What you’ll typically pay
Our rate is $165 an hour for 2 movers and a truck, with a 3-hour minimum. That covers the crew, the truck, moving blankets, shrink wrap, dollies, and taking apart and rebuilding basic furniture like bed frames and tables. Most people book us by the hour. For larger or very predictable jobs we also give an agreed price that stays the same once it is written down.
- Studio walk-up: $495–$750
- 1-bedroom: $650–$1,100
- 2-bedroom: $1,100–$1,900
- 3-bedroom: $1,800–$3,000
These ranges come from our own jobs across the five boroughs, Jersey City, Hoboken and Yonkers, fully done: loaded, driven, unloaded and beds rebuilt. The low end of each range is a packed apartment with an elevator or a low floor at both ends. The high end is a top-floor walk-up, a long carry from the curb or a lot of packing left for moving day. A small, ready-to-go studio on a low floor can be quoted as an agreed price from about $495.
The factors that drive your price
In New York, distance is rarely the big number. A 2-bedroom going 3 miles from Park Slope to Crown Heights can take longer than one going 10 miles to Hoboken, because most of the clock is spent on stairs, hallways and elevators, not on the road.
Stairs and elevators
Every flight of a walk-up adds time at both ends. As a rough guide, a 2-bedroom on the 4th floor of a walk-up takes 1 to 2 hours longer than the same apartment with a working elevator. A shared passenger elevator you have to wait for can be almost as slow as the stairs, which is why we book the service elevator whenever a building has one.
Packing and readiness
If your boxes are packed and taped when the crew arrives, you’re paying for moving. If they aren’t, you’re paying for packing at the same hourly rate, in a rush. Our packing service usually takes 2 to 3 hours for a 1-bedroom, plus materials, and it costs less booked ahead than finished in a hurry on the day.
Building rules
Move windows (often weekdays only, 9am to 5pm), elevator bookings and certificates of insurance can all shape the day. A building that only lets movers in from 10am to 4pm can push a long job into two visits. We ask about all of this before we quote, not after.
Tolls and the Manhattan congestion toll
Tolled bridges and tunnels, and Manhattan’s congestion pricing toll for vehicles entering at or below 60th Street, go on your quote as separate lines at cost. Trucks pay more than cars for both, so they are worth knowing about, but they are usually a small part of the total.
Get an exact written quote, usually back within minutes.
Red flags in low quotes
A quote far below everyone else’s usually gets made up later in the day. Here’s what we’d look out for:
- A price given over the phone with no questions about stairs, elevators or how much you own
- A large cash deposit demanded weeks before the move
- No written quote, or one that doesn’t say whether it’s hourly or an agreed price
- Fees that only show up on the day: stair charges, long-carry charges, fuel charges
- No NYSDOT or USDOT number, and no certificate of insurance when your building asks for one
What a quote should include
- Hourly or agreed price, and the exact rate
- How many movers, and what size truck
- When the clock starts and when it stops
- What’s included: blankets, wrapping, taking furniture apart and putting it back together
- What costs extra: packing materials, tolls, heavy items like a piano
- Insurance: ours is $100,000 cargo cover per truck and $2 million in liability
The honest answer to “can you match this?”
Sometimes, yes. If another quote is for the same crew size, the same hours and the same insurance, send it over and we’ll look at it honestly. If it’s 2 movers when the job needs 3, or it assumes 4 hours for a 4th-floor 2-bedroom, we’ll explain why we don’t think it will hold, and you can decide.
And if your move is small enough that a full crew is overkill, we’ll say so: a few pieces of furniture or a dorm room is often cheaper as a man-with-a-van job. For local ranges, see our Brooklyn movers page, and for how stairs change the hours, read our guide to walk-up moves. Text us any time; we answer in under a minute.
