Fortunately your in a good lane for ground freight, lots of trucking in the NE. 1st question becomes how far do you have to ship it. 2nd question is how far is your destination located from your destination terminal, if its too far away from a terminal, the carrier will interline it with a secondary trucking company and that adds to cost and the amount of time it'll take to deliver in either direction. Ask the carrier if they'll give you a better rate if you bring it to them and pick it up from their dock. It used to make a difference, but these days probably not, can't hurt to ask.
The farther its gotta travel to the destination the more handling its going to encounter which is where damage and the possibility of it getting lost starts to come into play. If you can put it in a good wood container and then attach it to a pallet it'll stand the best chance of survival, and then use the same container on the return trip. It'll make handling and protecting the engine that much better. Lift trucks and pallet jacks are the back bone of the LTL industry, if its not on a pallet, it'll get kicked around until it gets damaged, lost and then delivered...
So yeah, shipping an engine no matter how you do it, isn't cheap nor will it be easy. The cost of freight could well equal the cost of building the engine.
