Moving Pricing Guide: Hours Locally, Pounds Over Distance

Short answer: A moving pricing guide has to hold two unrelated units. A local move bills hours × crew size, so the price is a bet on your own time estimate. An interstate move bills weight or volume against distance, with weight coming off certified scale tickets and volume converted at the industry’s 7 lb per cubic foot. The same 6,000 lb two-bedroom below takes 18.5 man-hours on one job and 49.6 on the other, over the same nine miles.

Almost every dollar lost in moving is lost between the hours you estimated and the hours the job took. Nothing else in the trade moves that far that fast. Material is trivial, fuel is predictable, and wages are known — but a third-floor walk-up and a reserved freight elevator that nobody actually reserved can double a day that was quoted over the phone in four minutes. This page prices the gap. The deduction side of the same truck is in moving business expenses.

Which of the two units am I selling, and what does each one hide?

Distance decides the unit, and each unit hides a different thing.

Local, hourly × crew. You sell time. What it hides is that you are the one who guessed how much time. The customer’s exposure is capped by their own patience; yours is not capped at all. Every minute of stairs, waiting, parking, and disassembly comes out of a number you already quoted.

Interstate, weight or volume × distance. You sell pounds down a highway. What it hides is everything that is not the linehaul: origin and destination accessorials, shuttle service when the tractor cannot reach the door, long carry, stair carry, elevator charges, packing, and storage in transit. The linehaul line looks clean; the accessorials are where the job is either profitable or a disaster.

Local household goods moves are regulated by the state rather than by the federal government, and several states run genuine tariffs or filed rate structures for intrastate household goods. Interstate moves are federal. Know which set of rules the job falls under before you quote it, because the answer changes what you are legally allowed to charge and what paperwork has to be handed over.

What starts the clock, what stops it, and what never gets billed?

Write all three into the estimate, because the customer will assume the most favorable reading of each.

• Travel time. Some operators bill portal to portal, some charge a flat trip fee, and at least one state mandates a doubling convention on drive time between the two addresses. Pick one, state it in writing, and stop absorbing it.
• Billing increment. Quarter hour, half hour, or full hour after a minimum changes the total on every job. On a 6.15 hour move, rounding to the next full hour is a free hour to you; rounding down is a free hour to them.
• Minimum. A three-hour minimum on a two-hour job is not greed, it is the fact that a crew and a truck were committed for a day.
• Paperwork and the walkthroughs. Inventory at origin, condition notes, damage walk at destination, signature. That is real time and it belongs on the clock, not before it.
• Fuel, tolls, and parking permits. Separate lines. Absorbing a $95 street permit inside an hourly rate is a straight write-off.

How do I get from a walkthrough to hours instead of a guess?

Three steps, and only the last one is judgment.

1. Cube the shipment. A cube sheet lists every item with its cubic footage. Total it. A modest two-bedroom lands somewhere around 800 to 900 cu ft.
2. Convert to weight. The industry’s standard density factor is 7 lb per cubic foot. So 860 cu ft becomes roughly 6,020 lb. That number matters on interstate work directly and on local work as a difficulty index.
3. Divide by your own productivity. This is the part nobody can give you. Take last season’s jobs, pull the weight and the loading man-hours, and calculate pounds per man-hour on clean ground-floor jobs and on stair jobs separately. Two numbers, from your own crews, is worth more than any published figure.

Then adjust for the conditions in the next two sections. A quote built this way can be defended line by line when the customer asks why it is higher than the outfit that quoted from a phone call — and it survives contact with the actual day, which the phone quote does not.

What do the carry, the stairs, and the elevator do to the number?

They are the whole ballgame, and they are all measured in feet and flights rather than pounds.

Long carry. The distance from where the truck can legally park to the door. Thirty feet in a driveway and 190 feet from a metered loading zone are not the same job. Measure it on the walkthrough and put the number in the estimate.

Stair carry. Priced per flight, per origin and destination separately. Three flights does not slow the crew by a third; it can cut loading productivity by more than half, because every item becomes a two-person carry and every trip is a round trip.

