Binding vs Non-Binding Estimate: Delivery Day Math

Two quotes on the kitchen table, four hundred dollars apart. The cheaper one was non-binding, which is another way of saying it was the one that could grow. It took me an embarrassingly long time to work out that this is not a comparison of prices at all. It is a comparison of who carries the risk of the surveyor being wrong, and the answer sits in a tick box near the top of page one that most people skim past on the way to the total.

Get that box wrong and the number you compared stops meaning much on the day the truck shows up.

Does your shipment cross a state line? Then 49 CFR Part 375 is the rulebook, and this page is written for you. If it loads and unloads inside one state, your own state's rules answer instead and none of what follows reaches the move at all — worth settling before any section number below means anything.

Provenance, since these numbers matter: the regulation text quoted here came out of the eCFR on 18 August 2026, which reported title 49 as last issued 7 August 2026 and current through 14 August 2026. The links point at whatever is live today, so where a live page and a quotation here part company, the page is the one to trust.

The rulebook knows two words, and your quote may be using a third

Section 375.401(b) is short and it settles the frame: before executing a bill of lading, a mover "must provide a written estimate of the total charges and indicate whether it is a binding or a non-binding estimate."

Binding or non-binding. That is the whole list. The hyphenated phrase not-to-exceed does not occur anywhere in the part, appendix included. The unhyphenated "not to exceed" turns up seven times, and they are worth accounting for one by one: four cap impracticable-operations charges at 15 percent of other charges due at delivery, two cap recovery on an article of extraordinary value at the declared value of the shipment, and the seventh sits inside the Appendix A worked example, capping a collection at 110 percent of a non-binding estimate. Not one of the seven names a type of estimate. The glossary in Appendix A carries exactly two entries — Estimate, Binding and Estimate, Non-Binding.

So when a salesperson offers you a binding not-to-exceed price, they are describing a commercial product built on top of one of those two boxes, not a third legal category. That does not make it worthless. It does mean the promise lives in the mover's tariff and in the wording typed onto your estimate, not in a section number you can hold up on delivery day. Which box is ticked decides what happens at the truck. The not-to-exceed language decides whether money comes back afterwards.

Ask which box. In writing.

Binding: the guarantee runs in both directions

Under § 375.403(a), a mover "may provide a guaranteed binding estimate of the total shipment charges to the individual shipper, so long as it is provided for in your tariff. The individual shipper must pay the amount for the services included in your estimate."

Read that second sentence as a shipper rather than as a lawyer. It cuts both ways: the mover cannot collect more than the estimate for what is on the sheet, and you cannot pay less. If the survey called it 8,000 pounds and the certified scale later says 6,900, a plain binding estimate does not hand the difference back — which is exactly the gap a not-to-exceed product is sold to fill.

The ceiling is also less airtight than "guaranteed" suggests. Section 375.403(a)(7) caps collection at "the amount of the original binding estimate, except as provided in paragraphs (a)(8) and (9) of this section" — meaning services you agree to after the bill of lading is issued, plus impracticable-operations charges of up to 15 percent of everything else due at delivery, sit on top of the guaranteed figure. That pairing is the usual reason a binding number and a final invoice are not the same number.

Section 375.403 lists eleven requirements in paragraph (a) and three more lettered paragraphs after it. Four lines are worth checking against the paper in front of you:

• (a)(1) — the binding estimate must be based on the physical survey unless you waived it in writing under § 375.401(a). A survey waiver has to be signed before loading and kept as an addendum to the bill of lading.
• (a)(4) — the face of the estimate must state that it binds both of you, and must state that "the charges shown apply only to those services specifically identified in the estimate."
• (a)(3) — a copy is retained "as an attachment to be made an integral part of the bill of lading contract." Your estimate is not a sales document that expires when the real paperwork arrives. It becomes part of the real paperwork.
• (b) — the mover may charge a fee for producing it, which is one quiet reason some firms steer towards the other kind.

That phrase in (a)(4) is the one that does the damage. "Only those services specifically identified" is where a binding estimate leaks: not through the price, but through everything nobody wrote down. Shuttle, long carry, flights of stairs, a bulky article the estimator never saw. I went through that block line by line in Moving Quote Line by Line: Shuttle, Long Carry, Stairs, and it is why a binding estimate built from a phone call guarantees a number rather than a bill.

