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True Trade Cost

Moving Company Price Calculator: Price a Local Move From Its Weight

Updated

A 3-bedroom local move of about 6,000 lb, with 3 movers and a 26 ft truck, comes to $1,678.32 at a $40 break-even rate per mover hour with 20% profit. That works out to $279.72 for every 1,000 lb on the inventory, and it changes as soon as you type in your own move.

This moving company price calculator starts from the weight on the customer's inventory, then turns it into mover hours, supplies and truck cost. The defaults are a simplified copy of the example move in the Moving Company Pricing Calculator spreadsheet, where the customer packed 60 boxes themselves and the crew wrapped the furniture.

1. The job
× 1,000 lb

6 means about 6,000 lb. Add up the inventory list.

hrs

Wrap, load, drive, unload and set up, plus the hours before and after the move.

$

What you sell or use up on the move, at your cost.

2. Costs that come with every job

The ones owners leave out most. Put 0 if it doesn't apply.

$
$
$
3. Your rate and profit
$/hr

What each labour hour has to bring in to cover wages and overhead.

%
%

Don't know your break-even rate? Work it out in two minutes with the true hourly rate calculator.

Job price$1,678

Why the inventory weight drives a moving price

Weight is the one number that tells you how much has to go down the stairs, up the ramp and back off again. The room-by-room list gives it to you before anyone shows up: beds, dressers, the sofa, the boxes and whatever sits in the garage. Two homes with the same bedroom count can weigh very different amounts.

So the calculator asks for weight in units of 1,000 lb and spreads the crew's hours over it. In the example, 24.24 mover hours over 6,000 lb is 4.04 hours per 1,000 lb. At $40 an hour that is $969.60 of labour, well over half the price.

Counting every mover hour on the example 3-bedroom

On move day the three movers drive the truck over, lay floor runners and door pads, wrap the furniture, load about 6,000 lb, drive 15 miles, unload, place everything by room and put the beds back together. Two of them take the beds and tables apart.

Then come the hours that don't happen at the customer's door. Someone spends an hour on the inventory call and sign-off. The walk-up at the old address slows every trip. Things turn up in closets and under beds that never made the list. The crew still has to drive back to the yard after the last box. Leave those out of the hours and the example loses about $200 at $40 an hour before profit.

A 2-bedroom move and a studio on the same settings

Set the weight to 4 for a 4,000 lb 2-bedroom and the price becomes $1,211.28, about $302.82 per 1,000 lb. If the truck can park in the driveway, set the permit to zero and it drops to $1,157.28.

A small studio move of 1,000 lb comes to $510.72, because the $161 for the truck, blankets and dollies and the permit stay the same no matter how little goes on. That is why the weight-based price per 1,000 lb climbs on small moves, and why the $250 minimum is there for single-item jobs.

How the moving spreadsheet gets this move to $1,762

The $40 break-even rate is the example company's $39.62 per mover hour, rounded, with the owner's pay, insurance and the yard in it. The moving hourly rate page builds the example's crew rates, and the free true hourly rate calculator builds yours.

The spreadsheet costs the truck, the blankets and the dollies by their own running hour, keeps box and wrap prices on a list, adds a cushion, lists the hours movers forget, prints a quote for the customer with your terms and tracks each move afterward. Its price for this move is $1,762. To compare hourly, flat-rate and by-weight pricing, read the moving pricing guide.

How the math in the Moving Company calculator is checked

Every version of the moving company spreadsheet goes through an automatic test before it ships. The test rebuilds the file, recalculates it in a separate spreadsheet engine, and fails the release if any of these is off.

  • The example's break-even rate, $39.62 an hour, is worked out a second time outside the spreadsheet and the two have to agree to the cent.
  • The total for the customer has to equal the price plus sales tax, and the customer quote has to show that same total.
  • The example quote ($1,762 total) has to earn more per labour hour than it costs to run the business. It earns $57.14 an hour against the $39.62 break-even.
  • Then the test tries to break it: every yellow box on the quote emptied, nobody on the crew billable, a material price 400 days old, an order of zero. No cell may show an error, and the checks box has to flag the missing customer name and the out-of-date price.
  • The formulas only use functions that work the same way in Excel and Google Sheets.

Last test run: Moving Company passed, along with 39 of the other 39 trades. The example job and the list of easy-to-miss costs come from research into 6 videos of moving company owners explaining how they price. More on how the calculators are built.

Questions owners ask

How do I estimate the price of a local move?

Weigh the move from a room-by-room inventory, turn the weight into mover hours, add wrap and boxes, the truck and any permit, then add profit. The example 6,000 lb 3-bedroom move is 24.24 mover hours and comes to $1,678.32.

How many mover hours does 1,000 lb of furniture and boxes take?

About 4 in this calculator's example, for the whole crew together. That covers wrapping, loading, the drive, unloading, beds apart and back together, plus the inventory call and the trip back to the yard.

What does a 2-bedroom move come to with this calculator?

About $1,211 at 4,000 lb with the example's settings, or $1,157.28 if the truck can park without a permit. Your own weight and hours will change it.

Why is a tiny move so expensive per pound?

Because the truck, the blankets and the parking permit cost the same for a studio as for a house. A 1,000 lb move with the example's settings comes to $510.72, nearly twice the 6,000 lb move's rate per 1,000 lb.

Can I use this to price a long-distance move?

Not well. It is built for a local move priced from crew time. Long-distance moves add fuel, tolls, driver hours and overnight costs that this quick version has no boxes for.