Pet Transport Delaware: Costs, Rules and Corridors for 2026

Delaware sets a different rabies age threshold for dogs than it does for cats, which is unusual enough on its own, and then layers on top of it one of the most specific New World screwworm import orders found anywhere in the country. Neither rule is hard to satisfy once you know it. Both are easy to get wrong if you rely on the generic advice most transporter websites print, which treats every state the same and misses both.

Dogs and cats do not share a rabies age threshold

Delaware's companion animal rule, at 3 Del. Admin. Code Section 904-10.0, requires dogs over four months of age to be vaccinated for rabies, with the type of vaccine and the date of administration recorded on the health certificate. Cats have a different, later threshold: all cats six months of age or older must be vaccinated for rabies and accompanied by an official health certificate stating the animal is free of infectious or contagious disease or exposure to it.

Most states pick one age and apply it to both species, or exempt cats from the entry rabies requirement entirely the way Iowa does. Delaware splits the difference with a genuine two month gap between the dog and cat thresholds. In practice this matters most to anyone moving a household with both a dog and a cat close to those ages: the paperwork for each animal needs to be checked against its own threshold rather than assumed to match.

Delaware also requires a current Certificate of Veterinary Inspection or health certificate within thirty days of import, which is the conventional window used across most of the country. Our guide to the pet health certificate for travel covers what that document contains and who may sign it. Get the exam close enough to travel that the certificate is still valid on the day the animal actually crosses into Delaware, not the day the move was booked.

The screwworm order is the most specific one in this project

Delaware updated its import requirements on 8 June 2026 in response to New World Screwworm incursions in the United States, and the resulting order is unusually detailed for a companion animal rule. All warm blooded animals, including dogs, cats and birds, originating from a state with reported NWS infestations must be accompanied by an Official Certificate of Veterinary Inspection issued within seventy two hours of movement. That is a far tighter window than the ordinary thirty day certificate, and it applies specifically to the screwworm attestation rather than the general health check.

The Delaware Department of Agriculture's order spells out exactly what the certificate has to say: the accredited veterinarian must state that all animals listed have been examined within seventy two hours of movement and that none have been found with a wound infested or potentially infested with New World Screwworm. No alternative movement document, including the federal NPIP 9-3 form used for poultry, is accepted in place of the OCVI for this purpose.

The order also covers what happens if an animal does have a wound that is not currently infested. It can still be imported provided the wound is treated with a product on the FDA's approved, conditionally approved or emergency use authorization list for NWS, and the timing of that treatment is specified precisely: oral or injected treatments must be given no less than twelve hours before entry into Delaware, and topical treatments no less than seventy two hours before. The wound location and the treatment given both have to be documented on the certificate. Any animal with an active NWS infestation cannot be imported at all.

This is not a rule to guess at. If your animal is travelling from a state with reported screwworm activity, the seventy two hour certificate and, if relevant, the treatment timing are not optional extras, they are the difference between a legal entry and a rejected one at the point of delivery. The Delaware State Veterinarian's office continues to monitor detections and will amend or lift the requirements as the situation changes, so confirm the current list of affected states before you travel rather than relying on what applied a month earlier.

Delaware is too small to be its own market

Delaware is the second smallest state in the country by area, and its entire length sits inside the corridor that already connects Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC. Interstate 95 runs the length of the state, and it is one of the busiest freight lanes in the eastern United States, carrying a volume of daily traffic that would be remarkable in almost any other state of Delaware's size. For pet transport that means Delaware is almost never a destination in its own right for an operator; it is a stop on a route that was happening anyway between the bigger cities on either side.

Wilmington, at the northern end of the state, is effectively part of the Philadelphia metro for transport purposes, and operators loading there treat it as on route rather than a dedicated Delaware trip. Dover and the lower parts of the state, further from I-95, see somewhat less traffic and can attract a modest spur charge, but the distance involved is small enough that it rarely amounts to much. If you have any flexibility, getting a quote as a Philadelphia area pickup as well as a Delaware one will often widen the pool of available vehicles.

Beach traffic along the Delaware coast, particularly around Rehoboth and Lewes, produces a real seasonal spike between Memorial Day and Labor Day that has nothing to do with pet relocation specifically but competes for the same vehicles and accommodation. If your move falls in that window and touches the coastal part of the state, expect tighter availability and book earlier than you otherwise would.