Part 375 never says where on that sheet the indication has to sit, or how large it has to print. Section 375.403(a)(4) asks only that a binding estimate "clearly indicate upon each binding estimate's face" that it binds both of you; § 375.405(b)(5) asks the same of a non-binding one, which must also carry the line that you "will not be required to pay more than 110 percent of the non-binding estimate at the time of delivery." The part is capable of prescribing typography when it cares to — § 375.213(c)(2) and (c)(3) fix a 10-point minimum for the booklet and 12-point bold for the words on its cover — and it prescribes nothing at all here. So read the face of the estimate for those two sentences rather than hunting for a tick box, and use § 375.401(h): you both sign the estimate, and a dated copy is handed over at the time it is signed.

Non-binding: 110 percent is a collection limit, not a price limit

This is the sentence I most wish someone had put in front of me before my second move.

Section 375.405(b)(8) tells the mover it "may not collect more than 110 percent of the amount of the original non-binding estimate at destination," and § 375.407(a) turns that into an obligation: pay up to 110 percent on a collect-on-delivery shipment and the mover "must relinquish possession of the shipment at the time of delivery." Refusing after you have offered is not a billing dispute. Under § 375.407(b) it is a failure to transport with "reasonable dispatch" and it exposes the mover to cargo delay claims under Part 370.

Powerful. And narrower than it looks. Here is the FMCSA's own consumer booklet, reproduced in full as Appendix A to Part 375:

Under a non-binding estimate, the mover cannot require you to pay more than 110 percent of the non-binding estimate at the time of delivery. This does not excuse you from paying all the charges due on your shipment. The mover will bill you for any remaining charges after 30 days from delivery.

The 110 percent buys your furniture back on the day. It does not cap the move. Final charges come from actual weight and the tariff in effect — § 375.401(b)(2) — and the balance follows you home as an invoice. Anyone who describes the rule as "they can only charge 10 percent more" has merged a delivery-day right with a price ceiling that does not exist.

Nor is 110 percent a clean cap on the delivery-day payment itself. The limit in (b)(8) applies "except as provided in paragraphs (b)(9) and (10)," and § 375.407(a) states it from the other side: the mover must hand the shipment over once you have paid up to 110 percent plus charges for any additional services you requested after the bill of lading was issued plus any impracticable-operations charges, which § 375.407(d) holds to 15 percent of all other charges due at delivery. The figure to have ready at the truck is therefore 110 percent, plus whatever you added, plus up to 15 percent for an access problem nobody foresaw. Better arithmetic to do the week before than on the morning.

One counterweight sits on the mover's side. Section 375.401(d) warns that an inaccurately low estimate "may be limiting the amount you will collect at the time of delivery" — the regulation's way of making lowballing expensive for the lowballer.

One more line matters if your quote is priced in cubic feet rather than pounds. Section 375.401(e) and § 375.405(b)(1) both require the mover to give you, in writing, the formula used to convert volume to weight, and to state that final charges rest on actual weight subject to the 110 percent rule. A volume quote with no conversion formula attached is missing a document you are entitled to. Volume pricing is also the native language of container moves, which run on a different logic again — Container Quotes vs Van Lines: What the Price Leaves Out.

Load day is the last day the number can move

Both estimate types converge on the same deadline, and it is not delivery. It is the moment the first box goes on the truck.

Section 375.401(i) settles it in one sentence: an estimate may be amended by mutual agreement before loading, and "you may not amend the estimate after loading the shipment." Anything the mover wants to change about your number has to happen while the truck is still empty. Afterwards the question stops being what was agreed and becomes only what can be collected.

The menu of pre-loading moves — three routes on a binding estimate at § 375.403(a)(6), two on a non-binding one at § 375.405(b)(7), and what the regulation decides for you if the crew simply loads without taking any of them — I walked through in Moving Quote Line by Line and will not repeat here. One of those routes belongs on this page, though, because it is the only one that moves you between the two boxes.

That is § 375.403(a)(6)(iii): you and the mover agree, in writing, to treat the original binding estimate as a non-binding one. Say yes and your position changes materially. You leave a 100 percent ceiling and arrive at 110 percent plus additional services plus impracticable operations, with the balance following you home 30 days later. It is a fair offer to make and a reasonable one to refuse, and nothing in Part 375 requires you to sign it. What makes it worth flagging is the timing: it is put to you on the morning of a move, standing up, with a crew waiting.

