Car shipping Seattle to Hawaii, handled from pickup to island delivery

Pricing

Cost to ship a car from Seattle to Hawaii

Every Seattle quote we send covers the whole trip: pickup in Washington, the truck run to California, ocean freight and terminal handling on both ends. Ocean freight is the fixed part. Standard service from California to Honolulu, Kahului or Hilo starts at $1,070. The truck leg changes from load to load, because it depends on which car haulers are running south and when your sailing stops receiving vehicles. We book the ocean space first, then price the truck against that date. The four factors below decide where your quote lands.

Size decides which rate applies. A vehicle up to 21 feet 8 inches long, 8 feet wide and 7 feet high ships at the standard rate, and anything bigger gets its own oversize quote. Lifted trucks are where most surprises happen, so we ask for measurements taken with the tires, racks and accessories you’re actually shipping.

Your island decides the routing. Honolulu, Kahului and Hilo are reached directly from California. Kauai, Molokai and Lanai need a second leg on the inter-island barge from Honolulu, which prices cars by registered weight and has a stricter size limit. Over 20 feet long or 6,500 pounds, a vehicle ships as roll-on/roll-off (RORO) cargo instead of at the automobile rate. A long-bed pickup can clear the ocean leg as a standard car and still price higher on the barge. We rate the full route before you book, so the island leg is already in your quote.

Where we pick up changes the schedule. Door pickup in Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue or Everett is everyday work for us. Spokane and other eastern Washington addresses take longer to get a truck positioned. If you drop the car at the Auburn vehicle terminal yourself, the local pickup comes off the schedule entirely.

Running condition counts too. A vehicle that can’t start, steer and brake on its own needs special handling, which adds $500. Tell us at the quote stage, because a non-runner that shows up at the terminal unannounced can be turned away and miss its sailing.

Storage is the one charge that depends on timing. Terminals allow five free calendar days at Auburn and four days at the Hawaii terminals, then bill $25 a day. We schedule your drop-off against the sailing and tell you the day your car is released, so you can collect it inside the free window. You won’t see a separate “port fee” or “agriculture inspection fee” added to a Seattle quote from us.

For how pricing works on every Hawaii route, see our full breakdown of the cost to ship a car to Hawaii. If budget matters more than speed, we also cover the cheapest way to ship a car to Hawaii.

Transit time

How long Seattle to Hawaii car shipping takes

The ocean crossing is the predictable part. A ship leaving San Diego reaches Honolulu in about five days and Kahului or Hilo in about seven. Add at least two days for unloading and moving cars to the release lot. That makes the earliest your car can be ready about seven days after sailing for Honolulu, and about nine for Kahului or Hilo.

What stretches the total is everything before the ship leaves. The truck run from Washington to California has no fixed transit time, because it depends on which car haulers are available when your car is ready. The sailing schedule doesn’t wait either. Honolulu has a sailing every week, so a missed cutoff usually costs about a week. Kahului and Hilo sail every two weeks, so the same miss can cost about two. We avoid that by booking ocean space first and scheduling your pickup backward from the date the terminal stops receiving cars for that sailing.

A tracking screen that says “arrived” means the ship is in port, not that your car is ready. Cars aren’t released on the day the vessel arrives. Unloading alone can take one to two days, and some cars then move to a separate release lot. Hawaii release lots take pickups by appointment, booked at least 48 business hours ahead. A release notice that lands on a Friday or before a holiday can add days before you can collect.

That’s why we give you four dates instead of one: pickup, terminal check-in, sailing, and the day your car is available to collect. For Kauai, Molokai and Lanai, the inter-island barge leg from Honolulu comes on top, and we add that date when we book it. Our guide to how long it takes to ship a car to Hawaii covers timelines on other Hawaii routes.

Arrived is not ready. Plan your Hawaii pickup around the available date we send you, which is at least two days after the ship arrives.

How it works

How we ship a car from Seattle to Hawaii

Myth: My car ships from Seattle or Tacoma.

Fact: Hawaii-bound personal vehicles sail from California. Cars handed in near Seattle still travel south by road first.

Older shipping guides still list Tacoma as a Hawaii departure port, but Tacoma no longer handles Hawaii-bound personal vehicles. The vehicle terminal in Auburn, south of Seattle, takes in cars headed for Hawaii, but it’s a receiving point, not a port. Cars dropped there go by road to the ocean terminals in San Diego, Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay Area, the same sailings we use for car shipping from California to Hawaii.

We book the ocean leg first. Your sailing has a receiving cutoff at the California terminal, and we set the Washington pickup date backward from it with room to spare. That way a one-day delay on the road doesn’t cost you a whole sailing.