Elevator. A reserved freight elevator with a certificate-of-insurance requirement and a two-hour window is a scheduling constraint disguised as an amenity. When the building double-books the window, your crew stands still on your clock. Confirm the reservation with the building in writing, get the window, and put a waiting-time rate on the estimate so the stall has a price.

Shuttle. When a tractor-trailer physically cannot reach the address, the shipment gets transferred to a smaller truck. That is a double handling of the entire load and it is never inside the linehaul.

Calendar. Month-end, the first of the month, and summer Saturdays are when everyone moves. If you price those days the same as a Wednesday in February, you are subsidizing the busiest hours of your year.

What comes out of the crew rate and gets its own line?

Anything that needs a different skill, a different tool, or a different insurance conversation.

Item	Why it leaves the hourly rate
Piano, organ, gun safe, pool table	Specialized equipment, extra bodies, separate liability
Appliances needing disconnect or reconnect	Gas, water, or a licensed trade
Crating for glass, marble, or art	Materials plus build time before move day
Disassembly and reassembly	Beds, sectionals, cribs, treadmills, wall units
Packing and unpacking	Priced by the room or by the carton, plus materials
Cartons, paper, tape, mattress bags, shrink	Sold by the unit, not folded into labor
Storage in transit	Warehouse handling in, storage by the month, handling out

Packing materials in particular get given away constantly. Twenty dish barrels, a hundred sheets of paper, and six wardrobe cartons is real money leaving the building in someone else’s hands.

Why can the valuation line never be left blank?

Because the default is federal, it is very low, and the customer does not know it.

On interstate household goods moves, the mover’s minimum liability is Released Value Protection at 60 cents per pound per article, provided at no additional charge. A 40 lb television is $24 under that standard, regardless of what it cost. Full Value Protection — where the mover repairs, replaces, or settles at replacement value up to a declared amount — is a paid option the customer has to choose in writing.

FMCSA’s Your Rights and Responsibilities When You Move booklet has to be provided on interstate moves, and the valuation election belongs on the signed paperwork every time. Leaving it blank does not protect you; it produces the argument at exactly the moment you least want it, standing in a hallway next to a broken television.

What does the same 6,000 pounds look like on two moves?

Same inventory, same 9 miles, same company.

Move A — ground-floor townhouse to a ground-floor ranch. Driveway at both ends, 30 ft and 25 ft carries, a Wednesday in the middle of the month. Three movers.

Move B — same goods out of a third-floor walk-up into an elevator building. Sixty feet to the stairwell door at origin, 190 ft to a metered loading zone at destination with a street permit, a reserved freight elevator window the building double-booked, on the 31st. Four movers.

	Move A	Move B
Crew	3	4
Protect, paperwork, permit	0.5 hr	0.9 hr
Load	2.75 hr	5.4 hr
Drive	0.5 hr	0.6 hr
Elevator wait	—	1.3 hr
Unload and place	2.0 hr	3.8 hr
Final walkthrough	0.4 hr	0.4 hr
Elapsed on the job	6.15 hr	12.4 hr
Man-hours	18.5	49.6
Loading rate	727 lb per man-hour	278 lb per man-hour

Identical shipment weight. The loading rate falls by 62 percent, the crew is a third larger, and the elapsed day doubles. Quoted from the same hourly rate off the same inventory list, Move B pays for under 40 percent of the labor it consumes — and the elevator hour, which nobody caused and nobody can bill without a clause, is pure loss.

Binding, non-binding, or not-to-exceed — who carries the estimate risk?

Three structures, three different places the risk sits.

Non-binding. The final charge is based on actual weight and services. The customer carries the risk of being wrong, which is why the rules around how much can be collected at delivery on a non-binding interstate estimate exist at all.

Binding. You quote a fixed price for a listed inventory and listed services. You carry the risk. If the inventory grows on move day, that is a revised estimate signed before loading, not a conversation at the truck.

Binding not-to-exceed. The customer pays the lesser of the estimate or the actual charges. You carry all the downside and none of the upside. It sells well and it demands an accurate survey.

