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According to Google, driving would take about 12 hours. So if I bust my ass trying to hitch-hike non-stop and as hard as I can (but without having to pay any money or fork out any sort of special favors), about how long would it take to get me from Southeast Michigan to Boston (Massachusetts)?

More details if these will help: I am a solo male traveler in late July.

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    Personal experience: it's better to wait in Stockbridge until you can get a ride in to at least Newton where you can pick up the T. Even if being selective delays you. The police start getting more militant beyond Stockbridge. Plus competition on the exit ramps. Springfield or any other place closer in but beyond the T's reach is horrible. Stockbridge is ok. But this was all quite some time ago :)
    – Gayot Fow
    Commented Jul 6, 2015 at 1:59
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    @gayot: this should be an answer. Ironically, the answer below should've been a comment.
    – hippietrail
    Commented Jul 6, 2015 at 2:26
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    @hippietrail, that's kind of you, but I was always coming in to Boston from the coast, and always stopped in Ohio to rest and the OP wants non-stop Detroit - Boston (which is naively adventurous IMHO).
    – Gayot Fow
    Commented Jul 6, 2015 at 9:03
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    @pnuts: Well there is no set amount of time any hitchhiking trip will take since it depends on luck and other unquantifiable factors. The only kind of answers that are any good are descriptions by others who have hitched the same area.
    – hippietrail
    Commented Jul 6, 2015 at 10:27
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    Kenny, other factors for such a question are your age, how much hitchhiking experience you have and how it usually goes, what's the closest you have experience to the area in the question. For instance if you can't make it in a single day can you crash somewhere near the road? I have a few years experience hitchhiking around the world, but not in the US.
    – hippietrail
    Commented Jul 6, 2015 at 10:38

2 Answers 2

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Personal experience: it's better to wait in Stockbridge until you can get a ride in to at least Newton where you can pick up the T. Even if being selective delays you. The police start getting more militant beyond Stockbridge. Plus competition on the exit ramps. Springfield or any other place closer in but beyond the T's reach is horrible.

Stockbridge is ok. If you want to reduce hitchhiking time, route yourself through Stockbridge and wait there until you get a ride all the way to somewhere near a T stop. Stockbridge in this context means the Turnpike rest stop or even inside the village itself.

A basic estimate for the time needed to get from Detroit to the greater Boston conurbation is about 18 - 22 hours on a good day.

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My advice (for informational purposes since this is long outdated), is to do it by truck. I wrote a little about tractor-trailer hitching on hitchwiki. Generally, in the USA, I find that it is usual to wait 1-4 hours for a ride. This applies to on-ramps as well as truck stops.

Best-case scenario is it takes only two rides to get there (trucks are legally limited to 10-hour days, I think). If you get rides in an hour each, that makes 14 hours.

Worst-case, assuming you know how to hitch efficiently (have you done this before?) and don't get stuck, I would say two days in trucks. With cars, it could take more than a week.

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