The most common move in New Jersey, and the one most often quoted badly. A studio or one-bedroom is a half day for the right crew and a whole day for the wrong one.
For most studios and one-bedrooms inside New Jersey it is a truck and two men, sometimes a truck and three if there are stairs at both ends or the walk to the truck is long. It is usually finished well inside the working day.
The furniture is rarely the problem. What stretches a small move is everything that is not furniture yet — the closet, the kitchen cupboards, the things in the bottom of the wardrobe. A studio that is fully boxed the night before is a different job from a studio that is not.
In roughly the order they matter: the floor you are on and whether there is a lift; how far the truck can park from the door; whether your building requires the elevator to be booked and a certificate of insurance filed; how much of the packing you are doing yourself; and the date. The end of the month and the first weekend of it fill first, everywhere, every month, because that is when leases turn over.
Distance matters less than people expect on a local move. Cranford to Westfield and Cranford to Montclair are much closer in price than they feel.
On local moves in New Jersey, these are part of the job and not billed separately:
By the hour. This is how most local moves are priced. You pay for the hours the job actually takes: if it runs long you pay more, and if it goes quickly you pay less. Our written estimate tells you the crew we would send and the hours we expect the job to take, so you know what you are planning around.
At a flat rate. If you would rather not think about the clock at all, ask us to lock in the price. On local moves in New Jersey we can quote a flat rate for the job as scoped, agreed in writing before move day. A flat rate is fixed in both directions: it does not go up if the day runs long, and it does not come down if we finish early. We carry the risk on the hours, and that certainty is what you are paying for.
One or the other, not both. Tell us which you would prefer when you ask for your estimate and we will price it that way.
You should not have to book an appointment for someone to look at a one-bedroom apartment before anyone will tell you a number. Give us the size, the floor and access at each end, and both addresses, and we will put an estimate in writing for you the same day.
If something about the job means we genuinely need to see it — a lot of heavy or awkward pieces, a difficult building, a long carry we cannot judge from the address — we will tell you that rather than guess and correct it later.
We move studios and one-bedrooms across Union, Essex, Middlesex, Morris, Somerset, Hudson and Bergen counties, and between New Jersey and New York City. Common ones: Hoboken, Jersey City, Newark, Elizabeth, Rahway, Montclair, Morristown and New Jersey to New York City.
If your building needs paperwork before move day, read what a certificate of insurance is and who needs one. Related: small moves and same-building moves.