You rented the truck. You do not want to carry the couch. That’s the whole idea: two movers, three-hour minimum, $165 an hour, and you keep the truck you already paid for.
Labor-only is the fastest-growing part of what we do, and it’s the option most full-service moving companies quietly don’t want to sell you — because it’s the one where you keep the biggest piece of the savings.
Who this is actually for
- You booked a PODS, a U-Box, a 1-800-PACK-RAT, or a Zippy Shell. The container is sitting in the driveway and nobody is going to load it but you.
- You rented a U-Haul, Penske, or Budget truck because the rental was cheap, and then did the math on carrying a washer down a flight of stairs.
- You’re moving across the country and a freight trailer or a container is doing the long haul. You need bodies on this end, or on that end, not a truck.
- You’re not moving out at all — you’re rearranging. New floors going in, a room being repainted, a piano crossing the house, a basement getting emptied into the garage.
- You already moved and the truck is sitting full in front of your new place, and it turns out unloading is the same work as loading.
What it costs
$165 per hour, two movers, three-hour minimum. That’s $495 to start. The clock starts when we arrive and stops when we’re done.
Compare that to a full-service local move at $185/hour with a four-hour minimum ($740 to start). If you’ve already got the truck handled, you’re saving both the truck cost and an hour of minimum.
Need four movers instead of two? We can do that, and on a container load it often costs less overall, because two crews working a tight space finish in a lot less than half the time.
What we do and don’t do on a labor-only job
We do: load, unload, stack and tier a container properly, wrap furniture in blankets and shrink, disassemble and reassemble beds and tables, strap the load so it survives the drive, carry everything up and down whatever stairs are involved, and place items in the right rooms on the unload.
We don’t: drive your rental truck. That’s a real limitation and it’s worth explaining: driving a truck we don’t own and don’t insure creates a liability situation that doesn’t work for either of us. You drive it, or your rental company’s own driver does.
The part nobody tells you: how a container gets packed matters more than how fast
A PODS container or a rental truck is not a closet. It’s a box that’s about to be driven over Maryland roads, and everything inside it is going to want to move.
Loading it right means tiering — building floor-to-ceiling walls of boxes, heaviest on the bottom, tight enough that nothing has room to shift, with furniture blanketed and strapped to the walls. A load that’s packed loose arrives with broken things in it, and that’s true whether you drive it two miles or two thousand.
This is the actual value of hiring movers for a load-only job. Two people who move furniture every day will fit more into the same container, and it will arrive intact.
Getting the most out of your three hours
- Be boxed. Fully. This matters even more on labor-only, because the minimum is shorter and loose items eat it fast.
- Have the container or truck on site and open before the start time. If we’re waiting on a delivery, you’re paying for waiting.
- Know where it’s parked. A container in the driveway is a different job from a container the HOA made you put at the end of the street.
- Tell us what’s going in first. If your container is getting stored and you need the Christmas boxes accessible in December, say so before we build the wall in front of them.
- Have a dolly if you have one. We bring our own equipment, but on a tight three-hour job an extra dolly is free speed.
The honest comparison
| Labor-only | Full service | |
|---|---|---|
| Rate | $165/hr, 3 hr min | $185/hr, 4 hr min |
| Starting at | $495 | $740 |
| Truck | Yours | Ours |
| You drive | Yes | No |
| Best when | You’ve already got a truck or container | You want to hand over the whole thing |
If you haven’t rented anything yet, run the numbers both ways before you book the truck. Once you add the rental, the mileage, the fuel, and the day of your life spent driving it, full service is sometimes the cheaper option. We’ll tell you honestly which one your job is.
Book it
Call 443-622-4869, 8 AM to 6 PM, seven days. Tell us what you rented, where it’s parked, and how many stairs are involved, and we’ll tell you how many hours and how many movers it really takes.
Serving Maryland since 2016, we work out of Abingdon and cover Harford County, Baltimore City and County, Anne Arundel, Howard, Montgomery, Prince George’s, and DC. Find your area here.
