Is professional packing worth it for a long-distance move?

More often than for a local one. The published add-on runs $320 for a studio to $1,600 for a 4+ bedroom home. Against that, a long haul involves more handling than a local move and a 2–12-day delivery window, and the carrier's liability for anything you packed yourself is limited. The usual sensible answer is partial: have fragile and high-value items professionally packed and crated, do the rest yourself.

What does PBO mean on my inventory?

Packed by owner. It marks cartons the crew did not pack and could not inspect, and it limits the carrier's liability for what is inside them, because damage cannot be attributed to handling with any confidence. Anything you pack yourself will be marked this way. Photograph the contents of valuable cartons before you seal them, and consider having the genuinely fragile ones packed by the crew instead.

How much does packing add to the crew's time?

The packing charge is separate from the load and unload hours in the table above, which cover handling only — 3 movers for 5.5 hours on a 2-bedroom. Full packing is usually a separate visit the day before load day, which is worth knowing when you plan the last week: you lose access to packed rooms earlier than you would expect.

Public directory · Packing

Packing Services directory listings

Packing is where interstate moves are won or lost, the carrier's liability for a box it didn't pack is limited, and a cross-country trailer ride is unforgiving. Members offering packing publish it here with their service footprint, whether it's full-pack service ahead of a long haul or fragile-only crating.

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Full-pack service by home size

Full packing service from the published rate model, alongside the shipped weight and the crew hours each home size takes to load and unload. Packing is an add-on to the move, not a substitute for it. Estimates, not quotes.
Home size	Full pack	Shipped weight and crew
Studio	$320	about 1,800 lb · 2 movers × 3 hr to load and unload
1 bedroom	$450	about 2,900 lb · 2 movers × 4 hr to load and unload
2 bedrooms	$720	about 5,500 lb · 3 movers × 5.5 hr to load and unload
3 bedrooms	$1,100	about 9,000 lb · 3 movers × 7.5 hr to load and unload
4+ bedrooms	$1,600	about 14,500 lb · 4 movers × 9.5 hr to load and unload

Packing matters more on an interstate move than on a local one, and the reason is handling count rather than distance. A local move is loaded once and unloaded once. A long haul is loaded, moved within the trailer, frequently transferred during consolidation, and unloaded — across a delivery window that runs 2–12 days on the corridors tracked here. Packing that would survive a cross-town move does not necessarily survive that.

The liability position is the part most people find out too late. Under federal rules a carrier's responsibility for a carton it did not pack is limited, because it cannot verify what went in or how. Boxes you pack yourself are marked PBO — packed by owner — on the inventory, and a damage claim against a PBO carton is a materially weaker claim than one against a carton the crew packed. That is not a reason to have everything packed for you; it is a reason to decide deliberately which cartons you want on which side of that line.

The figures above are the full-pack add-on from the same rate model that prices every corridor on this site, scaled by home size the same way the transport component is. On a 2-bedroom household that is $720 against a crew-handling charge of $1,023 and transport mileage on top; on a 4+ bedroom it is $1,600 against $2,356. Partial packing — fragile-only or kitchen-only crating — sits between the two and is worth asking for by name.

Packing questions

More often than for a local one. The published add-on runs $320 for a studio to $1,600 for a 4+ bedroom home. Against that, a long haul involves more handling than a local move and a 2–12-day delivery window, and the carrier's liability for anything you packed yourself is limited. The usual sensible answer is partial: have fragile and high-value items professionally packed and crated, do the rest yourself.
Packed by owner. It marks cartons the crew did not pack and could not inspect, and it limits the carrier's liability for what is inside them, because damage cannot be attributed to handling with any confidence. Anything you pack yourself will be marked this way. Photograph the contents of valuable cartons before you seal them, and consider having the genuinely fragile ones packed by the crew instead.

Keep reading: Packing for a long-distance move · 8-week interstate moving checklist · Your rights on an interstate move.