Mini Truck Shipping. Kei-class dimensions, not guessed from a photo.

A standard open car hauler — steel rails, wheel straps, sometimes called a "stinger" setup — is built around three numbers: a sedan's wheelbase, its tire width, and its tire diameter. Mini trucks look like a small pickup, and that's exactly what leads people to assume standard equipment will fit. Load one onto equipment sized for the wrong numbers, and you end up improvising: straps in the wrong place, or a truck that isn't actually secured the way it looks like it is.

Kei and mini trucks — the Subaru Sambar, Suzuki Carry, and Daihatsu Hijet are the three you'll see most often — look like a small pickup, and that's exactly what leads people astray. Japan's kei-vehicle class caps these trucks at roughly 58 inches wide, with a wheelbase built to match — narrower than a lot of golf carts, and nowhere close to a US sedan or pickup's numbers. A lot of these trucks are bought for farm work or private property use, which has nothing to do with how they get secured on a trailer.

Most of these trucks have already made one long trip by the time they reach a US buyer — imported by container from Japan — and the domestic move from there is where the same equipment problem shows up all over again: rails and straps sized for a full-size vehicle, on a truck that's a fraction of the width. Sambar, Carry, or Hijet — the numbers are close enough between all three that the same planning applies regardless of which one you've got, which is why it's worth working with a mini truck shipping company that already knows these kei-class dimensions instead of one guessing from a photo.