Questions · answered or left open
16 straight answers, and the ones we won’t fake.
Moving questions get handled two ways on this industry’s websites: with a sentence that promises something nobody can deliver, or with nothing at all. Below are the ones a licensed interstate carrier can answer today, each resting on a federal rule, a public registry number, or a figure you can check. Where the honest answer isn’t settled yet, this page says so instead of writing one.
The number
Why nobody can price your move over the phone.
The first fear in every moving complaint file is the same one: the number moved. Here is how the number is actually built, and which parts of it federal law decides rather than we do.
Why can't you just give me an exact price over the phone?
Because no licensed interstate carrier legally can, and the companies that do it anyway are the reason this page exists. Federal rules require a survey of your actual goods before a written estimate, physical or virtual, unless you waive it in writing.
A number from someone who has never seen your apartment is a guess wearing a price tag. The bait-and-switch pattern in this industry runs on exactly that: a low figure on the phone, a signature, then a bigger figure at the curb with your furniture already on the truck.
So this site shows you a range, and the survey turns the range into a price. This is a planning range, not an estimate. Your exact price is put in writing after a video or in-home survey, as federal law requires. That written estimate is either binding or non-binding.
What's the difference between a binding and a non-binding estimate?
A binding estimate fixes the price in advance: the amount on the paperwork is what you pay, whatever the shipment turns out to weigh. A non-binding estimate can move with the real weight and services, and it carries a federal ceiling at delivery, the estimated amount plus 10%, known as the 110% rule. There is a third type, binding not-to-exceed, where the price can come down if the load is lighter than estimated but can never go up.
Those are federal definitions, not sales packages, and they apply to every licensed interstate carrier. Which one applies to your move is decided in writing after your survey. A company that tells you which type you are getting before anyone has looked at your goods has skipped the step that decides it.
How much does it cost to move from Miami to another state?
More than a single number on a web page could honestly tell you, which is why the calculator asks four questions instead. Corridor, home size, month, and access at both ends are what actually move the figure: stairs against an elevator, a long carry to where the truck can legally park, a July date against a late-September one.
The itemized planner uses the supplied source tariff and progressive cubic-foot tiers. Transportation components are shown separately from fuel and additional services that need confirmation. You can review the plan before entering contact details.
What if my inventory turns out bigger than I estimated?
Then the number changes, and the survey is where that is supposed to happen: before you sign, not on loading day.
That is the entire job of the walkthrough. You show the crates in the garage, the second closet nobody counted, the treadmill. It goes on the inventory, it gets priced, and it lands on the written estimate. The same items discovered by a crew at your door are the expensive version of the same conversation, because by then you have no leverage and no second option.
Who you are hiring
Broker or carrier, and how to check it in about a minute.
Are you a broker or an actual carrier?
A carrier. USDOT 4022357, MC 1517490, with household goods as the primary authority on the federal record.
The difference is who shows up. A broker sells your job to a carrier you have not met, sometimes the day before, and its obligation ends when the job is sold. A carrier holds the operating authority, carries the insurance filing, and owns the liability for your shipment. When something goes wrong on a brokered move the two companies point at each other. On a carrier move there is one name on the paperwork, and it is the one on the truck.
How do I verify you're really licensed?
Search USDOT 4022357 on FMCSA's SAFER system. It is free, public, and takes about a minute.
What should come back: the legal entity MAESTRO MOVING & STORAGE LLC, with First Southern Van Lines on the record as its trade name, an active for-hire interstate authority, household goods as the primary cargo carried, and the fleet and driver counts exactly as filed.
Do that for every mover on your list, not only for us. A company that has given you nothing checkable has given you nothing.
Are you licensed in Florida too, or just federally?
Both, and they are genuinely separate licenses. Interstate authority is federal, from FMCSA: USDOT 4022357 and MC 1517490. Moving anyone from one Florida address to another takes a state registration under Chapter 507, issued by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Ours is Fla. Mover Reg. No. IM3947.
Broward County runs a third layer under its own mover ordinance, and ours is Mover Reg. No. MV-100048. All three are held by the same legal entity, and all three are searchable without asking us for anything.
The calendar
What a delivery date on an interstate move actually means.
Do you deliver on an exact date, or a window?
A window. Any interstate mover promising a single guaranteed date is worth asking how.
Long-distance household shipments share trailer space. Your goods travel alongside other people's on a route built around pickup dates, weight, and where the truck is already going, which is also why a cross-country move costs what it does instead of the price of a private truck and a driver for a week. The window absorbs weather, a breakdown, and the shipment ahead of yours running long.
You get a delivery window before we load, and the spread widens with distance. What nobody should accept, from us or anyone, is a window that appears for the first time after the furniture is already on the truck.
Read this one twice
If something breaks, a choice you make before loading day settles what you get.
What happens if something gets damaged?
You file a written claim, and what it pays is decided by a valuation option you choose before the truck is loaded, not by how bad the damage is.
