Can a mover quote an interstate move online? What the federal rule says

Search how to price a moving job and the pages that come back all have the same shape: hourly for local work, flat rate for predictable jobs, weight and mileage for long hauls, charge extra for pianos. That is all true. What none of them do is quote the rule that decides what an interstate mover is allowed to hand a customer and call an estimate — and if you want a price on your website, that rule matters more than the pricing model does.

What we found in the guides

We read the five pages ranking for that search in late September 2026, skipping directories and consumer cost calculators. All five are written for moving company owners. Counted:

• 0 of 5 cite the regulation by section.
• 1 of 5 tells movers that an in-person evaluation is required when the customer lives within 50 miles — the rule as it stood before June 2022.
• 2 of 5 mention the 110 percent rule. Neither says what happens to the rest of the bill.

None of that makes them bad guides to pricing. It means the part that changed is the part nobody updated.

The rule itself

Interstate household moves for individual customers are governed by 49 CFR Part 375. It does not cover a move that starts and ends in the same state — §375.101 limits it to interstate commerce, and local moves answer to your state instead.

For interstate work, §375.401(a) is short and unambiguous: you must conduct a physical survey of the goods and give the customer a written estimate based on it. The customer can waive the survey, but only in writing, signed before loading, with the waiver kept alongside the bill of lading.

The word that changed is physical. Since the 2022 amendment, §375.103 defines a physical survey as one "conducted on-site or virtually" — by live video, or by pre-recorded video that lets you clearly identify what is being moved.

What 2022 actually changed

The final rule published on 26 April 2022, effective 27 June, did two things at once, and the guides tend to report only one of them.

	Before June 2022	Since
When a survey is required	Goods within 50 miles of your agent	Every interstate move, unless waived in writing
What counts as a survey	In person	In person, live video, or recorded video

So the rule got stricter about whether a survey happens — the 50-mile exemption is gone — and looser about how. For almost every mover the second half is the one that matters. In the same notice, FMCSA put the agent within 50 miles of the customer on 95 percent of interstate moves, projected 558,851 interstate household moves by for-hire carriers for 2023 — its table runs from about 558,000 to 560,000 a year across the decade — and said that a survey trip within that radius costs about an hour of round-trip driving. Its central assumption was that half of those surveys would go virtual.

Put plainly: the drive to look at the furniture was never the requirement. Seeing the furniture was.

What that means for a price on your website

A number a customer gets from a calculator on your site, before anyone has seen their goods, is not the written estimate §375.401 requires on an interstate move. It cannot be — no survey has happened, and the estimate has to be signed by both of you (§375.401(h)).

That does not mean you should publish nothing. It means the online number has a different job: telling a customer which ballpark they are in, fast, so the ones who were never going to afford it do not book a survey, and the ones who can book one tonight. The survey — on video, now — is still where the estimate comes from. The website just decides who gets that far.

The rule also tells you where the honest line sits:

• You may not charge for a non-binding estimate. You may charge for a binding one (§375.401(b)). If your survey is the product, a binding estimate is the only version you can bill for.
• Accessorials have to be settled before the bill of lading. Stairs, elevators, long carries — §375.401(f) says that if you did not ask about them first, you deliver and bill for them after 30 days. Asking up front is not good manners; it is the only way to be paid on the day.
• A low estimate is expensive. §375.401(d) warns that an inaccurately low non-binding estimate limits what you collect at delivery, which is the next point.

The 110 percent rule, all of it

Where the guides mention it, the 110 percent rule is usually summarised as the most you can bill on a non-binding estimate. The regulation says something narrower. Under §375.407, if the customer pays up to 110 percent of the non-binding estimate at delivery, you must hand over their goods. §375.703 sets that as the most you can demand at delivery, plus services added after the bill of lading, plus impracticable-operation charges capped at 15 percent of everything else.

The rest is not forfeited. The customer booklet in Part 375's own appendix says it plainly: paying 110 percent "does not excuse you from paying all the charges," and the mover bills the remainder after 30 days from delivery.

So an estimate that comes in 25 percent low does not cost you 15 percent of the job. It costs you a month's wait on that 15 percent, a collections conversation with a customer who now distrusts you, and whatever review they write while they wait. The accuracy of the survey is where the money is, which is precisely why the rule insists on one.

What to do with this

• Offer the video survey by default. The regulation has allowed it for four years. An hour of driving per estimate, on FMCSA's own figure, is an hour a crew lead is not doing anything that pays.
• Publish ranges for the local work you can price. Crew-hours and truck-hours are nameable. Check your state's rules first; Part 375 does not govern them.
• Use the website to qualify, not to estimate, on interstate moves. A range and a survey booking in the same place is honest and it is fast. A number that pretends to be the estimate is neither.

Where these figures come from

Regulatory text is quoted from 49 CFR Part 375 as in force on 1 September 2026, read from the eCFR on 28 September 2026. The 2022 changes, the 95 percent, the 2023 moves projection and the one-hour figure, and the 50 percent virtual-survey assumption (a primary estimate inside a 25–75 percent range) are from the final rule at 87 FR 24431 (26 April 2022), read the same day. The count of ranking guides is our own, from the five pages returned for "how to price a moving job" on 28 September 2026; as always, the ones that fall short are counted, not named. This is a reading of the regulation, not legal advice — if your operating authority depends on it, ask someone who is paid to be right.