Boston Movers
Local Movers and Packers for Apartments, Homes, and Offices

Two movers and a truck run roughly $100 to $200 an hour in Boston, three movers $150 to $240, and four movers $200 to $280. There is a three-hour minimum and time past it is billed in 15-minute increments. The rate covers the crew, the truck, gas, tolls, loading equipment, furniture taken apart and reassembled, and basic coverage in transit. Packing materials, a $50 equipment charge and hoisting at $40 per item per flight are billed on top. Two things swing a Boston total more than the inventory does: whether a street permit puts the truck at your door instead of around the corner, and whether the building hands you an elevator or a staircase. Our cost of movers in Boston guide breaks the figures down further.

Strictly speaking, no. The city says plainly that a moving truck permit is not required, only that it is what guarantees you a legal parking spot on the day. In practice the distinction matters less than it reads: without one the truck stops wherever it legally can, and on most Boston blocks that means a long carry billed by the hour, or a ticket. A standard permit from the Office of the Parking Clerk reserves two spaces for one day, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., and costs $69, or $109 where those spaces are metered. Apply online between 15 days and eight weeks ahead, or in person at City Hall at least three days ahead; the physical permit arrives by post in 7 to 10 business days, and the signs go up 48 hours before the move on a residential street. We handle all of it. What a permit will not do is override a snow emergency, a construction zone, an accessible space or a no-stopping zone, and during street cleaning somebody has to stay with the vehicle.

Nobody should take that answer from the company being asked, so here is a test you can run instead. Ask three questions a mover who really works Boston can answer immediately and an out-of-town operator cannot: who pulls the street permit for your address and when do the signs go up, can you produce a certificate of insurance naming my building and its management company, and what exactly does the hourly rate include. Then verify the credentials rather than the adjectives, since Massachusetts licenses intrastate household movers and the federal government registers interstate ones; ours are MA DPU #31854, USDOT #3212621 and MC #1018431. Finally, read the reviews for detail rather than for the star rating, because one review that names a stairwell, a permit or a specific street tells you more than fifty that say "great job".

Start with the Boston-specific one, because it catches out-of-town operators fast: ask how the moving truck permit works, who files it and when the signs go up. A company that works the city can answer in a sentence, including the detail that the permit is optional but worth having. One that cannot is going to park wherever it can and bill you for the walk. After that, the national warning signs apply here as anywhere. An estimate produced without a single question about stairs, elevators or access is a guess in a nicer font. A large up-front deposit is a bad sign, as is any reluctance to name the crew size, the hourly rate and the coverage in writing before the date. Check that the DPU and USDOT numbers exist and belong to the company on the invoice, and treat a business address that turns out to be a mailbox as the answer to your question.

Move midweek and mid-month, and stay away from the end of August. Demand across the city stacks onto weekends, the first and last days of the month, and the stretch around September 1 when most leases turn over, which is both the priciest week and the hardest to book. A Tuesday in October costs less than a Saturday in August for the same inventory. Beyond timing, the lever is how much you pack yourself: packing is billed separately, so handing us only the kitchen, the artwork and the fragile items keeps the labor hours down while still protecting what matters. Getting the street permit sorted also saves money rather than costing it, because a long carry runs the clock on every single trip.

Yes. In this city storage is less a convenience than a scheduling tool, because a September 1 lease start and an August 31 lease end leave you nowhere to put a household for a day, and a closing that slips by a week leaves you nowhere to put one for a week. Moving and storage runs as a single booking: we load, the goods sit in secure climate-controlled storage, and the same crew delivers them when your date comes good. Billing is monthly and covers the handling and the transport at both ends, so nothing extra lands on the invoice at delivery. An approximate window is enough to book on, since stretching a booking is easy and rescuing a move from two separate vendors mid-gap is not.

Yes. Send us your building requirements when you book and we will have the certificate issued and filed before the date, naming whichever entities the management office specifies. Larger and professionally managed buildings are the ones that usually ask, so if you are moving into one it is worth calling the management office early and getting three things in writing: whether a certificate is needed, exactly which companies have to be named on it, and whether the service elevator or loading dock has to be reserved to a window. Property managers are routinely slower to answer that than tenants expect, and a certificate naming the wrong entity is as useless as none at all, so ask the same week you book rather than the week of the move.

Yes, but book it early. Greater Boston turns over most of its leases on the same date, so September 1 and the few days either side are the busiest moving days of the year in the city: crews are committed weeks ahead, traffic is at its worst, and street parking is fought over. If your date is fixed, the things that matter are getting the permit application in early and being realistic about the arrival window, since every crew in the city is working back to back. If your date has any flexibility at all, moving a week either side of the first is easier, cheaper and far less stressful.