Delaware's political geography adds one more wrinkle worth knowing. New Castle County in the north, home to Wilmington, behaves entirely differently from Kent and Sussex counties further south. New Castle is dense, urban and firmly inside the northeast corridor commuter belt; Kent and Sussex are rural, agricultural and, away from the beach towns, genuinely quiet for pet transport purposes. An operator quoting a Sussex County farm pickup is looking at a very different job from one quoting a Wilmington apartment collection, even though both are technically the same state.

Dover, the state capital, sits roughly in the middle and functions as a reasonable meeting point for anyone in the southern two counties who wants to avoid a Sussex spur charge. It is close enough to Route 1 and Route 13, the state's two main north-south roads outside I-95, that an operator running the length of Delaware will pass through it regardless of the exact pickup address. If you are in Sussex County and getting quotes that feel high for the mileage, ask whether meeting at Dover instead would change the price; it often does.

What it costs

Ground pet transport in 2026 runs roughly $0.50 to $1.60 per mile, and because Delaware sits inside the busy I-95 corridor, most routes here price toward the lower end of that band on a per mile basis, with minimum charges taking over on the shortest hops. The table gives typical shared ranges from Delaware's main pickup points. Treat them as planning figures rather than quotes, because season and vehicle availability move them substantially.

Dedicated transport, where your animal is the only booking and the schedule is built around your dates, generally costs about double the shared figure on longer routes. On the shortest Delaware hops the gap narrows considerably, because a shared run within the I-95 corridor is not saving the operator very much time. Our breakdown of what it costs to ship a dog covers the variables in more depth.

Timing across the year follows the familiar school calendar pattern in the north of the state, with the last two weeks of July and the first two of August the busiest and priciest window for household relocations. Sussex County runs on a different clock, driven almost entirely by the beach season, so a farm or rural pickup there in July can be harder to schedule than the mileage suggests simply because every vehicle in the area is already committed to a summer rental turnover or a beach house move.

Weather is rarely the constraint here

Delaware's mid Atlantic climate is comparatively mild for pet transport purposes. Winter storms occasionally close I-95 for part of a day, and summer heat is real enough that operators should still be running climate controlled vehicles and avoiding midday departures, but neither reaches the extremes that shape scheduling in the Gulf states or the northern plains. The one genuine seasonal factor is hurricane season, June through November, which can bring a coastal storm up from the south that disrupts the I-95 corridor for a day or two even without making direct landfall in Delaware. Our guide to pet transport in hot weather covers what a competent summer operation looks like regardless of how mild the state's overall climate is.

Air freight is a limited option for Delaware specifically, since the state has no major commercial airport of its own; anyone flying a pet is really flying out of Philadelphia or Baltimore Washington International, both under an hour away. That makes the airline embargo rules for those airports the relevant ones, and it means most Delaware residents are effectively choosing between ground transport and a drive to one of the two neighbouring airports rather than a Delaware specific air option.

Check the states on either side of the line

Because Delaware is so small, almost every move touches Pennsylvania, Maryland or New Jersey somewhere along the route, and none of them shares Delaware's exact age thresholds or its screwworm order wording. Our Pennsylvania guide covers the requirement on the northern side of that boundary. There is no federal permit and no federal quarantine for ordinary pets moving between states, so the whole compliance picture is state by state, and the USDA state to state pet travel pages index the requirements without replacing any state's own current schedule.

Screwworm orders in particular can change quickly as detections are reported or cleared. Confirm the current list of affected origin states with the Delaware Department of Agriculture and a USDA-accredited veterinarian in the week you actually travel, and do not assume a list checked a few weeks earlier is still accurate.

Choosing an operator

Operators moving animals commercially in the ways covered by the federal Animal Welfare Act must be registered with the USDA, and that registration is verifiable rather than a claim on a website. Ask for the number and check it. Ask separately for insurance documentation that names live animals, because general cargo policies routinely exclude them and many operators have never read that clause in their own cover. Operators moving animals commercially in the ways covered by the federal Animal Welfare Act must be registered with the USDA.

If your route touches a state with reported screwworm activity, add one specific question: ask the operator directly whether they know about the seventy two hour OCVI requirement and whether they can confirm the certificate timing lines up with the actual delivery date. An operator who has moved animals into Delaware recently will know this without prompting. Beyond that the usual operational questions apply: how many animals travel at once, how often the vehicle stops, and whether the collecting driver is the delivering one. The pattern to walk away from is a quote well below the ranges above combined with pressure to pay in cash on collection or outside a marketplace escrow, which is the standard shape of pet transport fraud. Our guides to choosing a pet transport company and ground pet transport set out the checks in order.

Frequently asked questions