Car Shipping in Florida

Good to know in Florida

The things that actually move a pickup date here.

• Ten days, and the clock does not start when you move

  Florida gives a nonresident ten days to register a vehicle here, but counts those days from the moment you accept employment in the state or enter a child into a public school, not from the day you arrive or the day the car does. It is a shorter deadline than most states and it can begin before the transporter has even delivered. If a job start date is already fixed, work backwards from it when you book the shipment.

• The $225 nobody budgets for

  Florida charges a one-time initial registration fee of $225 on the first registration of most cars, on top of the ordinary title and plate costs. It applies when you do not already hold a Florida plate to move across, which is exactly the position somebody shipping a car into the state is in. Transferring a plate already in your own name avoids it, and the statute carries a list of other exemptions worth reading if you are moving as a family.

• Somebody has to look at the VIN in person

  Before Florida will title a car last registered somewhere else, its vehicle identification number has to be verified against the car by a law enforcement officer, a licensed motor vehicle dealer, a license inspector or a Florida notary. Nobody can do that until the vehicle is physically here, so it belongs on the arrival list rather than the departure one, and the statute allows thirty days from delivery to file. Keep the paperwork your driver signs: it dates the delivery.

• A peninsula has nowhere to divert to

  Florida's freight moves down two corridors, I-95 on the east and I-75 on the west, and there is no third way around. Before a landfall the state opens the inside shoulders of I-4 and I-75 as extra evacuation lanes, and every vehicle may use them except large trucks, buses and trailers. So the one road configuration built to add capacity in a hurricane is the one a car carrier is specifically excluded from. Carriers move equipment north ahead of a storm and it takes days to come back: book into the peninsula between June and November with a pickup window rather than a promised date.

Sources: Florida Statutes 320.38: nonresident registration deadline, Florida Statutes 320.072: initial registration fee, Florida Statutes 319.23: title application and VIN verification, FDOT: emergency shoulder use during evacuations, NOAA National Hurricane Center: Atlantic season dates