In-Home Moving Estimate: What the Survey Must Cover

A moving company can survey your house without anyone coming to your house. That has been the federal position since 27 June 2022, and it is the more useful half of a change most people never heard about. The other half is that the survey stopped being something a carrier could decline because you live too far from its yard.

Both halves land on the same page of your estimate, and they pull in different directions. The consumer booklet every mover has to give you — appendix A to Part 375, which is regulation text rather than a leaflet — tells you to steer clear of any broker or mover that refuses to perform a physical survey of your goods. FMCSA's own warning-sign page, Spot the Red Flags, goes further in its wording as of mid-2026: a mover or broker that "doesn't perform an on-site inspection of your household items and gives an estimate over the telephone or online — sight unseen." Yet the regulation behind that advice now allows a survey where nobody is on-site at all. The phrase doing the work on that page is sight unseen, and a video survey is not that. Working out which of those two ideas applies to the quote in front of you is most of this article.

One boundary first. This is about interstate moves, the kind where the truck crosses a state line. 49 CFR Part 375 governs those. A local or in-state move falls under whatever your state's transportation or utility commission requires, which may be more or less than what follows.

Regulation text quoted below was compared against the eCFR on 19 September 2026, when title 49 was current through 16 September 2026. Quotations from the 2022 rulemaking come from the Federal Register full text of 87 FR 24431. If a linked page now reads differently from a quotation here, trust the linked page.

The distance test that used to decide this no longer exists

Before mid-2022, whether you got a survey depended on geography. The obligation applied when your household goods sat within a 50-mile radius of the carrier's or its agent's place of business. Outside that ring, a phone quote was compliant.

The rule that changed it is Implementation of Household Goods Working Group Recommendations, 87 FR 24431, published 26 April 2022 and effective 27 June 2022. Its own summary of what it was doing includes "Allowing for virtual surveys of household goods; requiring motor carriers to conduct surveys beyond a 50-mile radius."

The size of that old ring is worth a moment. In the same document's cost analysis, FMCSA wrote that an information collection request supporting statement published in November 2019 "estimated that the motor carrier agent is within 50 miles of the shipper's location for 95 percent of interstate moves, and beyond 50 miles for 5 percent of moves." So the exemption covered roughly one move in twenty. Which means the common failure was never the legal exemption. It was carriers treating the survey as optional across the board, and customers who had no reason to know otherwise.

Read section 375.401(a) today and the first sentence has no geography in it:

You must conduct a physical survey of the household goods to be transported and provide the prospective individual shipper with a written estimate, based on the physical survey, of the charges for the transportation and all related services.

There is exactly one door out of that sentence, and it is the next one: "An individual shipper may elect to waive a physical survey." Not the mover's election. Yours.

On-site or virtually, and the test is whether they can see the sofa

The definition sits in section 375.103 and runs to two sentences:

Physical survey means a survey which is conducted on-site or virtually. If the survey is performed virtually, the household goods motor carrier must be able to view the household goods through live or pre-recorded video that allows it to clearly identify the household goods to be transported.

Three things fall out of that. Video, not photographs. Pre-recorded is allowed, so a walkthrough you film on your own phone and send can qualify. And the standard the video has to meet is not "good quality" but clearly identify the household goods to be transported, which is a question about coverage as much as resolution. A crisp video of four rooms in a six-room house does not identify the goods to be transported.

The pre-recorded option was not in the proposal. Industry commenters asked for it, FMCSA agreed in the final rule, and the agency attached a caveat that reads like an instruction to both sides:

any physical survey that utilizes pre-recorded video should include an opportunity for follow-up to address any questions about the goods to be moved to ensure that the prepared estimate is as accurate as one that would be prepared following an in-person physical survey.

Note the verb. Should, in a preamble, is not must in the regulation, and the follow-up call is not an enforceable line in Part 375. But it tells you what the agency thought it was authorising, and it gives you a clean thing to ask for. Send the video, then get someone on a call while they have it open.

What is plainly not a survey, under any reading of that definition: a web form where you tick "3 bedrooms," a phone call where somebody reads you a room list, a square-footage lookup, or a price generated from your address. None of those involve viewing your goods, and viewing your goods is the whole of the definition.

The waiver is a document with a shape, and only you can sign it

If you agree to skip the survey, section 375.401(a) puts three requirements on the paperwork. It must be in writing. It must be signed by the shipper before the shipment is loaded. And the carrier must keep a copy "as an addendum to the bill of lading," subject to the same retention rule as bills of lading, which section 375.505(d) sets at one year from the date the bill of lading was created.