Before any truck is dispatched, we check that the VIN, the registered owner’s name and the name on the booking all match. A mismatch caught in Seattle takes a phone call to fix. Caught at a California terminal, it leaves your car hundreds of miles from you, waiting.

At the California terminal, handlers check the paperwork, record the car’s exterior condition and stage it for its sailing. A car can be refused at this point for:

On board, the car is driven onto an enclosed RORO deck and secured with at least two lashings at the front and two at the rear. For Kauai, Molokai and Lanai, the car comes off the ship in Honolulu and goes onto the inter-island barge under a second bill of lading. We book that leg and handle the transfer.

Between your driveway and the island, your car can pass through up to six sets of hands: the local hauler, the Auburn terminal, the long-haul truck, the California terminal, the ship and the Hawaii release lot. We keep the condition report from each hand-off. Take your own dated photos before our driver loads the car, too. The terminal inspection covers the exterior only, and if damage ever turns up, the records show which leg it happened on. Because you booked with us, any claim comes to us, not to the carrier.

Island routing

Routing from Seattle to each Hawaiian island

Every Seattle car crosses the Pacific from California, but where it lands decides whether one booking covers the trip or two.

Seattle to Honolulu, Oahu

Oahu is the simplest route we run from Washington. Seattle to Honolulu car shipping takes one path: a truck to California, then a direct sailing into Honolulu. Honolulu has a sailing every week, so a missed cutoff costs less time here than anywhere else. Honolulu is also the transfer point for Kauai, Molokai and Lanai, covered below. For delivery details on the island, see our Oahu car shipping page.

Seattle to Kahului, Maui

Maui gets direct sailings from California into Kahului, so your car doesn’t need a second booking through Honolulu. The trade-off is frequency. Kahului sails every two weeks instead of weekly, which makes the truck’s arrival at the California terminal matter more. We build extra margin into Maui pickup dates for that reason. More on Maui deliveries is on our shipping a car to Maui page.

Seattle to Hilo and the west side of the Big Island

Shipping a car from Seattle to Hilo, Hawaii works the same way as Maui: a direct sailing from California every two weeks. Hilo sits on the east side of the island, though. If you’re headed to the west side near Kawaihae, the regular sailing doesn’t stop there.

You have two options:

• Ship to Hilo and drive across. One booking, one hand-off.
• Route through Honolulu and take the inter-island barge to Kawaihae. This adds a second booking and a second hand-off.

We price both routes before you choose.

Seattle to Kauai, Molokai and Lanai

None of these three islands gets a direct sailing from the mainland. Your car sails to Honolulu, then moves to the inter-island barge for one of these ports:

The barge runs 12 scheduled departures a week from Honolulu across its ports. The car travels on that leg under its own bill of lading, so we book it as a separate leg and manage the transfer in Honolulu.

The barge also has its own definition of a car. To ship at the automobile rate, a vehicle must run, have four wheels and stay within these limits:

The barge checks weight against ownership paperwork or a certified weighmaster’s certificate, and the keys travel with the car. Anything outside those limits ships as RORO cargo at a different rate. See our Kauai car shipping and inter-island car shipping pages for the island side of the trip.

Inter-island automobile rate: running four-wheel vehicle, up to 20 ft long, 8 ft wide, 7 ft high and 6,500 lb. Keys must travel with the car. Larger vehicles ship as RORO cargo.

Washington pickup

Pickup across Washington or drop-off in Auburn

You can hand your car over in two ways, and the better one depends on where you live and how fixed your dates are.

For most customers shipping a car from Washington to Hawaii, door pickup is the simpler choice. Our driver collects the car at your home or office in Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, Everett or elsewhere in the state. Pickup depends on truck dispatch, so we confirm a pickup window rather than an exact hour.

Spokane and other eastern Washington addresses take longer, because a car hauler has to be positioned there before it heads south. We set your pickup date with that in mind, so the extra days don’t come out of your sailing.

If you’re near Seattle and want control over the date, you can drive the car to the Auburn vehicle terminal yourself. Here is how the Auburn terminal works:

• It accepts Hawaii-bound cars by appointment only, and we book the slot for you.
• It takes cars, not motorcycles.
• The registered owner should be there for drop-off. If that’s not you, bring a notarized authorization letter or power of attorney.

Don’t drop the car off early to be safe. Auburn gives five free calendar days before storage starts at $25 a day, so an early drop can create a charge rather than reduce risk. We pick a drop-off date that fits inside that window.

Appointment only. Cars only, no motorcycles.

