The average speed is the number that decides everything
People plan a long move off the mileage and the speed limit, and then arrive a day late. The gap is not traffic. It is that a door to door average includes fuel stops, food, the twenty minutes finding somewhere a 26 foot box can turn around, and the fact that a loaded truck climbs grades slowly. Sixty-two miles an hour on the flat with a governor and a headwind becomes something in the forties across a full day.
The default here is 48 mph. On 1,450 miles that is 30.2 hours of driving, four days at eight hours a day, and three nights between them. Raise it to 55 and the same trip becomes 26.4 hours — still four days, because days come in whole units, and that is worth noticing. Between roughly 46 and 60 mph the day count does not move at all on this distance. At 45 it becomes five days and a fourth night on the road appears.
Days come in units and so does the bill
| Line | Default | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Truck rental | $903.00 | 7 rental days at $129 |
| Mileage charge | $1,435.50 | 1,450 miles at $0.99 |
| Fuel | $686.94 | 181.3 gal at $3.79 |
| Lodging | $480.00 | 4 nights at $120 |
| Food | $350.00 | 2 people, 5 days, $35 each |
| Tolls and incidentals | $60.00 | entered |
| Total | $3,915.44 | $2.70 a mile |
The seven rental days are one loading day, four driving days, one unloading day and one buffer. Notice that the mileage charge is the largest single line and it does not appear in the headline rate anyone quotes. A daily rate is what gets advertised; on a long one-way move the per-mile charge is usually the bigger number, and on this example it is close to a third of the whole trip.
Fill-ups, and why the range is short
A 40 gallon tank at 8 mpg is 320 miles of theoretical range, and nobody drives a tank to empty. At 80 percent that is 256 miles between stops, so 1,450 miles takes six tanks — five of them bought on the road. Each stop is fifteen to twenty-five minutes by the time a high filler, a queue and a receipt are done with, which is most of an hour across the trip and part of why the door to door average sits so far below the cruising speed.
What this does not include
Nothing about the load itself, nothing about the labour at either end, and nothing about equipment. The moving crew hours calculator works out the loading and unloading days this page asks you to type, the truck size calculator settles which truck it is, and the load balance calculator handles how it sits once it is in there. Where the whole thing is being weighed against hiring movers, the moving cost estimate puts all three routes in the same units, and the moving day planner collects the day-of charges that arrive after the quote is signed.
Questions people ask
How many days does it take to drive a moving truck across the country?
Take the mileage, divide by an honest door to door average rather than the speed limit, and divide again by the hours you will actually drive. Two thousand eight hundred miles at 48 mph is 58.3 hours, which is nine days at seven hours a day or six at ten. The two inputs that move the answer are the average speed and the daily hours, and both of them are usually set too high the first time somebody does this sum.
What mpg does a rental moving truck get?
Whatever the rental company publishes, loaded and in hills it will be less, and this page takes the figure from you rather than assuming one. A large box truck in single figures per gallon is ordinary. The important consequence is not the cost, it is the range: a tank that sounds enormous turns into two hundred and something miles between stops, which changes the shape of the day.
Is the daily rate or the mileage charge the bigger cost?
On a long one-way move the mileage almost always wins, and it is the line that is missing from the advertised price. On the default figures here the rental days come to $903.00 and the mileage to $1,435.50 on the same trip. Whether your quote includes an allowance and what the rate is beyond it is on your own paperwork, which is why both are inputs.
How many nights will I be in a hotel?
One fewer than the number of driving days, because you arrive on the last one, plus whatever nights fall around the move itself when the old place is empty and the new one is not ready. The calculator counts the first automatically and asks you for the second. Four driving days is three nights on the road, and it is the fourth night, the awkward one at the ends, that people forget to budget.
Why does the buffer day cost money if nothing goes wrong?
Because rental is charged in whole days and you have already booked it. A buffer day that goes unused is the cheapest insurance on the trip: the alternative is a late return, which is priced very differently, or an arrival that misses a handover. Set it to zero if your dates have slack in them elsewhere, but be honest about whether they do.