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If you’ve started researching the cost of moving in Texas, you’ve probably noticed that no two quotes look alike. One company tells you $4,500, another says $9,000, and a third won’t give you a price until someone visits your home. That happens because moving companies use different pricing methods, and each one follows its own set of rules. Unless you’ve moved several times, it’s hard to know which approach applies to your situation.
At Scobey Moving and Storage, we’ve spent decades helping Texas families and businesses make sense of the process. We’ve seen how confusing pricing can be, and we believe the best way to avoid surprises is to understand how estimates are put together before you start requesting quotes. On this page, we’ll explain how moving costs are calculated in Texas, why prices can vary so much from one company to the next, and how to recognize the difference between a fair estimate and one that could lead to unexpected charges.
If your move crosses state lines, for example, from Texas to Colorado or from Georgia to Texas, the pricing isn’t set by the moving company you call. Instead, it’s determined by the van line’s tariff, which in our case is Mayflower United. A tariff is a standardized pricing structure that factors in the weight of your shipment, the distance traveled, labor, and other variables such as nationwide demand and equipment availability.
What surprises many people is how much timing can affect the final cost. The same household moving the same distance could pay significantly more during the busiest weeks of the year than during a slower period. A move booked at the end of June, for example, could cost $10,000 more than an identical move scheduled in August simply because trucks and crews are in much higher demand. Those price changes reflect capacity across the van line’s entire network rather than decisions made by your local moving company.
That’s one of the biggest reasons moving costs in Texas can vary so much. Even shifting your move by a few weeks can have a noticeable impact on your final bill.
Since these rates are established above the local moving company level, no one can simply adjust the tariff. Our job is to help you understand how it applies to your move, explain any potential surcharges before they appear on your bill, and provide a realistic price range based on your circumstances, not just a number pulled out of thin air.
If you’re moving within Texas, whether it’s Killeen to Waco, San Antonio to El Paso, or anywhere else in the state, a different pricing system applies. Intrastate moves follow the Southwest Movers Association tariff. Like interstate moves, it’s tariff-based, but there’s one important difference: Scobey has the flexibility to determine the discount applied within the tariff’s approved range.
That discount isn’t fixed. It changes throughout the year as demand for trucks, crews, and equipment rises and falls. Peak season, pre-peak, post-peak, and slower months all fall at different points within that discount range.
Because of that, two customers moving similar homes over similar distances only a few weeks apart may receive noticeably different quotes. For intrastate moves, however, we have more flexibility to work with your schedule and find pricing that reflects your specific move instead of being locked into a fixed national rate.
Local moves work differently again, and this is often where people are most surprised by how many pricing paths actually exist. Depending on your needs, a local move can be priced in one of three ways: hourly, by weight and mileage, or as a flat rate.
Hourly pricing typically runs between $45 and $145 per hour, depending on your specific market and how much demand is hitting that market at the time you’re booking. A smaller, less busy Texas market is going to sit toward the lower end of that range, while a high-demand metro area during a busy weekend can push toward the top. Weight-mileage pricing, on the other hand, is based on the actual weight of your belongings and the distance they’re being moved, which tends to make more sense for larger households where an hourly rate could balloon unpredictably. Flat-rate pricing gives you a single, set number for the entire job, which is often the preferred option for customers who want certainty above all else and don’t want their final bill tied to how long the crew takes or how much traffic they hit that day.
None of these three approaches is inherently better than the others; it genuinely depends on your home size, your timeline, and how much unpredictability you’re comfortable with. Part of our job is walking you through which structure actually fits your move instead of defaulting you into whichever one is easiest for us to quote quickly.
The type of contract you sign matters more than the number on your initial quote.
Scobey writes two kinds of contracts, and that’s it. A Binding contract locks your price in place; it doesn’t move unless there’s a documented change in weight or mileage. A Not-to-Exceed contract caps what you’ll pay: you’re charged the lower of the quote or the actual final cost, and if the real number comes in under estimate, you get that difference back. Neither one is designed to give the company wiggle room. Both are built so you don’t get surprised.
That’s not how everyone in this industry operates. Some Texas movers, My Sons Moving and Two Men and a Truck among them, have a habit of quoting low to win the job, then re-quoting once your stuff is already on the truck. By then you don’t have much of a choice; your furniture’s sitting on someone else’s truck, and the new number is the price of getting it back. We watched this happen firsthand on an El Paso-to-San Antonio move: we’d already assessed the job and quoted $8,500 based on actual weight and scope. A competitor quoted the same customer $5,000. Once the move was underway and the customer had no leverage left, that competitor’s final bill came to $9,800, almost double what they’d promised, and well above what we’d quoted from day one.
None of this means the lowest quote is a scam. It means a low number attached to a vague, non-binding contract is worth a second look before you sign anything. The quote tells you what you might pay. The contract tells you what you’re actually on the hook for.
A big part of the variation comes down to which pricing system applies to your specific move. Interstate moves are governed by van line tariffs that shift based on national demand and capacity, so the same move can cost thousands more or less depending purely on timing. Intrastate moves fall under a separate tariff where the moving company controls a discount range tied to seasonal demand. Local moves are priced entirely differently, using hourly rates, weight-mileage calculations, or flat fees. Two companies quoting the “same” move might be running it through completely different pricing structures, which is why the numbers rarely line up cleanly.
In most cases, yes, and the difference can be significant rather than marginal. Peak moving season, which tends to cluster around the summer months, drives up demand for trucks, crews, and storage space across the board, and that demand gets reflected directly in tariff-based pricing. A move booked during a slower stretch of the year, sometimes just a matter of weeks away from peak season, can come in substantially lower simply because the underlying capacity pressure isn’t there. If your move date has any flexibility at all, it’s worth asking how much that flexibility could actually save you before you commit to a date.
A binding estimate locks in your price up front, and that price only changes if there’s a legitimate, verifiable change in the weight of your shipment or the mileage involved. A not-to-exceed estimate works a bit differently by setting a price ceiling: you’re guaranteed to pay either that estimated amount or the actual final cost, whichever turns out to be lower, and if the real cost comes in under the estimate, the difference gets credited back to you. Both approaches are designed to protect you from open-ended pricing, but they work in slightly different ways depending on how much certainty you want going in.
It’s worth being cautious, especially if that low number isn’t backed by a clear, binding contract. A common pattern with lowball quotes is that they’re used to win the job initially, and then the price gets revised upward once the move is already underway and your belongings are loaded onto the truck. At that point, you have far less leverage to push back. A dramatically lower quote isn’t automatically a red flag on its own, but it should prompt you to ask directly what type of contract is being offered and whether that number is actually protected from change.
Yes, and this is one of the most overlooked factors in the whole process. A local move within the same city or metro area is typically priced hourly, by weight and mileage, or as a flat rate, and tends to involve fewer variables overall. An intrastate move that crosses cities within Texas falls under a different tariff system with its own seasonal discount structure. An interstate move that crosses state lines is governed by van line tariffs that respond to national demand rather than local conditions. Knowing which category your move falls into is one of the first steps toward understanding what a realistic quote should actually look like.
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