How much should it cost to move furniture?

When moving, everyone's faced with the same decision: do I move it or sell it? If you're an economical person, you want to compare the cost of moving it compared to buying a new one when you arrive, but good luck getting a moving company to give you a price per item.

While some local movers will charge per large item, most movers charge either by the hour or by weight. The problem with being charged per hour becomes pretty obvious when you realize that the less they hustle, they more you get charged. This is why weight is recognized as the fairest way to charge (and is mandated by law for interstate moves). Movers will sell you on a "binding" quote, meaning the price won't go up if the weight is more than they anticipated, but in reality when they arrive at your house they will hunt for any toothpick you didn't mention. If the inventory changes one iota, they are able to rip up the "binding" quote and charge you by weight - which is why we recommend using our free tool to create the inventory yourself with photo evidence.

You can see why customers often get suckered by a lowball "Binding" quote and then whacked with a higher bill once their belongings are on the truck.

The problem: many movers refuse to give you any sense of what each item costs (although they most definitely have made sure to charge you!). They instead provide a list of your items with an assigned weight (which is rarely the same from one mover to the next). The makeup of this list is mandated by law.

Luckily, you don't need the mover's cooperation because we're going to give you the secret: once the mover tells you the weight they assign to each item (see bench above, assigned 35lbs) you can simply multiply it by $0.0009 per pound per mile. This equation doesn't work very well for short distances, but anything medium to long range it will get you in the ballpark.

For example, if I need to move a Buffet (assigned 210 lbs above) 225 miles, you can guess that will cost about $42 to move. Of course, this is the cost to load, drive, and unload, and doesn't work if you're looking for them to box you stuff up.