The whole price list fits on a jersey

Why we price local moves by the hour

For a local move, hourly is usually the simplest way to price it. Every house has surprises — a piano, a switchback staircase, a garage that grew since you last looked — and hourly keeps it straightforward: you pay for the time the job actually takes. Prefer a flat rate? We do those too — on moves we pack. The reason is below, and it's a real one.

Long-distance is a different animal: those moves get planned down to the item and priced as a detailed flat estimate, and done by professionals that's exactly how it should work. The scam was never the flat price — it's a broker who invents one before anyone has seen your stuff, sells your move to the cheapest bidder, then renegotiates once your things are on the truck and you're over a barrel. Here's how that plays out.

When we'll quote a flat rate

We'll hold a flat number whenever we can pin the volume down. Usually that means we're the ones packing it — but not always. Here's what actually decides it.

Movers move cartons. Packers pack them. Most movers pack as well, but there are plenty of packers who only pack and never touch a truck — they're two different skills that get lumped together under one word.

In the trade, a carton is one of two things: PBO — packed by owner — or CP, carrier packed. Carrier-packed cartons are reliably packed tighter and more securely. Owner-packed cartons tend to come up short of the top, which invites crushing the second anything stacks on them, and they're often taped light.

But the tape isn't the real problem. The real problem is that it's impossible to accurately estimate how much volume the contents of a home will take up once packed unless a professional is the one packing it. Volume is the thing a flat rate is built on. Get the volume wrong and the number was fiction from the start.

None of that is a knock on you. You're not getting paid to pack. We are.

So when we pack it, we know exactly what we're moving and we can commit to a price and stand on it. That's the common case — but it isn't the only one.

Plenty of other situations work too. If your shipment is already packed and the volume and weight are on record, we can work from that — the measuring is already done, and it doesn't matter whose hands filled the cartons. Same if a professional organizer packed you out; a lot of them handle the packing as part of the job, and that's professional work too.

Those are examples, not a checklist. Every move is its own puzzle — call us and we'll tell you straight whether a flat number would be an honest one for yours. When it wouldn't be, we go hourly and you pay for the time the job actually takes. What we won't do is put a flat number on a house full of cartons nobody has measured. That's the broker's trick, and it's the whole reason we price the way we do.

Either way a flat rate takes a more detailed estimate up front, so give us a call at (208) 328-5623 or send us the details and we'll walk it with you.