Three routes that fail in different places
| Route | Default total | Where the money is |
|---|---|---|
| Drive it | $698.14 | 3 nights of lodging, $360.00, against $158.14 of fuel |
| Tow it | $557.52 | $210 rental, $158.52 of extra truck fuel, one extra rental day |
| Ship it | $1,645.00 | The quote, plus 9 days of replacement car at $55 |
On 1,450 miles at these rates towing wins, and it wins for a reason that is easy to miss: the drive route is not really a fuel question. Forty-five gallons of gasoline is $158.14. The nights and the meals are $500.00. Driving a second car across the country costs what hotels cost, not what fuel costs, and that is why raising the mpg barely moves it.
The tow penalty is a fuel penalty
Renting a dolly or a carrier is the visible cost and it is the smaller half. A truck that returns 8 mpg alone and 6.5 mpg towing burns 223.1 gallons instead of 181.3 over 1,450 miles. That is 41.8 extra gallons, $158.52 at $3.79, which is roughly three quarters of the rental itself. Towing also makes the truck longer, slower on grades, and much harder to reverse, which is where the extra rental day in the defaults comes from.
Shipping buys days, not miles
The transport quote is a single number and it is usually the biggest of the three, but it removes a driver from the convoy, removes a vehicle from the schedule, and removes several hundred miles of wear from a car. What it adds is a window in which the car is somewhere else. Nine days without it is nine days of either managing without or renting something, and on the defaults that replacement rental is $495.00 — 30 percent of the shipping route. Set it to zero if you genuinely do not need a car at either end and the comparison changes shape entirely.
What this does not decide
Whether your particular car can be towed with its drive wheels on the ground is a question for its owner manual and for the transmission in it, and the answer varies between cars that look identical from outside. Getting it wrong is a repair, not an inconvenience. What may be towed on a public road, by what, with what equipment and lighting, is set by the state you are in and by the rental agreement you signed. None of that is arithmetic and none of it is on this page. What is here is a comparison of figures you supplied, and the honest use of it is to find which of the three routes is worth getting a real quote for.
Questions people ask
Is it cheaper to tow a car or drive it separately?
On the default 1,450 mile figures towing comes to $557.52 against $698.14 to drive it, and the gap is made almost entirely of hotel nights rather than fuel. Towing gets less attractive as the distance grows, because the mpg penalty runs on every mile while the dolly rental does not. Put your own numbers in and watch which of the two lines grows faster with distance.
How much fuel does towing a car behind a moving truck cost?
It is the difference between two mpg figures across the whole distance, and that is the number people leave out. A truck going from 8 mpg to 6.5 mpg over 1,450 miles burns 41.8 extra gallons, which at $3.79 is $158.52 — comparable to the dolly rental itself. Ask the rental company what the towing figure is for the truck you are booking and use theirs, since the drop varies with the truck and the car.
Is shipping a car worth it?
It buys back a driver and a schedule rather than saving money, so it wins when the drive would need a second person you do not have, or when the car is worth more than the miles you would put on it. The line that decides it is usually the replacement car during the window it is in transit: on the defaults that is $495.00 across nine days, which is a third of the whole route. Zero that out and shipping looks very different.
Can any car be towed on a tow dolly?
No, and the answer depends on the drivetrain and the transmission rather than the size of the car. The owner manual is the authority, and towing a vehicle in a way its manufacturer does not permit is a repair bill rather than a technicality. What is permitted on the road, with what equipment, is separately a matter for your state and for the rental agreement. This calculator prices the options you have already established are available to you.
Should the car and the truck travel together?
They usually do, and it costs time. Two vehicles keep to the slower schedule, stop together, and refuel on completely different intervals if one of them is a truck at single figure mpg. The convoy also cannot swap drivers, so the person in the car does every mile of it. That is why the driver hour field exists even though most people leave it at zero: the cost of the drive route is mostly time and lodging, not gasoline.