2025 AmeriFreight Car Shipping Review

AmeriFreight is a car shipping broker that can connect you to safe, reliable vehicle carriers in your area, help you get a fair price, and troubleshoot any problems that come up along the way. Although AmeriFreight doesn't hire drivers directly, it serves as a middleman to make the process as effortless and low-risk as possible.

We consider AmeriFreight the best car shipping company of 2025 because it performs thorough background and quality checks on all carriers in its network, has a fantastic and long-standing reputation among customers, and can help you ship just about anything with wheels. 

There's a lot to love about AmeriFreight, and our review will take a close look at typical prices, insurance coverage, reliability, and more.  

AmeriFreight has been in business longer than any other car shipping company we recommend. It's the only company in our top five besides Sherpa Auto Transport that can accommodate same-day pick-up requests, and its prices tend to be lower than most competitors. 

Learn more about how AmeriFreight compares to its competitors in our best car shipping companies guide.

Before we get much deeper into our AmeriFreight review, let's make sure the company offers the features and services you need.

Here's a quick look at AmeriFreight's core services. This car shipping company is willing to work with you to ship just about any vehicle from any location. 

Trailer types:

• Open (vehicles are exposed the weather)
• Closed (vehicles are secured inside a trailer)
• Specialty

Vehicles accepted:

• Cars and trucks
• Motorcycles
• Boats
• Golf carts
• ATVs
• Inoperable vehicles
• Modified vehicles (i.e. lift kits, roof racks, light bars, grill guards, etc.)

Pick up and delivery options:

• Door to door
• Terminal to terminal
• Storage facility pick up
• Auction pick up

Other services:

• Top load

In 2025, the average cost to ship a car with AmeriFreight is approximately $900 to $1,500. Costs range from about $600 to transport a vehicle one hundred miles in an open carrier to around $2,200 to ship it across the country in a closed carrier.

In general, you can expect to pay $2.30 per mile for open transport and $3.91 per mile for enclosed transport. But that's just the baseline price. As we'll discuss below, other factors can increase the final cost of your AmeriFreight bill.

AmeriFreight's prices typically hover just below industry averages for open transport. If you're looking for the best price on enclosed transport, you may want to consider another car shipping company because AmeriFreight has some of the highest quotes.

According to AmeriFreight, several factors affect its auto transport prices from start to finish:

• Vehicle size. You'll be charged for how much your car weighs and how much space it takes up. Our analysis of more than 60 AmeriFreight quotes shows that you’ll pay an average of $70 extra each time you go up a vehicle size (from a car to an SUV to a truck).
• Vehicle condition. AmeriFreight charges an extra $20+ (depending on the size) if your vehicle doesn’t run. Bottom line? The more work the driver does to get your car onto the truck, the more you pay.
• Transport type. Open transport is always your cheapest option, and almost everyone uses it. For people with classic cars or luxury cars who want the extra protection of an enclosed carrier, prices are much higher (about 80%).
• Expedited shipping. AmeriFreight can often pick up our vehicle within a couple of days for an extra fee. While you'll still need to talk with a company rep about specific timelines, normal expedited fees are $75 for SUVs, $125 for large SUVs, and $150 for full-size trucks.
• Price guarantee: AmeriFreight guarantees its prices only if the car can be picked up within 24 hours. Because of the short turnaround time, you'll end up paying more than if you can wait a couple weeks for pickup.
• Special requests. You can pay an extra $100 to “top load” your car on an AmeriFreight carrier. This may be a good option if you want a little extra protection but don’t want to pay for enclosed shipping because cars on the upper deck are less likely to be hit by rocks.
• Gap protection coverage. It costs an extra $50–$100 to get additional coverage with AmeriFreight. We'll discuss this more in the insurance section below.
• Time of year. AmeriFreight's car shipping costs are usually the lowest in the spring and fall and the highest in the summer and winter months (when most people transport their vehicles). Of course, holidays and seasonal weather conditions also affect your price.
• Economic conditions. For example, if gas prices go up $1 per gallon, your AmeriFreight quote will rise too.
• Pickup and delivery locations. Being close to freeways, populated cities, and established routes helps you get the best pricing from AmeriFrieght. 

1. Take advantage of discounts. AmeriFreight offers discounts to a variety of populations, including military members, seniors, students, law enforcement, healthcare workers, and first responders. The average discount is about $50.
2. Book early. It gives more carriers a chance to bid on your car, which lowers the price. Plus, AmeriFreight offers an early bird discount.
3. Consider a different origin city. Can you meet the driver in the nearest major city? Doing so means less work for the carrier and helps them stay on schedule. With a more attractive origin city, you might get a better deal on the total price.
4. Avoid snowbird season. If you can be flexible about when you ship your car, try to do it in the spring and fall for the best prices. AmeriFreight and other car shippers are extra busy in the summer and winter because they're transporting cars back and forth for people who spend the winter in the south. That means fewer carriers will be available to bid on your transport request, and the price will likely be higher.
5. Choose an open carrier. Your car will be subjected to the weather just as if you drove it yourself. For most cars, this isn't a big deal. 

Like most car shipping companies, AmeriFreight requires all drivers to hold the legal minimum in liability insurance, which is $750,000. However, AmeriFreight representatives told us most drivers in their network carry $1 million to $2 million policies. 

This basic liability insurance coverage protects your vehicle while it's on the road, but it doesn't cover damage that happens when your car is loaded, unloaded, parked, or stored. That damage is covered by your car insurance.

