North Carolina to Alabama Car Shipping Guides

Moving to Alabama

• Every east–west carrier is funneled through one crossing at Mobile

  Interstate 10 is the Gulf Coast's east–west route, and in Alabama it is pinched into a single crossing at Mobile: down beneath the Mobile River through the George Wallace Tunnel, then out across the bay on the Bayway viaduct. ALDOT's own argument for rebuilding it is that the crossing can no longer move what it carries — the Wallace Tunnel bars hazardous-material freight outright, pushing that cargo onto downtown streets — and the agency says the replacement is meant to significantly reduce congestion and travel times along I-10. Groundbreaking was in October 2026 and the new six-lane cable-stayed bridge is not due until late 2031, so for the next several years Mobile is the stretch where a cross-Gulf carrier keeps the schedule as a range, not a clock.

• A loaded carrier cannot take the old tunnel under the river

  Mobile keeps an older, lower crossing beneath the river, the Bankhead Tunnel carrying US-90 out from Government Street, and a car carrier cannot use it. The tube is narrow and posted at roughly 12 feet, trucks are barred, and ALDOT has gone so far as to repaint the east portal to warn off over-height drivers who ignore the signs and jam themselves in. A standard auto hauler stands well above that ceiling, so a driver crossing the river takes the taller Wallace Tunnel on I-10 or swings north to the Cochrane–Africatown Bridge. It is one reason a delivery into downtown Mobile arrives by a route no map app would pick for a passenger car.

• A pickup near the port may be a dock run, not a move

  The Alabama Port Authority runs a dedicated finished-vehicle terminal at the Port of Mobile: a 57-acre roll-on/roll-off site with a 40,000-square-foot processing center, on-site room for 7,000 cars and the capacity to handle 150,000 vehicles a year, operated under concession by AutoMobile International Terminal. Most of those cars arrive and leave by ship, not on a household move. So for anyone shipping to or from the Mobile area, the useful question is whether the number you were quoted ends at your driveway or at the dock — beside a working port the two are not the same job.