How movers actually price a move
There are two pricing worlds, and the boundary between them is roughly 100 miles or a state line, whichever comes first.
A local move is sold by the hour. A crew and a truck are quoted as a package, commonly a rate per mover per hour with the truck included, and most tariffs add a travel charge of about an hour on top. Everything that slows the crew down shows up as hours: stairs, a long carry to the truck, an elevator that has to be booked, a house that was not packed when they arrived. An hourly quote is really a quote about how fast your house can be carried.
A long-distance move is sold by weight and distance. The mover estimates the weight of the shipment, usually from a survey of the house, and prices the linehaul per hundredweight (100 pounds) per mile off a published tariff. The rate per mile falls as the distance rises, because the fixed cost of loading a trailer is spread over more miles, which is why a 300 mile move can cost more per mile than a 3,000 mile one. On top of it sit a fuel surcharge, quoted as a percentage, and accessorial charges for everything that is not simply driving: stairs, a shuttle when the trailer cannot reach the street, storage in transit, packing, specialty items. Carriers also bill a minimum shipment weight, commonly around 2,000 pounds.
The estimate itself has three shapes, and the words matter. A non-binding estimate is a guess: the bill is built afterwards from the weight actually loaded and the services actually performed. A binding estimate is a fixed price for the inventory that was surveyed, so anything added later reprices it. A binding not-to-exceed estimate, sometimes sold as a guaranteed price, charges the lower of the estimate and the real charges, which is the only one of the three that can only go your way.
For an interstate move the official reference is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's booklet Your Rights and Responsibilities When You Move, which a mover is required to give you, along with the Ready to Move brochure. Every interstate household goods mover has to be registered with a USDOT number, and that number can be checked against the register at protectyourmove.gov. A quote from a company that will not give you a USDOT number is not a quote from a mover.
What changes the number most
- Distance, because it switches the pricing model rather than just scaling it. The same house crossing a state line is a different product from the same house crossing town.
- Weight, which is the whole long-distance price and is estimated from the rooms until somebody surveys the house. Movers work from roughly 1,000 to 1,500 pounds per furnished room, so getting rid of things is the only lever that pulls this one.
- Who packs. Full packing is a service with its own crew and its own materials, and on a large house it can rival the transport. It is also the easiest thing to take back.
- The month. May through September is when roughly half of all moves happen, and prices in that window commonly run 15% or so above the rest of the year across trucks, containers and crews alike.
- Access and specialty items. Stairs are hours on a local move and a flat accessorial charge on a long one. A piano, a gun safe or a hot tub is quoted item by item and does not get cheaper because you rented the truck yourself.
Where driving it yourself stops being cheaper
Take the page's own defaults: a 3 bedrooms home of about 7,500 pounds going 1,200 miles in June, packed by the household, ground floor at both ends, nothing in storage. Round illustrative figures, not a quote.
| How it moves | Total | What the money buys |
|---|---|---|
| Drive it yourself | $2,500 | A 20 foot truck one way, $467 of fuel at 9 mpg loaded, the waiver and the boxes. You drive it and you carry it. |
| Container or freight | $3,300 | 2 containers dropped, loaded by you, driven by them, and able to sit in a warehouse for a monthly fee if the dates do not meet. |
| Full-service mover | $6,700 | $5,439 of linehaul at $0.053 per hundredweight-mile, a fuel surcharge, and the crew at both ends. |
| Things people forget | $1,100 | Deposits and utility setup, cleaning, and the nights on the road. The same whichever row above you pick, and on none of the quotes. |
The gap between the first row and the third is about $4,200. That is the real question behind the search, and it is what two or three days of driving and a weekend of carrying is being sold for. People guess at it and guess low, because the figure they carry in their head is the rental company's daily rate rather than the one-way rate plus fuel at 9 mpg plus the waiver plus the boxes.
Two things move the break-even. Season: the identical move in October comes out near $6,000 rather than $6,700 for the mover. Distance: the same household going 30 miles across town is quoted about $1,900 by an hourly crew, roughly 9 billable hours with a crew of 3 at around $50 a mover an hour, against about $600 for the truck. A few hundred dollars is easier to hand over than a few thousand, which is why local movers get hired and long-distance ones get compared.
The costs that are on no quote at all
The moving quote is not the moving budget. Connection charges and deposits for power, water, gas and internet land in the same fortnight, and it is the account with no history at that utility that gets asked for one. Cleaning is either paid for or taken out of a security deposit. If the two dates do not meet, a month of overlapping rent or mortgage is usually the largest single line on the page, larger than the mover. And if the move is also a purchase, none of this is in the closing costs: those are a separate pile of money in the same month, counted by the payment calculator and the home sale calculator.
Two cases the tool above does not price. Moving a manufactured home is not a moving quote at all: it is transport permits, a set-up crew and a foundation, and moving a double-wide covers what that actually involves. And if the move is the reason for the search rather than the result of it, the moving to Las Vegas page is the version of this with a market attached: what a household earns there, what homes ask, and what changes about owning one.
Questions people ask
How much does it cost to move?
It depends far less on the house than on which of three things you buy. A rented truck you drive yourself is the cheapest and costs you a weekend and your back. A pod-style container sits in the middle: they drive, you load. A full-service mover with a crew at both ends is commonly two to three times the truck, and more again if they pack the boxes. The calculator above prices all three off the same shipment so the gap is visible rather than assumed.
How do movers price a long-distance move?
By weight and distance, not by the hour. An interstate mover estimates the weight of your shipment, then prices the linehaul per hundredweight (100 pounds) per mile off a published tariff, with the rate per mile falling as the distance rises. A fuel surcharge is added as a percentage of the linehaul, and accessorial charges cover the extras: stairs, a long carry, a shuttle truck, storage in transit, packing. This is why two long-distance quotes on the same house can differ by thousands and both be honest: they estimated different weights.
What is the difference between a binding and a non-binding estimate?
A non-binding estimate is a guess, and the final bill is built from the actual weight and the services actually performed. A binding estimate is a fixed price for the inventory that was surveyed, and adding items to it changes the price. A binding not-to-exceed estimate, sometimes called a guaranteed price, bills the lower of the estimate and the actual charges. On a non-binding interstate estimate federal rules limit what a mover can require at delivery to 110% of the estimate, with the balance billed afterwards, which is worth knowing before the truck arrives.
Is it cheaper to move yourself?
On money, almost always. On the whole picture, not always. Driving it yourself trades several thousand dollars for two or three days of your time, the risk of damage that no waiver quite covers, and the physical work of carrying a sofa down stairs. The break-even is easier to see when the calculator's do-it-yourself total includes the parts people leave out of it: the per-mile charge, the fuel at loaded mileage, the damage waiver, the boxes, and the nights in a motel on the drive.
When is the cheapest time to move?
Outside the May to September rush, and away from the end of the month. Roughly half of all moves happen in that summer window because school calendars and leases push them there, and every part of the industry prices the crowding: crews, one-way truck rentals and containers all cost more. Mid-month and midweek are cheaper again, because leases end on the first and the last. The month field above carries a typical busy-season default you can turn off by picking a different month.
Arithmetic on the numbers you type, not advice, and not a quote or an offer from any mover, rental company or container provider. Every default is a national midpoint chosen to be plausible and editable, not a current market rate: rates move by region, by season and by carrier, and a real estimate comes from a survey of your actual house. A mover's published tariff, its accessorial charges and its valuation coverage govern over anything on this page. Figures in the worked example are round illustrative numbers. Nothing typed here is stored or sent anywhere.