Released Value is the federal default and it costs nothing, which is the only good thing about it. It pays 60 cents per pound per item, on weight and not on worth. A 30-pound lamp you paid $400 for pays out $18. A flat-screen pays out less than the carton it shipped in. As protection for a household it is close to worthless, and we would rather write that here than let you find it out on a claim form.
Full Value Protection provides repair, replacement or settlement under its written terms. The exact charge, deductible and exclusions are confirmed for your shipment. On an interstate move it is the one worth paying for. It has to be elected before loading, so after the damage, the choice you made is the choice you have.
How long does a damage claim take to resolve?
Federal law sets that clock, and there is no faster in-house one published on this site.
You have at least 9 months after delivery to file a written claim, and no carrier may shorten that. The carrier must acknowledge the claim within 30 days, and pay it, deny it, or make a firm offer within 120. Before your bill of lading is signed you are also owed a written summary of a neutral arbitration program for disputes.
Those deadlines bind every licensed interstate carrier, us included. A published company turnaround that nobody in the operation has signed for would be marketing, so there isn't one here.
When the keys are late
The gap between the truck leaving and the new door opening.
Can you store my things if my new place isn't ready?
Yes. It is called storage in transit, and it stays part of the move rather than becoming a separate rental.
The shipment comes off the truck into sealed wood vaults at our Fort Lauderdale-area warehouse, stays on the same inventory manifest as the move, and delivers when your door is ready. One carrier, one paper trail. The alternative, renting a unit and hiring a second crew to fill it, means two companies, two sets of handling, and a much harder conversation if something goes missing.
How long can you store my stuff?
The storage-in-transit window runs 30 to 90 days, which is the industry-standard period during which your move is still legally a move. Past that it converts to a longer-term storage arrangement with its own terms and its own billing.
If you already know the gap runs months rather than weeks, say so on the survey call and the paperwork gets written that way from the start instead of converting mid-stream.
Scope
Three moves people ask about, and the honest answer on each.
Can you help with a military PCS move?
Only in one specific lane, so here is the map. Most PCS moves run through the military's own contracted household-goods program, arranged through your TMO. We are not in that program and not a provider under it, and a moving company implying otherwise is worth a second look.
Where we do fit is a Personally Procured Move. On a PPM you hire your own licensed carrier and the government reimburses you against your entitlement, and we are a carrier you can hire directly for that, with the USDOT and MC numbers the paperwork will ask for.
Whether a PPM beats the arranged move is a real calculation rather than a slogan: control and timing on one side, and reimbursement against actual cost on the other, which can land in your favor or not depending on your weight allowance.
I'm a college student moving out of state. Is this too small a job for you?
Usually yes, and shipping is probably the better answer. A few boxes, a mini-fridge and a bike do not fill enough trailer for an interstate carrier to be the cheap option. Freight or parcel will beat us on that load most of the time, and we would rather say so than sell you the wrong tool.
A carrier starts making sense around a furnished studio or a one-bedroom, or when the dates have to be held rather than hoped for. If you are somewhere between the two, call and describe the load. It is a short conversation and the answer might be no.
What's the best time of year to move to Florida?
October through April if the choice is yours, and mostly for what you avoid rather than what you gain.
Share your preferred date early so we can plan crew availability, building reservations and delivery. The published source tariff has no approved seasonal surcharge; your consultant confirms availability with your route.
The Florida wrinkle is that this state runs against that rhythm. Inbound snowbird and retirement volume builds from October and holds through April, so the corridors into Florida are genuinely busy in the months the rest of the country is calm. That changes how early you should be booking, not what you will pay. We have no evidence of a winter price break on these lanes, so we are not going to invent one.
The truck
What stays behind.
What can't you move?
Hazardous materials, perishables, and live plants. That is federal rules and physics rather than company policy: propane tanks, paint, aerosols, pool chemicals, ammunition, and the fuel still sitting in the mower all stay behind, along with food that will not survive days in a trailer and houseplants, which mostly will not either.
Then the shorter list that is advice rather than a rule. Jewelry, cash, medication, passports and the documents you would be in real trouble without should travel with you, not in the trailer. Firearms carry their own federal and state transport rules, so raise them on the survey call rather than on loading day.
The gaps, on purpose
Five questions this page doesn’t answer.
They get asked as often as the ones above. The reason they are missing is the same reason the answers above are worth reading.
The federal material above describes 49 CFR Parts 370 and 375 as they apply to every licensed interstate household-goods carrier. Those are statements of the law, not service promises. The terms of your specific move are the ones put in writing after your survey. Fuller versions of the licensing record and the consumer-protection rules live on the about and compliance page, the specialty-item capability boundary is on specialty and fragile items, and storage in transit has its own page at storage in transit.
Still holding a question
The ones that aren’t on this page get answered on the phone.
You’re calling the licensed carrier, not a broker’s sales floor. Out of Oakland Park, FL, on the registrations above.
Not ready to talk to anyone? The calculator shows your range with no name, no number and no email, and it is on the range page. The way to reach us, and what happens on that call, is on the contact page.