North Carolina to New Jersey Car Shipping Guides

Moving to New Jersey

• The first fill-up is an attendant's job, not yours

  Under New Jersey's Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act it is unlawful for anyone but a station attendant to dispense fuel into a vehicle (N.J.S.A. 34:3A-6), so a customer cannot legally pump their own gasoline anywhere in the state. The prohibition is written for gasoline, and the regulations exempt diesel. It rarely touches a route, but it shapes the first errand after delivery: a car often arrives with the tank low, and the fill-up at this end is an attendant's job whether you want the help or not.

• The Pulaski Skyway turns the carrier away

  NJDOT bars trucks and buses from both directions of the Pulaski Skyway, the elevated run of Route 1&9 between Newark and Jersey City, and sends them onto a separate road signed as US 1&9 Truck. A car carrier is a truck for this purpose, so a driver crossing from Newark into Jersey City cannot take the Skyway and trades its height and speed for the surface streets below. It is a short detour on the map and a slow one in practice, and it is one reason a delivery in Hudson or eastern Essex County runs later in the day than the mileage suggests.

• A lot of the car traffic here is going to a dock, not a driveway

  The automobile terminals of the Port of New York and New Jersey sit on the Jersey side, at Port Newark–Elizabeth and at Port Jersey in Jersey City, worked by three vehicle processors. Hundreds of thousands of cars are imported and exported through them in a year, and most of that leaves by road, much of it on the New Jersey Turnpike that runs right past the terminals. For a household shipment it means two things: carrier supply along the Turnpike is heavy because the port keeps it that way, and a quote to or from the Newark–Elizabeth area is worth checking, because it may be priced as a run to a terminal rather than to your door.