We put in a contract on a house last week, we should know if it’s accepted Monday. Cross your fingers for us!
Anyway, my question is this. If we get the house, we’ll be moving about 10 miles, from a 3 bedroom townhouse to a larger single family home. I’ll be calling movers Monday to get some real prices, but I was wondering if anyone could give me a general idea of what you’ve paid for movers in the past.
Last time I moved (about three years ago), it was $95/hour with a minimum four hour charge. But that was down here in northern Virginia; rates may be a bit different in Baltimore.
I’ll definitely keep my fingers crossed for your contract. Keep us apprised, huh?
I paid around $125/hr + supplies for my move 6 months ago. It will depend on how many men they assign as well. We had 3 guys, 4 will cost more per hour, but should take fewer hours overall. They will probably try to set it up as a full day of work, with fewer workers, rather than put a bunch of guys on for half a day.
You should have someone come by to inspect your stuff and give an estimate, rather than doing it all on the phone. You also want to know what is included and what is excluded from the price. Things like wardrobe boxes, blankets, tape, etc can add up to a big surprise if they don’t include it in the estimate.
Our estimate was X hours @ $Y/hr + $Z for supplies, with us paying the actual cost based on how long they actually worked, not to exceed 10% over the estimate. So, if they told me 8hrs at $125/hr + $100 supplies that’s an $1,100 estimate, so my maximum cost is $1,210 even if it takes 10 hours to do, if it takes 6 hours, I pay $850.
A few months ago I moved three miles, from a 2-bedroom apartment to a 3-bedroom house. I had a lot of boxes of books and the apartment was on the second story, which slowed things down on that end. All in all it took them 5 hours to move me; they charged $105 per hour.
Had the apartment been on the first floor, I think an hour could have been shaved off the time.
We’ve done short-distance moves a couple times, once apartment to apartment, once apartment-to-house. We just hired movers, no packers (everything “packable” was already in boxes).
Cost us about $400 the first time (Central Minnesota), and about $500 the second time (Central Oregon, a couple years later).
I was also moved by my company, to the tune of about $8-10K, but I don’t think it’s comparable, since it included packing, was cross-country, and included moving a car.
Some movers charge by the weight of goods, and a deceitful tactic is to show you the unladed weight of the truck, and then after loading your goods, take on a load of diesel before hitting the scale. At around 7.15 pounds/gallon, twin 50 saddle tanks can pad the bill with 650# extra.
If you’re sufficiently motivated to pack up most of your stuff, a crew of Dopers/family/cow-orkers with trucks should be able to shlep you across town in a day. Heck, a half-dozen of us dragged all of Amber and Rich’s stuff down from the 9th floor in Uni City and loaded their rental truck in less than 6 hours.
As we already discussed, that’s the route I was planning to take (and I thank you again for your offer. I’m more than willing to pack everything in the house; it’s the asking of friends to move our piano (again, in one case) that has me a little bugged. Our (hopefully) new house is a split level, with stairs from the street up.
Is the transportation to/from part of the “hours worked”? Or just the actual manual ‘moving’?
Transportation time was included in the number of hours. Since it was a short trip, it was all done in one day, and the guys who loaded/unloaded were there the whole time without an appreciable break.
I used to be a mover for a few years back when I was an undergrad. There are several things you have to consider when it comes to the price of a move: size/type of homes, distance between the homes, furniture, boxes, and time of year.
The first two are pretty obvious how they affect the cost. By furniture, I mean the type, weight, quality, and quantity. Some types of furniture just take longer to move because they take time to take apart, or are awkward. Obviously, very heavy pieces (like pianos) and very nice pieces or antique pieces take longer. Obviously for boxes, the number, size, and weights affect how long it takes to move them.
What you may or may not know about time of year is how much it can affect price. In peak moving time starts around mid May and can go through 'til early september (parents like to move when their kids are out of school), and prices can go as high as $150-160 for 3 men, while in the dead of winter, you could get the same three guys for maybe $100-110. Prices are also higher during the last week or first few days of a month (because most people want to avoid paying an extra month from those few days, or need to wait for the previous people to move out to move in), so try to plan a move near the early to middle part of a month if possible.
