 or higher from early May, with used EV values beating the wider market as a result. Households that buy an EV when fuel is expensive also seem more likely to ship one.

Two other shifts:

• Enclosed transport fell to 11.2% of shipments from 13.4%. As prices rose, customers traded down from the premium option.
• Inoperable vehicles fell to 1.8% from 2.5%, continuing a multi-year decline in non-running cars moving through consumer channels.

When Americans shipped

The typical customer books 5 days before they need the car picked up. That has not changed. But 38.5% of shipments now need a truck within 2 days of booking, up from 34.9%.

At the same time, the group booking more than 30 days ahead shrank to 11.6% from 12.9%. Customers are arriving later and in more of a hurry. 

The snowbird effect

SGT Auto Transport shipment data shows Florida takes in 22.9% of all national shipments at its October peak, and sends out 22.8% at its March peak. Comparing those two flows month by month gives one number - inbound divided by outbound - and no pattern in vehicle shipping repeats more reliably.

Florida's inbound share runs high from September through December, and its outbound share peaks between February and April. As a ratio, the state ran 2.25 in October 2025 and 0.44 in April 2026 - a 5x reversal in 6 months. The year before was sharper still: 2.95 in October 2024 against 0.35 in April 2025. The autumn peak lands in September or October depending on the year. The spring trough has landed in April both years.

If you are shipping a car to Florida in autumn or out of it in spring, this is the one thing to know. You are competing with the largest predictable demand surge in the industry.

Where vehicles moved

Utah, South Carolina, Illinois, Arizona and Texas gain vehicles. New Jersey, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, California, New York and Nevada lose them. The measure is simple: inbound shipments divided by outbound, over the last 12 months.

Most of that matches the U-Haul Growth Index. U-Haul named Texas its top growth state of 2025 - the 7th time in 10 years, after South Carolina held the spot in 2024 - and ranked California last for the 6th year running. South Carolina is the clearest overlap with our data: it topped U-Haul's index in 2024 and sits 2nd on our measure at 1.25.

But cars do not always move with their owners, and the exceptions are the interesting part. Illinois sits in U-Haul's bottom 5 for people leaving, yet it gains cars here. It also posted the biggest swing of any large state, moving from 0.91 to 1.19 in 1 year. Washington and Oregon show the opposite: both rank as U-Haul growth states, and both lose cars on our measure.

The likely reason is that cars travel for reasons people do not. A car bought at auction or from an out-of-state dealer moves without anyone relocating. Big city dealer hubs pull in stock that migration numbers never count. Anyone using car shipping data to track where people move should treat these gaps as the finding, not as noise.

California is still the largest single market by far, at 14.3% of all inbound shipments and 15.7% of outbound.

Who is actually shipping

76.9% of these shipments start at somebody's home. Dealerships account for 7.9% and auctions for 1.8%. Industry numbers often get quoted without saying whose shipments they describe, so here is the make-up of this dataset.

This is a consumer market. It is people relocating, buying a car in another state, sending a car to family, or heading south for the winter. It behaves differently from the dealer-to-dealer and auction traffic that fills most load board reporting. The 2 should not be treated as the same thing.

Outlook

The biggest question for the rest of 2026 is fuel. The rate rise is a fuel story, so how long it lasts depends on the Strait of Hormuz. The IEA reported in August that reopening was still unresolved. If it reopens and diesel falls back, some of the 2026 increase should unwind. ATRI's non-fuel costs, which rose 4.2% in 2025 on their own, will not.

Whether brokers keep absorbing the gap. Consumer prices rose about two-thirds as fast as carrier pay in 2026. That squeeze cannot last forever. Either consumer prices catch up, or trucks leave the market.

More scrutiny on pricing and vetting. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's broker transparency rulemaking is still open. In May 2026, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC that state negligent-hiring claims against freight brokers are not blocked by federal law. Brokers' pricing, disclosure, and carrier checks will face more scrutiny in 2027 than in 2026.

Methodology

This report covers 30 months of vehicle shipping data, from January 2024 through June 2026, processed through SGT Auto Transport. It spans all 50 U.S. states as both origin and destination, across 1,581 distinct state-to-state lanes in the most recent 12 months alone.

Time windows used. Rate indices cover 5 half-year periods from January 2024 to June 2026, with the first half of 2024 set to 100. Year-over-year comparisons use matched January-to-June periods for 2025 and 2026, so seasonal effects cannot distort them. Pricing, regional, and seasonal figures use a trailing 12-month window running August 1, 2025 to July 31, 2026. The seasonal Florida analysis uses 24 months, August 2024 to July 2026.

Which shipments are included. All figures come from organically acquired shipments only. Paid search and affiliate channels are excluded, because their volumes follow marketing spend rather than market conditions. Rate figures use completed, delivered shipments of a single vehicle on open transport, so that vehicle count and trailer type cannot distort the price per mile.

How the indices are built. Both rate indices are mix-adjusted, meaning they are weighted to a fixed distance profile. If the report's mix of short and long hauls shifts, the index does not move as a result - only real price changes move it. Prices are grouped into 5 distance bands. The enclosed premium is adjusted the same way, against the open-transport distance profile. Without that adjustment the premium would read about 10 percentage points too high, because enclosed shipments skew toward shorter hauls where cost per mile is naturally higher.

Each index period pools every shipment in that half-year, so every shipment counts once. Averaging the 6 monthly figures instead would weight each month equally, no matter how many shipments it held, and that gives +20.7% for the first half of 2026 rather than +22.8%. The difference is volume weighting: 2026's busiest months were also its most expensive. May carried nearly twice as many shipments as February, at a price per mile about a third higher.

Data coverage. Origin location type was recorded for 99.1% of shipments in the 12-month window. Segment figures are reported only where the sample supports them. The shortest distance band is shown as a combined 100-to-499-mile range because the 100-to-249-mile band fell below our minimum reporting threshold.

What is not disclosed. SGT Auto Transport does not publish order volumes, revenue, or market share. Every figure here is an index, a share, a median, or a ratio. No number in this report, alone or combined with another, is intended to allow those totals to be worked out.

Citing this report: Please attribute to The State of Auto Transport 2026, SGT Auto Transport and link to this page.

External sources referenced

• American Transportation Research Institute, Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking: 2026 Update
• U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. No 2 Diesel Retail Prices, monthly series
• International Energy Agency, via CNBC, August 2026
• Congressional Research Service, The Strait of Hormuz: Security Developments and Impacts on Oil, Gas, and Other Commodities
• Cox Automotive, Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index, July 2026 and mid-May 2026
• U-Haul, Growth Index 2025
• Supreme Court of the United States, Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, No. 24-1238
• Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Transparency in Property Broker Transactions