Why this site exists

Moving is unlike almost any other transaction. You hand over everything you own, including things that cannot be repurchased at any price, to a company you found online a few weeks earlier. Payment comes at the end. Your belongings travel out of sight, sometimes across several states. And you have already given up your old home, so you are under time pressure the other party controls.

That asymmetry is the whole business model for a certain kind of operator. Once the truck is loaded, the negotiation is over, and both sides know it.

I watched it happen for years. Carriers holding people’s belongings until they paid a number nobody had agreed to. Brokers taking deposits and disappearing. Families discovering, at the worst possible moment, that nobody was coming to help them and that the company they hired was not the company that showed up.

What struck me most was not the dishonesty. It was how much of it depended on one thing: the customer not knowing a rule that already existed. Federal law caps what a mover can collect at delivery. Non-binding estimates have to be based on weight. A damage claim expires nine months after delivery. None of this is secret. It is published, it is enforceable, and almost nobody is told.

Move Advocate exists to close that gap.

What you will find here

Every article on this site answers a question people actually ask, and grounds the answer in the federal regulations that govern interstate household goods moves under 49 CFR Part 375 and the related statutes.

The coverage falls into four areas: verifying a moving company before you sign, understanding what your estimate actually commits you to, knowing your rights on delivery and damage, and fighting back effectively when something goes wrong.

Some of it is not what other sites will tell you. The 110% rule does not apply the way most articles claim if your estimate was priced by cubic feet. The commonly quoted 21-day delivery deadline is usually 21 business days, which is closer to 30 calendar days, and that misunderstanding starts more disputes than almost anything else. Being “fully insured” usually means 60 cents per pound, which on a destroyed television works out to about fifteen dollars.

Those details matter, and they come from having worked inside the industry rather than from reading other people’s summaries.

How this is researched

Claims about your legal rights are cited to the actual regulations, statutes, and FMCSA guidance rather than to other blogs. Where sources conflict, or where a widely repeated figure turns out to be unsupported, this site says so instead of repeating it.

Where the law is less favorable than consumers might hope, that is stated plainly too. FMCSA cannot force a mover to pay your claim. Police usually treat a hostage load as a civil matter. Knowing the limits of your remedies is part of using them well.

Articles are reviewed and updated as regulations and agency guidance change.

What Move Advocate is not

Move Advocate is an independent consumer resource. It is not a government agency, is not affiliated with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration or any other federal or state body, and does not act on their behalf.

It is also not a law firm. Nothing here is legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created by reading it. For advice about your specific situation, speak to a lawyer licensed in your state.

Move Advocate does not accept payment from moving companies, does not sell leads to movers, and does not rank or recommend carriers in exchange for money.

Get in touch

If you are in the middle of a moving dispute, the fastest help is in the articles themselves, starting with what to do when movers won’t deliver your belongings.

For everything else, Move Advocate is on YouTube, X, Instagram, and there is a Facebook community where people share what happened to them and what worked.