The biggest mistake people make when they decide to show a car at the Goodguys Lone Star Nationals is thinking about the shipping the way they'd think about mailing a package — pick a date, hand it off, it shows up. A car headed to a show doesnt work like that. The show has one fixed morning when the gates open for move in, and everything about the transport has to bend around that single deadline. Miss it and the "transit time" doesnt matter, because a car that rolls in the afternoon after the field is already set is a car that sat on a trailer for nothing.
Quick answer: shipping a car to the Goodguys Lone Star Nationals comes down to three things — book early enough to beat the move in deadline, match the trailer to how your car actually loads, and tell the dispatcher the truth about the car before anyone schedules a truck. The 33rd Summit Racing Lone Star Nationals runs September 25 and 26, 2026 at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, and it draws the usual Goodguys mix of hot rods, street rods, muscle, and classic trucks, 1999 and older. Fort Worth ships easy because it sits in one of the busiest freight markets in the country, but the trucks fill up as the date gets close.
Let me walk through how this actually works, the way a dispatcher would.
Why is shipping to a show different from a normal move?
Because a normal move is judged on how fast the car gets there, and a show move is judged on one thing only: was the car at the speedway before move in. That flips the whole planning logic. You dont book for "as soon as possible," you book for a pickup window that lands the car in Fort Worth with a day or two of cushion before the gates open, and you leave slack for a weather delay or a mechanical hiccup along the way.
The people who scramble are the ones who cut the timing tight and assumed a truck runs like a courier van. It doesnt. Carriers build multi car loads and pick up when the truck is actually near your driveway, so the date you book is really the start of a window, not a guaranteed minute. Build in the buffer and that variability stops being a problem. Ignore it and you're refreshing a tracking page at 2am the night before the show.
Open or enclosed when the car sits low?
Most people think enclosed transport is about weather and looking fancy. For a slammed street rod or a lowered restomod, the real reason to go enclosed has nothing to do with rain. It's the loading. A low car cant be driven up a steep open ramp without dragging the front lip, the exhaust, or the oil pan across the metal — and that damage happens at the curb during loading, not out on the highway. A lot of enclosed trailers carry a hydraulic liftgate that lowers flat to the ground, so the car rolls on level instead of climbing an angle it was never built to climb.
So the equipment follows the car, not your budget. If your ride is a drivable cruiser or a classic truck that sits at a normal height, open car transport handles it fine and costs less — open haulers move the huge majority of vehicles in this country and do it well. If the car is aired out on bags or sits under about four inches of clearance, you're really shopping for the liftgate, and that lives on the enclosed side of the yard.
What does the Goodguys crowd actually ship, and how do carriers handle it?
Goodguys admits specialty cars 1999 and older, which means the loads coming into a show like this skew toward exactly the vehicles that break standard shipping assumptions. Lowered stuff. Customs with air ride. And a fair number of project and show builds that dont run under their own power.
Non running is where you have to be precise, because "it doesnt run" isnt one thing. There's a big difference between a car that wont start but rolls and steers freely, and a car that's fully seized. If the wheels turn and the steering works, a winch equipped carrier can usually pull it aboard with normal gear for a modest surcharge. If it wont roll or steer, that's a narrower set of trucks and sometimes a forklift. The other detail that matters on a custom is the tie down — an experienced classic hauler will secure a car with air ride or a careful coilover stance using soft ties or wheel straps that hold the tires, instead of chaining hard to the frame and compressing a suspension somebody spent real money setting up. That's the kind of handling you're paying for when you book classic car transport instead of the cheapest open slot, and it's a big reason collector car shipping and hot rod transport are their own little corner of the business.
Does shipping into Fort Worth actually help me?
It does, more than people expect. Dallas and Fort Worth sit right where I-35 and I-20 cross, in a state where trucking moves the bulk of the freight. Texas truck tonnage is projected to keep climbing for years, and all that volume means a deep pool of carriers running lanes into the metro. More trucks bidding on your load usually means a shorter wait for a pickup slot and more competitive pricing than you'd get hauling into some rural corner.
But — and this is the catch — that advantage only helps the person who books with lead time. Book last minute into the same event week and you're fighting every other procrastinator for the same trucks. Then the density stops helping you and plain old demand pricing takes over. The freight hub is a gift you have to claim early.
When should I book, and does September change anything?
Book several weeks out. Treat a hard event date the way you'd treat peak season — give yourself real lead time, because the deadline is public and everyone shipping to this show is chasing the same trucks in the same window. Late September adds a second squeeze: it's the front edge of the fall snowbird push south, when a lot of cars start heading toward Texas, Arizona, and Florida for the winter, and capacity on southern lanes starts to tighten. None of that is a crisis. It's just one more reason the calendar is your friend if you use it and your enemy if you dont.
Fort Worth in late September is also just hot, highs in the low to mid 90s most years, which matters more for how a driver stages the load and protects the interior than for the drive itself. Worth mentioning to your dispatcher, not worth losing sleep over.
How does the car actually get onto the show field?
Not by a full size car carrier pulling up to the paddock. A speedway runs on a fixed move in schedule with tight access, and a 75 foot rig cant just thread into the show field whenever it likes. So the real handoff is a coordinated one — the carrier works out a nearby staging spot and a delivery time that fits the venue's rules, and the last short hop happens from there. Good carriers sort this out before they roll in, because once the event schedule is moving, the easy options disappear.
This is also where paperwork earns its keep. On a show quality car the condition report and the photos you take at pickup — every panel, every wheel, every existing chip — are the whole insurance story if anything gets marked in transit. It feels like busywork until it's the thing that turns "it got scratched" into a claim that actually gets paid. And the carrier underneath your car isnt running bare: for hire haulers are required to carry a minimum level of public liability coverage set in the low seven figures, and a broker worth using verifies a carrier's authority and cargo coverage before dispatch instead of taking the cheapest name on the board.
Don't forget the ride home
Everybody plans the trip to the show and forgets the trip back. The return is a separate dispatch problem, and honestly it's often the harder one — everybody leaving at once, on a Sunday, from a single venue, all wanting a truck. Book the round trip together, or at least have the return lined up before you leave, so you're not stranded in Fort Worth calling around while the parking lot empties out.
That's really the whole game. Plan around the move in deadline, match the trailer to how the car loads, be honest about the car, and book before the rush. Do that and shipping to the Lone Star Nationals is a non event, which is exactly what you want it to be.
Ready to get your car to Fort Worth for the show? Get a shipping quote from Rivalane and we'll handle the move in timing for you.
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