Buying a Moving Company
Why Searchers Look at Moving
Moving is fragmented, brand-light, and full of retiring owners. The federal count puts 9,436 employer establishments in household and office goods moving against 102,745 workers. The shape underneath is the case: 54 percent of them employ fewer than five people, 84 percent fewer than twenty, and only 71 establishments in the whole country employ a hundred or more. Demand recurs with life events rather than with the economy alone, and a mover with its own repeat and referral base buys customers at a different price from one renting them from an aggregator. The operating reality is equally clear: this is a labor-logistics business where crews, claims, and reviews are the product.
What Moving Companies Trade For
The publisher's sold moving and shipping listings put half of transactions between 1.8x and 3.11x SDE across 2021 to 2025, on a 2.38x median, a $350,000 median sale price and revenue at 0.38x to 0.82x. Underneath the multiple, the federal economic census gives the shape a buyer underwrites. There is about $20.1B of receipts across the trade, near $1.97M of revenue per establishment and $186,000 per employee, with W-2 payroll running about 23 percent of revenue before any contract labor at all. Inside the band, the sorting variables are the labor model's stability, the mix of local versus long-distance work, and how much demand arrives from reputation rather than purchased leads.
Crews, Claims, and Reviews
The product is a crew showing up on time and not breaking things, which makes labor the business: recruiting pipeline, pay against the local market, driver qualifications, and whether leads and supervisors stay after close. The summer peak is measurable rather than folklore, since federal payroll counts for the trade run about 15 percent higher in July than in January, so a business bought in the autumn hands you the trough first. Claims are the quality meter. Full value protection is the federal default and released value is the waiver, paying 60 cents a pound per article, so how a mover sells and honors that choice is a margin question and a complaint-volume one at once.
What to Verify in Diligence
Beyond earnings quality:
- Lead sources and their real cost, because purchased leads from aggregators are expensive and competitive while repeat and referral revenue is the moat
- The local-versus-long-distance mix and any interline or van-line relationships with their contract terms
- Fleet age, ownership versus leases, and maintenance records
- Storage revenue and warehouse leases if offered
- Workers-compensation history and classification practices in a heavy-lifting workforce
- Whether the cargo and liability filings are current, since a filing can be cancelled thirty days after the agency receives notice
Financeability Notes
Moving companies finance under SBA 7(a) with the usual service-business underwriting: earnings documentation, owner dependence, and customer-acquisition durability. The fleet is worth less as collateral than it looks. A lender is not required to take a lien on a vehicle worth under $20,000, and used equipment counts at a fraction of book value, so these loans lean on cash flow rather than on steel. Licensing lands in the loan file as well: the lender has to see every required license within ninety days of final disbursement, and if the buyer's structure forces a new USDOT number and new authority, that clock is already running. Model debt service on the off-season, not the summer.
Terms in This Industry
Claims ratio
Damage claims paid against revenue, the number a van line and an insurer both watch.
Valuation coverage
How much the mover is liable for if the goods are damaged, which is not a business appraisal.
Tariff
The published schedule of rates a mover charges under, and the basis for what may be billed.
Van line agency
An agreement to book and haul interstate moves under a national van line's brand and authority.
Non-binding estimate
A quote that does not bind the mover, and the ceiling on what it may collect at the door.
Household goods authority
The federal registration a mover carries, whose transfer is a filing that can be refused.
Claim filing window
The minimum time a customer has to file a damage claim, which no contract may shorten.
Released-value insurance
Insurance an interstate mover may sell only on goods released at 60 cents a pound, and must issue as a policy.
What the Data Says
The sold series blends moving with shipping services, and the blend's read is a $350,000 median sale at a 2.38x median earnings multiple (2.52x on average), the transaction floor under the wide advisory bands this trade attracts.
Source: BizBuySell moving and shipping benchmarks (2021-2025 sold listings)
Marketplace benchmarks show the category's average earnings multiple climbing to about 2.9x in 2025 with revenue multiples near 0.7x, both above pre-2022 levels, as many smaller moving businesses traded with discretionary margins around 26%.
Source: BizBuySell moving and shipping valuation benchmarks (2021-2025 sold listings)
The census records 9,436 used household and office goods moving establishments with 102,745 workers as of 2023, about eleven per establishment, which puts the quality questions in proportion: crews and claims history are the whole asset, because almost no mover owns anything scarcer.
Source: Census County Business Patterns, household and office goods moving (2023)
Enter earnings to apply this industry's cited band.
A sanity check against asking prices, not a valuation.
Where they are, from Census County Business Patterns: California (526), Texas (363) and Florida (273) hold the most buyable ones. Each state guide ranks its own counties, which is the number that decides a search: nobody buys a state, they buy inside a drive.
Holding a live deal in this industry? Underwrite it with this industry preselected and its cited band loaded.
Compare bands across industries in the cited multiple bands by industry.
Who Else Is Buying in This Industry
- Coleman Worldwide Moving · Midland City, Alabama
Calls itself the largest agent for Allied Van Lines, and grows by buying fellow Allied agents, folding their locations into a network it counts in the dozens.
- Colonial Van & Storage · 2026 · A fellow Allied agent with operations in Sacramento, Fresno and Reno, taking Coleman to sixty-four locations.
- 1 more confirmed on the firm's profile
- The Armstrong Company · Memphis, Tennessee
A Memphis moving and storage group that buys long-established van line agents one market at a time, and keeps the acquired name on the building and the crews in place.
- Accent Moving, Storage & Logistics · 2026 · A Tulsa, Oklahoma mover, a Mayflower agent since 1939, bought whole.
- 3 more confirmed on the firm's profile
Buyers is the shelf these come from, ordered by who closed something most recently.
How Big This Market Is
There are about 9,436 businesses in this industry. 4,275 of them (45%) have 5 to 99 employees: the band big enough to have something to sell, small enough to finance. Most of the rest are owner-operators with a job rather than a business to hand over.
Census County Business Patterns (2023). How often they change hands is in Market Depth.
Who the Law Lets Own This
Interstate moves require federal operating authority; many states license intrastate movers separately.
How buyers structure around it: Authority and insurance filings must transfer or be re-established cleanly at close.
Most of these rules are set state by state and change, so confirm the current one with the regulator that issues it and your attorney before it shapes an offer. Every trade with a recorded rule is on Ownership & License Rules.
What It Costs to Replace the Owner
The multiples above are quoted on SDE, which adds the owner's pay back into earnings, so they hold only if you do the owner's job. Hire someone instead and the going rate for the role comes back out. For this trade that is usually the manager who runs a fleet or a facility, paid a median of $107,230 a year nationally. Subtract it from SDE before applying any multiple, because at a 3x multiple that wage also takes about $321,690 off what the business is worth to you.
Transportation, storage, and distribution managers, BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (2025), national, all industries, before payroll taxes and benefits. Every role, and the same arithmetic worked end to end, is in Manager Wages.
The Numbers That Run This Business
- Booked jobs versus crew capacity
- Referral and repeat share of bookings
- Damage-claim rate and cost
- Cost per booked lead by channel
- Review rating trajectory