You can save money if you go with a lesser known company, but they may or may not have the same level of insurance, equipment, etc. so take that into account if one company offers a much lower price than the others. Most moving companies will offer a free in-home estimate, so take advantage of that as well. My guess is, if you’re trying to move before mid-May, you can probably get 3 men for about $120-135, and if your house is moderately furnished and self-prepared (everything packed, pre-disassembled) you’re probably looking at about 6-7 hours of labor plus travelling time, so about 8 hours to be billed. They may also try to give you more guys (like 4 or 5) to try to get the move done quicker so they can send the crew on a second job in the afternoon. I don’t think they’d be busy enough yet to offer that.
To save more money, and save your movers frustration, move any delicate or difficult to pack items in your car (especially since its a short distance). You may also want to consider moving your own clothes as most companies will charge for the use of wardrobe boxes, even if you’re only renting them… some will even force you to buy them; find out what their policy is on that.
Also, as far as the movers go, if you can keep them happy, they’ll probably get done quicker and better. That is, if you offer to buy them lunch, or have some water/Gatorade available for them, it will probably pay for itself. Finally, since some people forget, moving is a service industry, so they appreciate tips $20-$40 per person or about !0% of the total bill is about the norm (more of course, if they did what you think is an exceptional job… or if they screwed up, none). If you do decide to tip, I recommend using cash and handing it to each crew member yourself (as some crew chiefs will keep all the tip to himself); this will also allow you to tip a specific crew member more or less if you feel it appropriate to do so.
In our case, it depended heavily on the time of year. We tried moving from one 2-bedroom to another 2-bedroom, but because we were looking at moving in April (which is when the school year begins here, and all the major businesses do their transfers and have all the new employees start), the movers wanted to charge us US$3000 for the whole job. We decided to wait until the next year and did our moving the following March, at which time we only had to pay US$1000 to move from our 2-bedroom to a 4-bedroom.
I’m moving in June, from one second-floor apt. to another, about a mile apart, and was quoted $700 flat-rate by one mover, and I have another giving me a quote on Sat. I’ll pack everything myself except for mirrors.
While we’re here, how much should I tip the movers? $20 apiece?
If its a $700 flat rate, it probably won’t take them more than about 5-6 hours. $20/person is probably plenty, though obviously, adjust it if they do a particularly good or bad job. Though, if its only two men (which is likely if its only a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment on the second floor), you may want to consider a little more since they’ll have to work harder (eg, $20 if its 3 guys, or $30 if its 2 guys… works out to the same amount).
Thanks!
My move last year was $130 per hour for Larry Moe and Curly. They weren’t particulary clumsy but they certainly were all exemplary of “I’m not smart, but I can carry heavy stuff.”
“Supplies” will hit you hard. Find the most expensive place in town to buy a single roll of tape and double the price to get an idea of what they’ll charge you for their bought-in-bulk stuff. I think I was charged $100 for tape alone, and that’s with all of my stuff already in taped-up boxes. They used miles of tape to hold moving blankets on furniture, and miles of the stuff to hold drawers closed.
Do everything in your power to be the first move of the day for that crew. If you get an afternoon move, chances are they’ll be dragging their butts at 3/4 speed, and you’ll be paying an extra hour or two as a result.
Our two bedroom apartment to three bedroom house took close to 12 hours, including one hour of drive time.
You can get a couple of moving companies to look at your stuff and give a rough estimate - when we moved 3.5 years ago we got refs from a number of friends and had 3 companies do an estimate. They ranged from 2500 (1 bid) to 3500ish (2 bids). We actually picked one of the 3500 bids at random figuring maybe the one that was so drastically different was lowballed for some reason.
THis included 3 guys for one full day doing all the packing (we simply did not have time to do it ourselves and oh boy was it worth it!!!) and 4 guys for the next day doing the actual loading/moving. Total move distance was about 2 miles (from townhouse to single-family, like you) but they also had to swing by a u-store-it place to pick up all the crap we moved out to make the house look sellable 
Between supplies and their per-hour charge, the total move actually wound up being about 2500 dollars so I guess the original “low-ball” offer was spot on! Oh, and this was Northern VA, so perhaps a bit pricier than up where you are. Plus tips for the guys, of course, I think we tipped the packers 30 bucks each and the loaders 40 each, plus buying them lunch.
And a totally unrelated and perhaps useless hint: Make sure you know the whereabouts of a couple of lamps. We moved from a townhouse where we had ceiling light fixtures in every room, to a house with pretty much no ceiling fixtures. We nearly spent our first night in the dark (we did some frantic box-opening about 7 PM). YHMV of course