This article studies the Carreau viscosity model (which is a generalized Newtonian model) and then use it to obtain a formulation for the boundary layer equations of the Carreau fluid. The boundary layer flow and heat transfer to a Carreau model over a nonlinear stretching surface is discussed. The Carreau model, adequate for many non-Newtonian fluids, is used to characterize the behavior of the fluids having shear thinning properties and fluids with shear thickening properties for numerical values of the power law exponent n. The modeled boundary layer conservation equations are converted to non-linear coupled ordinary differential equations by a suitable transformation. Numerical solution of the resulting equations are obtained by using the Runge-Kutta Fehlberg method along with shooting technique. This analysis reveals many important physical aspects of flow and heat transfer. Computations are performed for different values of the stretching parameter (m), the Weissenberg number (We) and the Prandtl number (Pr). The obtained results show that for shear thinning fluid the fluid velocity is depressed by the Weissenberg number while opposite behavior for the shear thickening fluid is observed. A comparison with previously published data in limiting cases is performed and they are in excellent agreement.