What a Move Actually Costs — and What the Cheap Quote Left Out

What the estimator models, and the two charges it has no field for

The inputs are a country, a home size from studio to five bedrooms, a move type, a distance, a season, a packing service, a stairs or lift option, a list of special items and an insurance level. Note the first substitution: it asks for a home size, not a volume. Removals firms quote on volume, and the two are not the same thing — a heavily furnished one-bedroom flat can outweigh a sparse three-bedroom house. If you want the volume to hand, count your boxes first and add the furniture; the boxes alone for a two-bedroom home come to roughly 210 cubic feet.

Two charges that turn up on real invoices have no field at all. A long carry is billed when the vehicle cannot park within a set distance of your door and the crew has to walk the load; the distance that triggers it and the rate per unit beyond it are set in the firm's own tariff, and they vary. A shuttle is billed when the street, the gate or the overhead clearance cannot take the removal lorry, so the load is transferred to a smaller van and shuttled — two extra handlings of everything you own. Neither is exotic. Both are ordinary in a narrow city street, a pedestrianised centre or a house at the end of a lane, and both are exactly the sort of thing a quote written from a phone call cannot know about.

Distance is almost free under the local threshold, and dominant above it

The model applies a per-mile coefficient that scales with home size, and then cuts it to 30 percent on a local move. The consequence is easy to see: on a two-bedroom local move the estimate is $1,101 at 1 mile and $1,189 at 99 miles. A hundredfold change in distance moves the price 8 percent, because on a local job you are paying for a crew's day and a lorry's day, not for fuel. Cross the threshold into a long-distance move and the coefficient goes to full weight and gets a 1.5 multiplier on the base as well: the same three-bedroom job runs $2,951 at 100 miles, $4,554 at 500, $6,557 at 1,000 and $14,572 at 3,000.

One caveat before you lean on the distance field: it is not validated. Leave it blank, type a negative number, or type letters, and the estimate comes back identical to what a distance of zero gives — for the two-bedroom default, around $1,100. That is not a rounding artefact, it is the field silently reading as nothing. If you see a plausible figure appear without having entered a distance, you are reading a zero-mile move.

Access: the flat fee that stops counting at two floors

Access is where the estimator is furthest from a real tariff. It offers four options — ground floor, one flight, two or more flights, lift — and charges a flat fee for each: $75 for one flight, $150 for two or more, and $50 where there is a lift. Two things follow. A sixth-floor walk-up costs exactly what a second floor costs, which is not true of any crew's day. And the lift option is charged at all, which is right: a lift has to be booked, protected and sometimes taken out of service for the neighbours, and a small lift can be slower than the stairs for anything that does not fold.

In practice the access questions that decide a price are the ones neither the tool nor a phone quote asks. Can the lorry stop legally outside, or does the street need a permit and a suspended parking bay booked in advance? Is there a turn on the stairs that a two-metre wardrobe will not go round? Is there a window through which a furniture hoist can work, and is there room in the street to stand one? Every one of those is a yes-or-no that changes the crew size, and the crew size is the price. Ask them of yourself before you ask a mover, because the answers are what turn three quotes into three comparable quotes.

Why two quotes for the same move differ: read the exclusions, not the total

Take the three-bedroom local move at $1,730 and tick four things a thin quote typically omits. Peak season adds 25 percent. A full packing service adds 35 percent on top of that. Two flights of stairs adds a flat fee. Full-value cover instead of the minimum adds 3 percent. The result is $3,162 — the same flat, the same distance, the same day's work, at 83 percent more. Every one of those four is a line a firm can leave off a quote without lying, because a quote prices the services it names and nothing else.

That last sentence is not a figure of speech; in the United States it is written into the rules for interstate household-goods moves. A binding estimate has to state on its face that the charges shown apply only to the services specifically identified in it, and if the shipper turns out to need services the estimate did not list, the mover is not required to honour it. The same regulation requires a physical survey of the goods before a written estimate is given, waivable only by a signed agreement. That is the whole lesson in one place: the survey exists so the exclusions list can be short, and a quote produced without one is a quote whose exclusions you have not read yet.

