Do I need motorcycle-specific tie-down straps?

Sort of. What you actually need is the system: soft loops, a wheel chock, four anchor points, and straps rated well above the bike’s weight. The straps sold as “motorcycle tie-downs” are mostly ordinary ratchet or cam-buckle straps with the soft loops already attached and a hook that does not scratch. That is convenient, not magic. A generic strap with a separate soft loop does the same job.

What is different about a motorcycle

A car sits on four tires and does not care much how it is strapped. A motorcycle balances on two, has a suspension that wants to bounce, and has a lot of expensive plastic and paint exactly where the obvious strap points are. The two things that go wrong are the bike walking out of the straps under braking, and the straps damaging what they are attached to.

The four things that actually matter

1. Soft loops. A short loop of webbing that goes around the frame or the lower triple clamp so the metal hook never touches the bike. This is the single most useful item, and the cheapest.
2. A wheel chock. Holds the front wheel straight and stops the bike rolling forward. Without one, the front straps are doing a job they were not designed for. A bolt-down chock on a trailer is best; a removable one in a truck bed is fine.
3. Attachment points on the bike. Lower triple clamp, frame downtubes, or a dedicated strap point if the bike has one. Not handlebars (they bend), not fairings (they crack), not the tank (it dents), not the swingarm on a bike with a shaft drive boot.
4. Four straps, not two. Two front, pulling down and slightly forward and outward. Two rear, keeping it from bouncing or swinging. Two straps holds a bike until the first pothole.

How tight

Compress the front suspension about a third to a half of its travel, then stop. Bottoming the forks and leaving them there for hours is hard on seals, and it does not make the bike more secure. It is the chock and the geometry that hold it, not brute tension. Cam-buckle straps make it hard to over-tighten; ratchets make it easy, which is why a lot of riders prefer cams for bikes.

Check everything after the first few miles. Straps settle, and a bike that was tight in the driveway can be loose on the highway.

Trailer, truck bed, or hitch carrier

Any of them works with the system above. A hitch carrier adds one rule: mind the tongue weight rating on your vehicle, and remember the bike’s weight is hanging a couple of feet behind the bumper, which multiplies the load. A truck bed needs a ramp long enough that the bike does not high-center at the top; that is where the loading-ramp injuries happen, not on the road.

If you are paying someone else to move it

Ask what they attach to and whether they carry soft loops and a chock. Those two questions tell you whether they move bikes or just say they do. There is more on that in the tow article on this site, and the tow and roadside listings here are filtered for operators who handle motorcycles.