How to Estimate Moving Jobs: Survey, Cube Sheet, Access

Short answer: To estimate moving jobs, survey both ends of the move, not just the origin. Walk room by room with a cube sheet, cube every item, count cartons for anything still unpacked, then measure the parts that burn the clock: flights of stairs, feet from the truck to the door, and whether the freight elevator can be reserved. Local work converts cubes into crew hours at your own measured loading rate. Long-distance converts cubes into pounds. Say in writing which kind of estimate it is.

A moving estimate is not really a price. It is a prediction of how many crew hours a house will consume, and the profit on the job lives entirely inside the gap between that prediction and the clock on move day. The rate itself — what a crew hour costs you and what it has to sell for — is worked out in how much to charge for moving. This page is the other half: the survey that feeds the rate.

Can I quote this from the phone, or does it need a survey?

Three answers, and the middle one is where most shops sit.

A repeat customer moving a studio you have already loaded once: quote it. A house you have never seen: survey it. Everything in between gets a video walk-through, which takes fifteen minutes and catches the things that actually break estimates — the garage, the basement, the storage unit across town, the treadmill in the spare room, the second address the customer mentions at minute twelve.

Rules for a video survey that holds up: the customer opens every closet, every cabinet, the garage, the attic hatch, and the shed on camera. You record it. You state, in the estimate, that the price assumes the inventory shown and nothing else. A survey where the customer narrates instead of showing is a phone call with better lighting.

Which estimate am I actually giving — binding, non-binding, or not-to-exceed?

Pick one deliberately, because the three hand the risk to different people.

Type	Who carries the overrun	Where it fits
Binding	You	A surveyed inventory you are confident in, packing included
Non-binding	The customer, within limits	Long-distance where actual weight decides
Binding not-to-exceed	You above the number, customer below it	Competitive residential work
Hourly with an estimated window	The customer	Local moves where access is unknown

On interstate moves the non-binding version is regulated, not casual. Under 49 CFR 375.405, a non-binding estimate has to state that the shipper will not be required to pay more than 110 percent of it at delivery, and the related rule on collect-on-delivery shipments requires you to relinquish the goods once that amount is paid, billing anything beyond it later. An estimate written low to win the job does not become collectable just because the truck was heavier than you guessed.

What order do I walk the house in?

The same order every time, ending in the places customers forget they own.

Start outside at the truck position and work in, room by room, floor by floor, closing each room out on the sheet before you move. Then do the sweep list, because this is where inventory hides: garage, attic, crawlspace, basement, shed, patio and grill, laundry room, the closet under the stairs, the storage unit off site, and anything at a relative’s house that is joining the load. Ask about each one by name. “Is that everything?” gets a yes. “What is in the attic?” gets an inventory.

Two more passes before you leave. Mark every item the customer is not taking, in writing, because a sold couch that failed to sell is a real dispute. And mark every item needing disassembly — bed frames, sectionals, wall units, treadmills, table legs, TV mounts — as a count, since disassembly and reassembly are their own hours at both ends.

How do I cube the inventory instead of eyeballing it?

Use a cube sheet, use the same one every time, and never mix sheets mid-estimate.

Item	Typical cube value (cf)
Small or book carton	1.5
Medium carton	3.0
Large carton	4.5
Dish pack	5.2
Wardrobe carton	10 to 16, by height
Three-seat sofa	35 to 65, depending on whose sheet you use
Dresser	25 to 40
Refrigerator	30 to 45

That sofa row is the point of the table. Published cube values for the same piece of furniture vary widely between carriers, so the number itself matters far less than consistency — one sheet, used on every job, calibrated against what your truck actually held. After twenty jobs you will know that your sheet reads about 8 percent high or low, and you can correct it. Two sheets used interchangeably can never be corrected.

For anything unpacked, count cartons rather than guessing. Kitchen cabinets, bookshelves by linear foot, closets by rod foot, and the garage. A customer who says they will be packed by Friday and has not started is the single most common reason a local move runs two hours over.

What do I measure between the truck and the door?

This is the part of the survey that separates a good estimator from an optimistic one. Pace it and write the number down.

Measurement	How to take it	Why it costs money
Carry distance, both ends	Paces from the legal truck position to the door	Beyond about 75 feet, every item becomes an extra round trip
Flights of stairs	Count flights, not steps, per end	Each flight slows the load and adds a rest cycle
Elevator	Freight or passenger, dimensions, reservable	An unreserved elevator can idle a crew in a lobby
Truck access	Street width, low branches, wires, weight limits, gate codes	A 26-footer that cannot turn in becomes a shuttle
Parking	Permit, meter, loading zone, HOA restriction	Permit cost plus the walk you just paced
Doorways and turns	The narrowest point on the path, and the tightest turn	This is what decides if the sofa gets hoisted or disassembled
Building requirements	Certificate of insurance, move hours, elevator pads, deposit	Some buildings only allow moves on weekdays before 4 p.m.

Do this at the destination too. Estimators survey the origin and assume the destination, and the destination is where the surprise lives — the third-floor walk-up, the gravel driveway that will not carry a loaded truck, the condo that requires an insurance certificate naming the HOA.

What has to be on camera before move day?

Photograph the truck position at both ends, the full carry path including every turn and threshold, the stairwell, the elevator interior with its door dimensions, and the parking situation with any signage in frame.

Then photograph condition, which is a claims issue rather than a pricing one: high-value furniture from two angles, existing scratches, chips, and dents on the goods, the floors and walls of both hallways, doorframes, and any item the customer describes as an antique. A dated photo of a pre-existing scratch on a dining table ends an argument that otherwise costs you a claim and a review.

