A practical guide for removal company owners

Ask ten removal company owners how they price a job and you'll get ten different answers. Some go by bedrooms. Some use a square footage rule of thumb. Some just know from experience. A few use a volume calculator. Almost none price crew time explicitly as a function of volume.

This guide explains the model that actually reflects what a removal job costs — and why it produces more accurate quotes than the alternatives.

The problem with pricing by bedrooms

Bedroom count is a starting point, not a price. A 3-bedroom house can be 25 m³ or 55 m³ depending on whether the occupants are minimalists or have lived there for twenty years. Two identical-looking 3-bed semis on the same street can be a half-day job and a full-day job respectively.

Pricing by bedroom creates systematic errors in both directions. Light-load 3-bed jobs get overpriced and you lose them to competitors. Heavy-load jobs get underpriced and you absorb the difference in overtime or crew stress.

The fix is to price by volume, not rooms.

The five components of a removal price

Every removal job — from a 1-bed flat to a 5-bedroom house — can be broken into five components. Price them in order.

Component 1: Labour (crew × time × rate)

Labour is the largest component of most removal prices — typically 60-75% of the total.

Labour cost = crew size × total job hours × hourly rate

Total job hours = load time + transit time + unload time

Each of these needs its own estimate:

Load time comes from volume. More cubic metres = more time to carry everything from the property to the van. The relationship isn't perfectly linear (a 40 m³ job doesn't take exactly twice as long as a 20 m³ job because some overhead is fixed), but it's close enough for most jobs. The right approach is a volume-to-load-hours lookup table calibrated from your own completed jobs.

A starting point for UK removals:

Volume	Load time
10 m³	1.5 hours
20 m³	2.5 hours
30 m³	3.5 hours
40 m³	5 hours
60 m³	7 hours

These should be calibrated to your actual job data. If your crew consistently loads faster or slower than these figures, adjust them. The point is to have a number, not to guess.

Transit time is distance divided by average speed, with a floor. A 10-mile move doesn't take 10/30 = 20 minutes. It takes 30-40 minutes because of van positioning, slow urban roads, and the time to get the vehicle into and out of both properties. Most movers use 25-35 mph as their effective transit speed and set a minimum of 30-45 minutes regardless of distance.

Unload time is typically equal to load time. It can be faster (no disassembly) or slower (if the destination has worse access than the origin), but the symmetric assumption is a good default.

Crew size follows from volume. More volume means more crew to keep the job within a single day. Most movers have thresholds:

Up to ~25 m³: 2-person crew
25–45 m³: 3-person crew
45–60 m³: 4-person crew

These thresholds matter. A job right on the boundary between 2-person and 3-person crew is your riskiest quote — it's worth flagging and reviewing manually rather than letting the formula decide.

Hourly rate is your crew cost per hour, including vehicle costs and overhead. Most UK removal companies are in the range of £55-95/hour for a full crew, depending on company size, location, and whether the rate includes fuel and overhead or just labour.

Component 2: Mileage

Mileage covers fuel and vehicle wear beyond what's included in the hourly rate. The industry convention is a free distance allowance — typically 10-20 miles each way — with a per-mile charge above it.

That convention is worth questioning, and it's the one place this guide departs from standard practice. A vehicle incurs running cost from the first mile. "The first 15 miles are free" isn't a fact about the job; it's a quoter's shorthand for "short-run fuel is already buried in my hourly rate" — and once it's buried, nobody can see whether it's covered or not.

There's a simpler test. If your crew asked you why the first 15 miles cost nothing, could you answer with a fact about the van? If the honest answer is "that's just how we've always quoted it", it isn't a rate. It's a guess wearing a rate's clothes, and it's the kind of number that quietly absorbs margin on short jobs and overcharges on long ones.

So: every mile is charged, from mile zero.

Mileage cost = actual distance × rate per mile

Use actual postcode-to-postcode distance, not a rough estimate. A 10-mile error in distance at £0.75/mile is only £7.50 — but the transit time error it creates (underestimating travel time) typically costs more.

Component 3: Adjustments

Adjustments are complications that add crew time beyond the base load/transit/unload estimate. Each one needs its own rate — not a round number, but a figure that reflects actual crew time at your rates.

The main ones:

Stairs (no lift): each flight of stairs adds significant time and physical difficulty. A 4th-floor flat with no lift on both ends is fundamentally different from a ground-floor move. Rate should be per flight, and should reflect the crew time for heavy items going up/down.

