Car carrier trailer

In the United States, shipping of used vehicles is also a big industry, employed by car owners who are relocating and choose to ship their cars instead of driving, as well as consumers who have just purchased a vehicle on the second-hand market (particularly online) and need it delivered to their location.

[citation needed] Like other semi-trailers, most commercial car carrier trailers attach to the tractor using a fifth wheel coupling.

Trailers can either be enclosed, possessing walls like a conventional box trailer, which affords the shipped vehicles more protection at the cost of lower capacity; or open, as in the commonly seen skeletal tube steel design, which exposes the vehicles to the elements but allows for greater carrying capacity.

[2] Open commercial car carrier trailers typically have a double-decker design, with both decks subdivided into a number of loading and storage ramps that can be tilted and lifted independently of one another with hydraulics.

In order to further expand storage capacity, some trucks, typically called stinger units, are equipped with an "overhead" — an extra storage space mounted above the truck cabin which is accessible via the top ramp of a car carrier trailer.