How to make two quotes comparable

Write your own specification first and send the identical text to everyone. It needs six things: the volume or the room-by-room inventory with the oversized items named; the access at both ends, floor by floor, with a note on whether the lorry can park; the date, with a note if it falls at a month end or in the summer peak; who packs what, itemised as materials supplied, fragile items packed by the crew, and everything else by you; the cover you want, stated as a replacement value rather than as a tier name; and the dismantling and reassembly you expect, listed by item. Then require every quote to price that specification and to list, separately, anything it excludes.

Then compare on one line only: the total for the identical specification, with the exclusions read out loud. If one quote is materially lower and its exclusion list is longer, it is not lower. If one quote is materially lower and its exclusion list is the same, ask which of the six items it has priced differently — it is nearly always the crew size or the number of days, and both of those are things you will discover on the day rather than on the page.

Doing it yourself: the honest arithmetic

The estimator's own studio figure is the right anchor: $411 in the middle, $350 to $493 across the band, for a short local move done by a firm. That is the same order as a day's van hire with fuel, so for a studio or a very light one-bedroom the self-move usually wins and it is not close. Above that the arithmetic tightens fast, because the firm's figure grows with home size while your van hire does not — but the number of trips does.

The costs people leave off the self-move side are the ones that decide it. Van hire is quoted per day, but a move that starts at nine and finishes at nine is two days on most contracts. Mileage is often extra beyond an included allowance. A one-way hire carries a drop fee that can rival the daily rate. The damage waiver is not optional in practice, because the excess on a hire van is measured in four figures. Fuel on a loaded van is not the fuel figure on the leaflet. You will still buy every box, roll of tape and blanket the firm would have brought. Two friends for a day is a real cost even when no money changes hands, and it is the one that gets repaid at the worst possible moment. And nothing you break is covered by anything: the firm's minimum liability is thin, but it is not nothing, and your own contents insurance usually excludes goods in transit unless you asked for it.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a local move cost?

For a short local move with no packing service, ground floor and off-peak, the estimator gives roughly $411 for a studio, $715 for one bedroom, $1,122 for two, $1,730 for three, $2,438 for four and $3,245 for five or more. Those are the middles of a band that runs from 15 percent below to 20 percent above. Add packing, stairs, a peak date or an oversized item and each of those figures moves substantially — a three-bedroom job with all four reaches $3,162.

Why is one quote so much cheaper than the others?

Almost always because it is pricing fewer services. A quote covers the services it names and nothing more, so the difference between two totals is usually a difference between two exclusion lists rather than between two hourly rates. Put the two lists side by side before you look at the totals again. The four that go missing most often are packing materials, a long carry from the door to the vehicle, a shuttle where the street will not take the lorry, and cover above the minimum liability.

Is a binding quote worth paying for?

Usually yes, on a move where the access is awkward or the inventory is uncertain, because a binding estimate guarantees the total for the quantities and services shown on it. The catch is in the same sentence: for the quantities and services shown on it. If you hand the crew more than was surveyed, or need a service the estimate did not name, the mover can decline to honour it and write a new one before loading. A binding quote is therefore only as good as the survey behind it, which is the argument for letting someone walk round the flat rather than describing it on the phone.

Does the currency dropdown convert the estimate?

No, and this is worth knowing before you compare two settings. The country you pick carries a cost-of-moving coefficient and sets a default currency; changing the currency afterwards only changes the symbol printed next to the same number. Pick the country you are actually moving within and leave the currency where it lands. Note too that the flat fees — stairs, a piano, a hot tub — are baseline figures scaled by that same country coefficient rather than local prices anyone surveyed.

When does moving yourself stop being cheaper?

Somewhere around a full one-bedroom, and earlier if there are stairs at either end. The estimator puts a firm at about $411 for a studio and $715 for one bedroom, which a day's van hire with fuel and materials can beat or match. At two bedrooms the firm's figure is $1,122 and the self-move has become two trips, two days of hire, two friends and a weekend — and one of those trips will be at night. The decision usually turns on stairs rather than on money: a professional crew with a wardrobe carrier does a second-floor flat in the time it takes two amateurs to get the sofa out of the door.