You can get a little extra help from AmeriFreight in the form of an Allied Fidelity Total Assurance (AFTA) plan. It costs an extra $50–$100 and pays up to $2,000 toward your car insurance deductible if there's damage that the carrier's insurance doesn't cover. Although $2,000 may not sound like much, it's above and beyond what most car shipping companies offer.

The AFTA plan also reimburses you for a rental car if your vehicle is delivered late, and it protects you against "certain out-of-policy cancellations" so that you can get a refund. 

We also like that AmeriFreight gives you 48 hours after delivery to detect damage. According to AmeriFreight CEO Sameer Ismailzada, cars shipped on open carriers can get pretty dirty, and that dirt can hide dents from hail or scratches from tree limbs. It's also tough to spot damage when a car is delivered after dark.

That's why AmeriFreight gives its customers extra time to inspect for damages. Most car transport companies require you to sign off as soon as your car arrives, which can make it difficult to perform a thorough damage check.

AmeriFreight uses a five-step carrier vetting process, and frankly, it’s better than just about any transport company we’ve seen. Here are the standards required of each carrier that works for AmeriFreight:

1. License and registration. Sure, it’s a basic thing, but AmeriFreight does the legwork to make sure your driver is properly licensed and registered with the US Department of Transportation.
2. Interstate authority. You may be surprised to hear that not all carriers have the authority to cross state lines when transporting a vehicle. And the last thing you want are drivers who break the law the second they leave the confines of your home state. AmeriFreight makes sure that won’t happen.
3. Insurance. AmeriFreight identifies the insurance status of its carriers before it ever picks up your vehicle. It may sound simple, but we’ve heard more than a few horror stories of uninsured truck drivers who try to sneak under the radar. This won’t happen with AmeriFreight, though.
4. Driver ratings. You may already know that all auto transport brokers find reliable carriers in the same place: an online marketplace with more than 13,000 drivers. And unsurprisingly, not all of them are stellar drivers. AmeriFreight uses only the excellent ones, and refuses to contract with any driver that scores below 95% on Central Dispatch’s rating system.
5. “Do not use” list. Anytime a customer reports bad experiences to AmeriFreight, it’ll break off the relationship with the offending carrier faster than you can parallel park your car. Plus, the company maintains an in-house “do not use” list to make sure you get the best drivers.

When the company opened its doors in 2004 (more than 20 years ago), it had a mission to become one of the industry’s most trusted logistics companies in the country … and we’d say it accomplished that. If you factor in its gap insurance offerings and unwavering carrier vetting process, you’d agree that AmeriFreight has consistently angled itself to be one of the most reputable and road-safe shippers around.

 Although the company doesn't offer guaranteed pick-up or delivery dates, customer reviews tell us AmeriFreight has an excellent track record for meeting customer's needs. Drivers are in charge of their own schedules, and sometimes things come up. AmeriFreight works hard to find alternative drivers if the original carrier can't make it.

The closest thing you can get to a guaranteed pick-up date is AmeriFreight's same-day or next-day pick-up service. It's available at the First Class rate, so it's more expensive than waiting one or two weeks.  

From its guaranteed pricing option, its AFta gap coverage, and its carefully vetted carriers, AmeriFreight gives customers plenty of reasons to award it an average online review score of 4.8 out of 5 stars.

"Our job is to take care of consumers and make sure they're treated the way we would want to be treated," said Ismailzada. "We take care of our team. A happy team will always translate into happy customers."

Most reviewers say AmeriFreight was attentive to their needs, communicated often, and quickly solved any problems so that pick-up and delivery dates weren't impacted. The majority of customers say their car was delivered on time, without damage, and within about $100 of the original quote.

Negative AmeriFreight reviews are rare, but there are instances where people say the driver never showed up, the vehicle was delivered days later than expected, or that the final cost was excessive compared to the original quote. Fortunately, most people seem to have a good experience with AmeriFreight.

Move.org calculates industry averages and identifies pricing trends by following a fivefold research approach:

1. Compare quotes. We collected nearly 700 quotes from 10 different companies to find industry and company averages. The car shipping quotes included prices for a motorcycle, car, SUV, and truck across 11 distances with both open and enclosed transport. However, we take this data with a grain of salt when ranking and reviewing companies that don't guarantee their quotes.
2. Mystery shopping. We contacted auto transport companies posing as customers to gather pricing data and learn how brokers formulate their prices. We preferred companies that were easy to reach and had friendly, attentive representatives.
3. Site visits. We invited several industry leaders to our headquarters in Salt Lake City, UT, for in-depth, face-to-face conversations—giving us a unique opportunity to explore not just how they structure their pricing but also to gain a deeper understanding of their company philosophies, operational practices, customer service standards, and what truly differentiates them in the car shipping industry. We then compared their answers to information we independently obtained to verify accuracy. 
4. Testimonials. We read hundreds of online customer reviews to look for recent positive and negative trends. We also interview real car shipping customers to learn about their buying process and first-hand experiences. We prioritize companies with long-standing and positive reputations.
5. Annual calendar. We repeat this research process every year and save our data to compare trends over time.

At the end of the day, AmeriFreight is one of the best car shipping companies we’ve seen. While it definitely stands up against its strongest competitors when it comes to things like pricing and customer reviews, AmeriFreight truly outshines almost everyone when it comes to vehicle safety—because AmeriFreight puts every potential driver through an exhaustive background check and refuses to work with the ones who don’t meet its standards. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention its gap coverage that gives you peace of mind if your car gets damaged in transit. Bottom line: customers love AmeriFreight—and we do too.

Want a company that cares about finding the best drivers to keep your car safe?