New Jersey to Florida, one company end to end
Florida is the most common destination for New Jersey households leaving the state. Retirees closing on a house in Union, Essex, Middlesex or Morris County and buying something smaller near the water, families following a job to Tampa or Jacksonville, and part-year owners setting up a second home all make the same run down I-95. It is a long trip with a lot of moving parts, and most of what goes wrong on it goes wrong before the truck ever leaves New Jersey.
University Van Lines is a carrier, not a broker. The crew that packs and loads in New Jersey works for us, the truck is ours, and the office that answers the phone in New Jersey is the same office that coordinates delivery in Florida. If you have read the warnings about long-distance moving brokers, that is the single question worth asking any mover you are considering.
Where we deliver in Florida
East coast: Jupiter, Palm Beach Gardens, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Delray Beach and Boynton Beach; Fort Lauderdale and Broward County; Miami-Dade; Vero Beach, Stuart and Port St. Lucie; Jacksonville, Ponte Vedra and St. Augustine; Daytona Beach and New Smyrna.
Gulf coast: Naples, Bonita Springs and Marco Island; Fort Myers, Cape Coral and Punta Gorda; Sarasota, Bradenton, Lakewood Ranch and Venice; Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater.
Central Florida: Orlando and the surrounding communities, The Villages, Ocala and Gainesville.
If your town is not on the list it is almost certainly still on the route. Tell us where you are headed and we will confirm it in the estimate.
How a New Jersey to Florida move works
Survey. Interstate moves are priced from a written inventory, not by the hour. We survey by video call or in person, whichever suits you, and count what is actually going rather than guessing from a room count.
Written estimate. You get a written estimate with the scope, the services included and a delivery window before anything is scheduled. Nothing changes on move day unless you add to the shipment.
Packing and loading. Full packing, kitchen and fragile-only packing, or you pack and we load. Our crew wraps furniture, protects floors and doorways, and inventories every item onto the truck.
Transit and delivery. Your shipment travels in our truck and is delivered inside the window on your estimate. The crew places furniture where you want it, reassembles what we took apart, and takes the packing material away if you asked us to.
The Florida building rules that catch people out
More Florida deliveries go into a condominium or a managed community than into a single-family house, and those buildings have rules a New Jersey move does not prepare you for. Four cause most of the trouble:
- A certificate of insurance naming the association. Many buildings will not let a truck onto the property without one, and they often want it well ahead of the day with exact wording. Send us the requirements as soon as you have them and we will issue it.
- A reserved elevator and a fixed move-in window. Plenty of buildings allow move-ins only on weekdays, inside set hours, in a booked slot. That window drives our load date in New Jersey, not the other way round.
- Truck size and access. Low garage clearances, narrow service drives and gate restrictions are common. If a full-size truck cannot reach the door the shipment has to be shuttled in a smaller one, and that is far cheaper to plan for than to discover on delivery day.
- Seasonal restrictions. Some associations limit or block move-ins during their busiest months. Ask early, because the answer can move your whole schedule.
Put those four questions to your association or property manager and send us the answers. Everything we can build into the plan in advance comes out of the delivery day.
Retiring or downsizing to Florida
A large share of the moves we run on this route are a couple leaving a four-bedroom colonial for a two-bedroom villa or a single-story home in a 55+ community. Downsizing changes the job. The real inventory is smaller than the house suggests, decisions about what stays behind are still being made the week of the move, and there is often a gap between the New Jersey closing and the Florida move-in.
We are used to all of it. Our senior moving crews are patient with a house that is still being sorted, we can pack part of a household and leave the rest for family or donation, and if the dates do not line up we can hold the shipment in our own New Jersey warehouse until the new home is ready.
Timing the trip
Southbound demand out of New Jersey builds through the fall and stays heavy into the new year. If you already have a closing date or a lease start, the most useful thing you can do is get the survey done early and set the load date around it. If you are still deciding, a survey costs nothing and gives you a written number to plan around.
Is the estimate binding?
Your written estimate states exactly what it covers. As long as the inventory and the services stay the same, the price does not change. If you add items or services, we tell you what changes before we load.
Do you use your own trucks the whole way?
Yes. University Van Lines performs interstate moves with company crews and company trucks. We do not hand your shipment to a partner carrier.
My Florida building needs a certificate of insurance. Can you provide one?
Yes. Send us the association or management company requirements, including any specific wording and the parties they want named, and we will issue the certificate before move day.
What if my Florida home is not ready?
We can hold your shipment in our own New Jersey warehouse and deliver when you are ready. Ask about it during the survey and we will include it in the written estimate.