The structure only works if the survey is real. A binding price built from a four-minute phone call is a coin flip with your payroll. Do a walkthrough — in person or by video — inventory it, and note the carry, the flights, the parking, and the elevator in writing.

Is my rate a markup or a margin?

On an hourly business the two diverge at the rate level, so the error repeats on every hour of every job.

Say a four-person crew with a truck costs you $118 an hour fully loaded — wages, payroll burden, workers’ comp, truck, fuel, insurance, and your share of overhead. That figure is an illustration, not a rate to copy: wage levels, comp rates, and insurance differ enough between metros that the same crew can cost half again as much one state over. Build it from your own payroll and your own policy renewals. Add 30 percent markup and you bill $153.40, which is a margin of 23.1 percent. To actually hold 30 percent, divide: $118 ÷ 0.70 = $168.57. Over Move B’s 12.4 hours that is nearly $190 on one job, and you would run the same shortfall on every job all season without a single invoice looking wrong.

Check the loaded cost itself once a year. Crews that were costed at last year’s wage rates are the second most common way an hourly price quietly goes underwater.

What has to be written down on move day?

More than the invoice, and most of it before the first item moves.

The inventory with condition codes, signed at origin. Photographs of anything already damaged, anything high-value, and the condition of both properties’ floors, door jambs, and elevator interiors. Start time, end time, and the reason for every gap — the elevator wait needs a time stamp or it never happened. The valuation election, signed. Weight tickets on interstate work: the tare weight before loading and the gross weight after, from a certified scale.

The money side rides along with it. Keel does that part entirely on the phone — no account, no login, no bank connection, and an App Store privacy label reading Data Not Collected. Photograph the fuel receipts, the tolls, the street permit, and the carton invoice as you go; they are read on-device with Apple Intelligence. Then send the invoice at the tailgate before the crew leaves, with your logo and a payment QR on it, while the customer is standing in a house full of their own furniture and happy about it. The free tier is unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage, and Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase rather than a subscription. Collecting when the tailgate close does not work is in how to get paid for moving work, and what to hold back from a heavy season is in how much to set aside for 1099 taxes.

Frequently asked questions

Should a local move be priced hourly or by weight?

Hourly, times crew size, with a stated minimum and a stated travel-time convention. Weight is the interstate unit because distance is what is being sold there. On a local job the truck comes back the same day, so what you are actually selling is a crew’s day, and the hours are the honest measure of it.

How do movers estimate weight from a walkthrough?

By cubing the shipment. Every item gets its cubic footage on a cube sheet, the sheet is totaled, and the total is multiplied by the industry standard 7 pounds per cubic foot. A shipment of 860 cubic feet estimates at about 6,020 pounds. On interstate moves the final figure comes from certified scale tickets, tare before loading and gross after.

What is released value protection and what does it actually cover?

It is the federally required minimum liability on interstate household goods moves: 60 cents per pound per article, at no extra charge. A 40 pound television settles at $24 under it. Full Value Protection, where the mover repairs, replaces, or pays replacement value up to a declared amount, costs extra and must be elected in writing before the move.

How much should stairs and a long carry add to a moving quote?

Enough to cover the productivity loss they actually cause, which you can only know by measuring your own crews. Three flights can cut loading output by more than half because items become two-person carries and every trip is a round trip. Price stair carry per flight and long carry by distance from legal parking, both at origin and destination separately.

What is the difference between a binding and a non-binding moving estimate?

A non-binding estimate is settled on actual weight and services, so the customer carries the risk of an inaccurate survey. A binding estimate fixes the price against a listed inventory, so you do. A binding not-to-exceed gives the customer the lower of the two, which puts all the downside on the mover and requires a genuinely accurate walkthrough.

Where does a moving company usually lose money on a job?

Between the estimated hours and the actual hours. Fuel and materials are predictable; time is not. Unmeasured carry distance, uncounted flights, a freight elevator window that the building did not honor, and disassembly nobody mentioned are the four that show up most, and all four are cheap to catch on a real walkthrough.

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