The paper that conversation produces is specified even where the clock is not. Section 375.403(a)(6)(ii) wants a new binding estimate prepared before loading, listing the additional goods or services "in detail" and signed by you, and it tells the mover it "should maintain a record of the date, time, and manner that the new estimate was prepared" — the only timestamp in the whole transaction, and a reasonable thing to ask for a copy of. No minimum period to think about it appears in the section; the one-hour allowance people half-remember lives in § 375.403(a)(8) and covers services proposed after the bill of lading has been issued. Nor does a second cooling-off window open behind the first, since § 375.505(h) says changes to the bill of lading flowing from a new estimate made on the day of the move "do not require a new 3-day period."

If only half your shipment arrives

Partial delivery is where the arithmetic gets specific, and the regulation supplies a worked example rather than a principle.

Section 375.403(a)(11), for binding estimates: "you may not demand upon delivery full payment of the binding estimate. You may demand only a prorated percentage" — delivered weight over total weight. Its example: deliver 2,500 pounds of a 5,000-pound shipment and 50 percent is the most that can be demanded. Section 375.407(c) does the same for non-binding, prorating a figure of up to 110 percent.

The booklet turns it into money. A $1,000 binding estimate with half the shipment lost supports a $500 demand; the same estimate non-binding supports $550. What you owe and what can be demanded at the truck are, once again, two different questions.

When a broker wrote your estimate

If the person who quoted you never intended to drive anything, a separate rule is in play.

Section 375.409 lets a household goods broker issue an estimate only where a written agreement exists with the actual carrier "adopting the broker's estimate as your own estimate" — and the carrier then has to comply with every estimate requirement in Part 375, "including the requirement that you must relinquish possession of the shipment if the shipper pays you no more than 110 percent of a non-binding estimate at the time of delivery."

Section 371.113 adds that a broker's estimate must be in writing, based on a physical survey conducted by the authorised carrier, and built on that carrier's published tariff. Paragraph (c)(2) is oddly specific and therefore useful: a survey waiver has to be printed on the estimate itself, in plain English, "at no less than 7-point font size and with the font typeface Universe." A waiver you cannot find anywhere on the sheet is worth asking about.

Settle these before the signature, because after loading they harden

The valuation election belongs on this same sheet. Section 375.401(g) requires the mover to include the liability election notice from the Surface Transportation Board's released rates order as part of the estimate, which means the 60-cents-a-pound decision is being made at estimate time whether or not anybody points at it — Released Value vs Full Value Protection: Do the Math works through what that choice costs on a real household.

An email that gets the estimate questions answered in text rather than over the phone:

Please confirm in writing: (1) whether the attached estimate is binding or non-binding under 49 CFR 375.401(b), and where on the form that is indicated; (2) if it is offered as "not to exceed," the tariff provision under which charges are reduced if actual weight comes in lower, and the wording of that provision as it appears on the estimate itself; (3) if any figure is based on volume, the written conversion formula required by § 375.401(e); and (4) the form of payment you will accept at delivery under § 375.401(c).

Keep the reply. Under § 375.403(a)(3) and § 375.405(b)(4) the estimate becomes an integral part of the bill of lading contract, so what it says on estimate day is what you are still holding at the kerb three weeks later.

Two mechanics decide what that gap feels like afterwards, and both are usually met for the first time on the day they bite. The booklet states one of them without softening it: "If you are unable to pay 100 percent of the charges on a binding estimate at delivery, your mover may place your shipment in storage at your expense," and it writes the sentence again for the 110 percent case. The other is subpart H. Section 375.807 requires the invoice within 15 days of delivery (excluding Saturdays, Sundays and Federal holidays), sets the credit period at seven days, then automatically extends it to 30 calendar days for a shipper who has not paid — carrying a service charge of "one percent of the amount of the invoice, subject to a $20 minimum charge" for each 30-day extension, and no extension whatever beyond 30 days for impracticable-operations charges left uncollected at delivery.

A word about who is talking, before you weigh any of it. I have never conducted a survey, filed a tariff or adjusted a claim, I hold no qualification that would let me, and the estimate on your table is a document I have not seen. This is reading, not advice. Who is writing, and on what authority, is set out separately.

The section numbers are the part worth keeping. Each one is quoted here at length rather than summarised, for a fairly boring reason — a paraphrase is the thing a salesperson can talk you out of at the kerb, and a quotation is not.