There’s something pretty special about an American road trip. Windows down, a great playlist, spontaneous stops in towns you probably wouldn’t otherwise visit, and the freedom to change your plans because you saw an interesting sign on the side of the highway.

It’s one of my favorite ways to travel, and in a country as vast and varied as the USA, driving can often be the best way to experience a destination properly.

But not every mile of a road trip is spectacular.

For every incredible coastal highway or mountain pass, there can also be hundreds (sometimes thousands!) of miles of interstate where you’re really just trying to get from A to B. So before committing three, five, or even ten days to driving across the country, it’s worth asking yourself one question:

Is the drive actually part of the trip, or do you simply need your car at the destination?

Because if it’s the latter, you don’t necessarily have to drive it there yourself.

Should You Drive It or Ship It? Rethinking the Great American Road Trip

The Road Trip You Imagine vs. the One You Actually Take

When people imagine a cross-country drive, they picture golden hour on a desert highway, a diner stop in some town they’ll never visit again, maybe a detour to a roadside attraction that made for a great photo.

What they don’t picture is the 14-hour stretch through featureless interstate, the fatigue that creeps in around day three, or realizing halfway through Nebraska that you’ve spent more time watching the road than the scenery.

None of that is a knock on road trips – some of the best travel memories come from exactly that kind of unplanned chaos. But it’s worth being honest that a long-distance drive is really two experiences stitched together: the parts that feel like adventure, and the parts that are just logistics.

The scenic overlook in Utah is the trip. The eight hours of flat highway to get there is the cost of admission.

When Shipping Your Car Can Make More Sense

Car shipping isn’t something most travelers immediately think about when planning a road trip, but there are situations where it can be a surprisingly practical alternative.

Instead of driving the entire distance, you can have your vehicle transpoJted across the less interesting part of the route, fly to your destination, and then use your own car for the part of the trip you actually want to drive.

A few scenarios where this tends to make the most sense:

• You’re moving, not vacationing. If the drive is functionally a relocation — new job, new home, a seasonal move somewhere warmer — there’s often nothing romantic left in it by day two. It’s just miles.
• The scenic stretch is only part of the route. Plenty of iconic drives (coastal highways, mountain passes, national park loops) are only a few hundred miles long. Ship the car to the start of that stretch and skip the thousand miles of flat highway that lead up to it.
• You’re short on time. A trip that would take five days of driving can become a single flight plus a couple of days of scenic driving once the car’s already waiting for you.
• You’re traveling with a car that needs extra care. Classic cars, low-clearance vehicles, or anything you’d rather not put 2,000+ miles on can be transported enclosed instead.

What Shipping a Car Actually Involves

If you’ve never done it, the process is more straightforward than it sounds. Auto transport companies pick your car up – often right from your driveway – load it onto a carrier, and deliver it to your destination, usually within a window of a few days depending on distance.

You’re not driving to a depot or dealing with freight terminals; it’s closer to booking a shuttle for your vehicle than shipping cargo.

The two main options are open transport (your car rides on an open trailer alongside others – the more common and more affordable choice) and enclosed transport (fully covered, typically used for higher-value or classic vehicles). Costs vary based on distance, vehicle size, and time of year, but for a lot of routes it ends up costing less than the gas, meals, lodging, and time a multi-day drive would eat up – and that’s before you factor in wear on the car itself.

We went down this rabbit hole after a friend shipped her car ahead of a move from the Northeast to Arizona, then flew out and spent four days doing the one drive she actually wanted to do – Sedona up through the Grand Canyon – instead of the six days it would’ve taken to get there.

She still got her road trip. She just got to skip the part that wasn’t one.

If you’re curious about how the process works end to end, Mile Auto Transport has a good rundown of how door-to-door shipping typically goes.

The Hybrid Trip: Best of Both Worlds

None of this is an argument against road trips – it’s an argument for being intentional about which parts of a route deserve the windshield time. Ship your car to Denver and drive the Rockies. Ship it to Portland and take the coast down to San Diego at your own pace. Ship it home after a long work relocation and save your actual vacation days for a trip you’ll want to remember, not just survive.

The next time you’re staring down a route that’s 70% flat interstate and 30% the reason you wanted to go in the first place, it might be worth asking: do I want to drive this whole thing, or do I just want to be there?

Sometimes the best road trip is the one where you let the boring miles happen without you.