Long carry: when the van can't park close to the property (often in city centres or narrow streets), the crew is walking further per item. Adds substantially to load and unload time. Rate per property.

Narrow access: corridors or doorways that prevent two people passing force single-file working throughout the property. Adds 20-40% to load and unload time. Rate per property.

Parking difficulty: restricted bays, loading limits, permit zones all add time and stress. A worst-case parking situation (Central London, loading bay with a 30-minute limit) can add an hour to a job.

Disassembly: beds, flatpack wardrobes, large desks. Each piece adds 20-30 minutes. A 3-bed house with three beds and two wardrobes is 25-30 minutes of disassembly per piece × 5 pieces = 2-2.5 hours.

Special handling: pianos, pool tables, safes, hot tubs. These need specialist equipment and additional crew time. Each one should be individually quoted.

Additional stops: picking up from storage before delivery, or dropping at storage before the final destination. Each stop adds transit time plus a restart on loading/unloading.

Component 4: Modifiers

Modifiers adjust the total price up or down based on factors that aren't strictly time-based.

Full pack service: the crew packs all items (not just loads the pre-packed boxes). Adds significant time — typically 30-40 minutes per room — and changes what the crew is responsible for.

Off-peak discount: mid-week, non-end-of-month jobs are easier to staff and plan. A small discount is reasonable and can win jobs that would otherwise go to a cheaper competitor.

Peak premium: Friday moves, month-end moves, August — your busiest times when crew are under pressure. A modest premium is appropriate.

Fuel cost escalation: if your fuel costs have increased significantly since you last reviewed rates, a temporary fuel surcharge keeps you from absorbing it through your margin.

Component 5: Guardrails

Even a well-designed pricing model can produce numbers that don't pass sense-check. Two guardrails:

Minimum charge: no job goes out below a floor that covers your fixed costs for sending a crew. Typically £150-250 depending on company size.

Complexity flag: when multiple adjustment categories co-occur on the same job (stairs + disassembly + parking difficulty + long carry all on one move), the components price each independently but the real job is harder than the sum of parts. Flag these for manual review — the model may be understating the complexity.

Putting it together: a worked example

3-bed house, Bristol BS3 to Bath BA1 (12 miles). No lift, 1 flight of stairs at origin. Standard parking at destination.

Volume estimate: 38 m³ (standard 3-bed)
Crew: 3-person (25-45 m³ threshold)
Hourly rate: £85/hr

Load hours: 4 hours (from table, interpolated for 38 m³)
Transit: 30 min (12 miles at 30 mph, floor applies)
Unload: 4 hours
Total hours: 8.5 hours
Labour: 3 × 8.5 × £85 = £2,167.50

Mileage: 12 miles × £0.75, charged from mile zero
Mileage: £9.00

Stairs (1 flight): £25
Adjustments: £25

Total: £2,201.50

That's higher than you might quote from instinct for a Bristol→Bath 3-bed, but let's check it. 3 people × 8.5 hours = 25.5 person-hours. At £85/hour that's £85 per crew member per hour — entirely reasonable. The question is whether 8.5 hours is right for a 38 m³ job with stairs.

If your crew typically does it in 7 hours, your load hour calibration is off for your team. If they typically do it in 9, you're probably underquoting similar jobs. That's the value of the model — it makes the assumption explicit so you can fix it.

The calibration loop

The model is only as good as the rates in it. Those rates need to come from real job data:

Quote the job using the model
Record the actual hours, any unplanned issues, the final price
Compare predicted vs actual for each component
When a component is consistently off, adjust the rate

"Stairs took 45 minutes instead of the 25 we priced" is a signal to increase the stairs rate. "Loading a 40 m³ job consistently takes 5.5 hours, not 5" means adjusting the load hour table.

Over 20-30 jobs, the model gets accurate for your specific company, your crew, your typical job profile. That's not something any industry-average pricing guide can give you — it has to come from your own data.

Summary

A removal price has five components: labour, mileage, adjustments, modifiers, and guardrails. Price them explicitly and in order. Use volume, not bedroom count. Use actual distance, not estimates. Price each adjustment at a rate that reflects real crew time. Calibrate from your own job outcomes.

When you do this consistently, two things change. Quotes get more accurate. And when a job is more expensive or more profitable than expected, you know exactly why — and you can fix the right thing.

Cerrax is pricing software for UK removal companies that implements this model and calibrates it from your real job data. Request a demo →