Which questions change the number?

Ask all of these out loud and record the answers on the estimate:

• Are you packing, or are we? If you are, will it be done the night before?
• Do you have your own boxes, or are we supplying them?
• Is anything going into storage, and for how long?
• Is anything going to a second address?
• Are any appliances staying or going, and are the gas and water lines disconnected?
• Is there a piano, safe, pool table, gun cabinet, aquarium, or treadmill?
• Do you want furniture placed and beds reassembled, or set down in the room?
• Who will be on site, and can they make decisions?
• Is the destination ready — closing recorded, keys in hand, utilities on?
• What day and what time window, and is there a hard deadline at either end?

The move date question is a pricing question, not just a scheduling one. The last week of the month, the first of the month, and summer weekends are capacity-constrained across the whole market, and pricing them the same as a Tuesday in February gives that capacity away.

How does the survey turn into hours, pounds, and a price?

Two conversions, depending on the job.

For a local move, take total cubes and divide by your crew’s measured loading rate in cubic feet per crew hour — a number you get from your own last twenty jobs, not from an industry chart. Add unloading at its own rate, disassembly and reassembly by item count, floor protection and walk-through time, drive time yard to yard, and stair and long-carry allowances taken from the measurements above. That total is crew hours. Multiply by your fully loaded crew-hour cost, add materials, then set the price by dividing by one minus your target margin.

The margin arithmetic is where money quietly disappears. Adding 30 percent markup to $1,000 of cost gives $1,300, which is a 23.1 percent margin, not 30. A true 30 percent margin on that cost is $1,000 ÷ 0.70 = $1,429. The gap is $129 on one job and a truck payment across a season.

For a long-distance move, convert cubes to weight and apply your line-haul rate for that weight and mileage band, then add accessorials as separate lines rather than folding them into the rate. Published per-hour and per-pound figures swing by a factor of two between markets, seasons, and building stock, so treat any number you find online as a check on your own arithmetic and nothing more.

What does the estimate deliberately leave out?

Name the exclusions, because silence reads as inclusion.

Items not shown during the survey. Hazardous materials, propane, paint, and ammunition. Disconnecting gas, water, or hardwired appliances, which is licensed work. Third-party services — piano specialists, crating, appliance servicing — quoted separately. Waiting time when the customer is not packed or the building is not ready. Parking permits and building fees at cost. Anything the customer packs themselves, which is normally excluded from damage claims on the contents of those boxes.

State the estimate’s validity window, the deposit, and the cancellation terms in the same block. A moving estimate with no expiration date will be waved at you in September on a price you built in March.

What gets recorded once they say yes?

The survey sheet and the photos become the job file, and the job file becomes the invoice. Get the invoice out before the truck leaves the destination while the customer is still standing in a house full of their own furniture — that timing does more for collections than any of the tactics in how to get clients to pay, and what belongs on the document is in what to include on an invoice.

Keel is an iOS app that does that from the tailgate. It does not write estimates — that part is still in development — but the moment the job is done, the invoice goes out in about a minute with your own numbering, your logo, your brand color, and a payment link the customer scans as a QR code off your screen. Fuel, tolls, permits, pads, shrink, and carton receipts get photographed and read on the device by Apple Intelligence, which is how the truck line in your cost table stays honest instead of becoming an annual guess. Survey trips are their own drives and count as business miles, the kind of record described in independent contractor mileage log. Nothing leaves the phone: no account, no bank connection, no cloud, no login, and an App Store privacy label reading Data Not Collected. At year end the Accountant Pack exports a CSV and a one-page summary, and the whole year leaves as a single file. Free covers unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

How do movers estimate the size of a move?

By inventory, not by house size. The estimator walks room by room with a cube sheet, assigns a cube value to every piece of furniture, counts cartons for anything still to be packed, and totals the cubic feet. That total converts to loading hours on a local move or to shipping weight on a long-distance one. House square footage alone tells you almost nothing about how full a truck will be.

What is a cube sheet in moving?

A standard list of household items with an average cubic footage assigned to each, used to turn a walk-through into a volume figure. Values differ between carriers, so the accuracy comes from using one sheet consistently and correcting it against what your truck actually held. A sheet that reads 8 percent high is useful once you know it does; two sheets mixed together never become useful.

Should a moving estimate be binding or non-binding?

Binding suits a fully surveyed inventory where you control the packing, since it gives the customer certainty and hands you the overrun risk. Non-binding suits long-distance work where actual weight decides the charge, and on interstate moves it carries the 110 percent rule at delivery. A binding not-to-exceed price competes well in residential work: the customer pays less if the job runs light.

How much extra should stairs and long carries add to a moving estimate?

Enough to cover the added hours, quoted per flight and per stated distance beyond a threshold rather than as a vague surcharge. Pace the carry from the legal truck position to the door at both ends and count flights at both ends. Past roughly 75 feet each item becomes a full extra round trip, which is why long carry costs more than most estimators think it does.

What do movers forget to include in an estimate?

The destination survey, the storage unit off site, the garage and attic, disassembly and reassembly counts, elevator reservations and certificates of insurance, parking permits, and the customer who will not be finished packing. Every one of them is an hour or more, and every one of them is invisible from a phone call. A written exclusions block is the cheapest protection against all of it.

How long should a moving estimate stay valid?

Long enough to be useful and short enough to protect the rate, which for most shops means 14 to 30 days, with the date printed on the document. Fuel, wages, and seasonal demand all move. State separately that the price assumes the inventory recorded at the survey and the access conditions observed, since those are the two variables that change between the estimate and move day.

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This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.