Before pickup

Getting your car and paperwork ready

When a terminal turns a car away, the cause is usually simple, like too much fuel or a registration that doesn’t match the booking.

Your car should arrive with:

• No more than a quarter tank of fuel
• A clean inside and outside
• No fluid leaks
• The ability to roll, brake and steer

A standard booking assumes the car starts and drives with no special instructions. If yours doesn’t, tell us when you book and we’ll quote it as an inoperable vehicle.

Take out your personal belongings. The car can keep what normally lives in it: the spare tire and jack in their usual place, the owner’s manual, floor mats and seat covers, and a secured child seat. Anything else in the cabin or trunk gives the terminal a reason to refuse the car.

Before shipping a car to Hawaii from Seattle, take your own dated photos of every panel, the wheels and the interior. The terminal’s survey records exterior condition only and says nothing about how the car runs. A battery that goes flat during shipping also isn’t automatically the carrier’s responsibility, so start with one in good health.

Paperwork that holds cars up tends to be the same few problems: an expired registration, a name that doesn’t match, a missing authorization letter, or a company car with no officer’s letter. We clear all of them before a truck is dispatched.

Our guide on how to ship a car to Hawaii covers preparation step by step. If you drive a pickup, read our page on shipping a truck to Hawaii before you measure it.

Electric cars and plug-in hybrids

One of the ocean carriers serving Hawaii stopped accepting new bookings for battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in July 2025, because of lithium-ion battery fire risk. Another continued carrying them in 2025. That makes your car’s powertrain part of the routing.

Tell us at the quote stage if your car is electric or a plug-in hybrid. We confirm which sailing will accept it before anything is booked. A regular hybrid that doesn’t plug in isn’t part of that suspension, though we still confirm acceptance with the carrier.

Electric or plug-in hybrid? Tell us when you request a quote. Carrier acceptance differs, and we confirm your sailing takes the car before we book it.

Avoiding delays

What delays Seattle shipments, and how we prevent them

The sea crossing is rarely what holds a Seattle shipment up. Most delays on this route happen on land, before the car reaches the ship or after it comes off.

If you want to ship a car to Hawaii from Seattle on a fixed date, the sailing’s receiving cutoff is the date that matters. When the truck reaches the California terminal after that cutoff, the car waits for the next sailing. That’s about a week later for Honolulu and about two weeks for Kahului or Hilo.

Every Hawaii-bound vehicle has to be pre-booked, and terminals can turn away a car that shows up without an appointment.

The remaining delays come from a car that doesn’t match its booking:

The table shows what each problem causes and how we handle it.

Arrival in Hawaii

Picking up your car in Hawaii

Your car is ready on the available date we send you, which is at least two days after the ship arrives. Unloading takes one to two days, and some cars then move to a separate release lot before they can be collected.

Pickups at the Hawaii release lots are by appointment, booked at least 48 business hours ahead. Honolulu releases cars on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Kahului and Hilo close in the middle of the day, so check their hours before you plan a flight around your pickup. Each lot gives four free days, then charges $25 a day for storage.

If you can’t be there, we can arrange a local carrier to collect the car and deliver it to you. Those carriers usually retrieve vehicles within one to three days after unloading.

Walk around the car before you drive it off the lot. Compare it with the condition report from pickup, and check every panel and the wheels. If you find damage, stop before you leave. Photograph it, and make sure it’s written on the delivery form you sign. Damage that isn’t noted on that form before you exit won’t be considered later.

Because you booked with us, any claim comes to us, not the carrier. To file one, we need:

• The bill of lading
• The inspection report from origin
• The signed delivery form
• Color photos of the damage

For damage under $500, one repair estimate is enough. Above $500, we need a second estimate.

Storage after free days: $25 per day.

Return trip

Shipping a car from Hawaii back to Seattle

The return trip runs the same route in reverse. Tacoma doesn’t handle personal vehicles in either direction, so a car leaving Honolulu, Kahului or Hilo sails to California and then travels north to Washington by truck. Cars on Kauai, Molokai and Lanai start with the inter-island barge leg, because those islands have no direct mainland sailing. We book every leg and deliver to your Washington address.

Paperwork is where the return trip differs. If you ship a car from Hawaii to Seattle while it’s still financed, the sailing may require a lien release from your lien holder. We confirm that when you book, so the car isn’t held at the Hawaii terminal. Pricing works the same way as the trip out: ocean freight and the truck leg north are quoted together as one price.

Our Hawaii to mainland car shipping page covers the return route from every island.

Heading home to Washington? We run the route in reverse, with an island sailing to California and a truck north to your door.