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How many movers, and which truck?
The question every new mover gets wrong and every experienced one answers by feel. Put in the home and the access and get the crew, the truck, and the hours the job actually needs.
Send
3 movers
- Truck
- 26 ft box truck
- Hours on site
- 8 hrs
- Loading and unloading, not including the drive.
- Plus packing
- 0 hrs
- Estimated volume
- 1,300 cu ft
- Estimated weight
- 8,000 lbs
Rules of thumb for a typical household. A hoarder's two-bedroom is a four-bedroom; a minimalist's four-bedroom is not. Walk the job.
How the sizer works
It starts from volume. A typical studio is about 400 cubic feet of belongings once packed, a one-bedroom 600, a two-bedroom 900, a three-bedroom 1,300, a four-bedroom 1,800, and a five-bedroom or larger 2,300. Those are the figures the trade plans against, and they are what the sizer uses.
Crew follows volume: two movers up to a one-bedroom, three to a three-bedroom, four above that. Two or more flights of stairs without an elevator add a mover, and so does a specialty item, because a piano or a gun safe needs hands on it that are not carrying anything else. Six is the cap; past that a job is two crews, not one big one.
Hours come from throughput. A mover handles roughly 55 cubic feet an hour across loading and unloading, so crew-hours are the volume divided by that, and hours on site are crew-hours divided by the crew. Each flight of stairs adds about 8% and a long carry about 15%. Two hours is the floor. The truck is the smallest box that takes the volume at its real usable capacity, not the figure on the spec sheet: about 800 cubic feet for a 16-footer, 1,100 for a 20, and 1,600 for a 26.
Questions
Crew and truck sizing, answered
How many movers do I need for a 3 bedroom house?
Three movers is the standard crew for a typical three-bedroom house, and the job usually takes around 8 to 10 hours on site for loading and unloading combined. Add a fourth mover if there are two or more flights of stairs without an elevator, or a piano or similar item that needs dedicated hands. A fourth mover rarely costs more overall, because the job finishes sooner.
What size truck do I need for a 2 bedroom apartment?
A 20-foot box truck is the usual fit for a two-bedroom, which packs out at roughly 900 cubic feet. A 16-footer holds about 800 cubic feet of real furniture and is tight for a two-bedroom with a full set of rooms. A 26-footer is comfortable and is what most movers send if it is what they have.
How many cubic feet is a 26 foot truck?
A 26-foot box truck is rated at roughly 1,700 cubic feet, but a crew loading real furniture, with pads, dollies, and the awkward shapes that do not stack, gets a reliable 1,600 out of it. Plan on the lower number and you will not be sending a second trip.
How long does it take to move a house?
For loading and unloading combined, plan on about three hours for a studio with two movers, five to six for a one-bedroom, eight to ten for a three-bedroom with three movers, and a full day or more for four bedrooms and up. Stairs, long carries, and poor packing all add to it. The drive between the two addresses is on top.
More free tools
Which other free tools might help?
Zip puts this crew and truck on the schedule.
Dispatch assigns the movers and the truck to the job, the crew gets it on their phone with the inventory and the address, and the owner sees every truck's day at a glance.
The tools do one job. Zip does the whole move.
Quotes, dispatch, paperwork, and payments in one place, for movers running 1 to 10 trucks. Set it up in under an hour.
20 minutes · No sales pressure