That retention line is the quietly useful part. A waiver is not a verbal understanding between you and a salesperson. It is a record the carrier has to be able to produce for a year, attached to the contract. If you are told a survey was waived and you do not remember signing anything, that is a document you can ask to see.

When the estimate reaches you from a broker rather than the carrier, the requirements get stricter rather than looser. Section 371.113(a) says a broker's written estimate "must be based on a physical survey of the household goods conducted by the authorized motor carrier on whose behalf the estimate is provided," unless you have waived the survey under paragraph (c). The survey belongs to the carrier. A broker looking at your living room on video does not satisfy that sentence on its own terms, because the broker is not the carrier.

Paragraph (c)(2) of the same section then descends to the level of the printing press:

The household goods broker must explain the physical survey waiver agreement to the individual shipper in plain English. The physical survey waiver agreement must be printed on the written estimate and must be printed at no less than 7-point font size and with the font typeface Universe.

A rule that names a typeface is telling you where it expects the abuse to happen. Printed on the estimate itself, at a legible size, explained out loud. Not a checkbox buried in an email thread, and not a line you initial on a tablet while a driver waits. If you are not certain which kind of company is sending you paper, that question has its own answer in the split between brokers and carriers, and it decides a good deal more than this one issue.

Six things the estimate visit has to settle before a bill of lading exists

The survey is not a ritual. It is the input to a document, and section 375.401 lists what that document has to contain by the time the visit is over. Taking the paragraphs in order.

The form of payment you will be expected to produce at delivery. Paragraph (c): the mover "must specify the form of payment you and your agent will honor at delivery," with cash, certified check, money order, cashier's check and named cards among the possibilities. This is the paragraph to hold up if delivery day arrives with a demand for something else, and 375.505(b)(4) requires the bill of lading to carry the same payment information that went on the estimate.

Whether the price is binding or non-binding. Paragraph (b) requires the written estimate to "indicate whether it is a binding or a non-binding estimate," and those are the only two the rule knows. Which box is ticked decides what the mover can collect before the crew unloads, and the delivery-day math on each differs enough that comparing two totals across the two types tells you almost nothing.

How volume becomes weight, in writing, if the quote was built on cubic feet. Paragraph (e): where an estimate based on volume will later convert to a weight-based rate, the mover "must provide the shipper an explanation in writing of the formula used to calculate the conversion to weight," and has to tell you the final bill will follow the scale, within the 110 percent limit at delivery. So if the surveyor counted cubic feet, ask on the spot how many pounds per cubic foot the company uses. If the paperwork never states that number, the estimate is short a page the rule requires.

Every accessorial service, priced. Paragraph (f): charges for accessorial services "such as elevators, long carries, etc." must be determined before the bill of lading is prepared. Not sketched as a range. Determined.

The liability election notice. Paragraph (g) requires the estimate to include the liability election notice from the Surface Transportation Board's released rates order. That is where the choice between full value protection and released value at 60 cents per pound per article first appears in your paperwork, and it is a choice made at estimate time, not at claim time.

Two signatures and a dated copy in your hand. Paragraph (h): you and the mover both sign, and "You must provide a dated copy of the estimate of charges to the individual shipper at the time you sign the estimate." The date matters later, because paragraph (i) permits amendment by mutual agreement only before loading and then shuts the door: "You may not amend the estimate after loading the shipment."

What the surveyor never asked about turns into a question of timing

Paragraph (f) has a second sentence that says what happens when the first one is ignored: a mover who neither asked about accessorial charges nor determined them before preparing the bill of lading "must deliver the goods and bill the shipper after 30 days for the additional charges." That sentence in full, and what it does to an argument on the pavement, is worked through in reading a moving quote line by line.

What belongs here is the question of who was supposed to have asked. The survey is the appointment at which those questions get asked, and it is usually the only time anyone from the company looks at the job before the day itself. So a surveyor who never raised your third-floor walk-up has not quietly given you the stairs for free. They have moved the charge off the invoice you can refuse to pay at the door and onto one that arrives a month later, by which time your furniture is inside and the argument is a different argument.

There is a companion obligation in section 375.505(e). If the mover, its agent or the driver reasonably expects that a special or accessorial service is needed to transport the shipment safely, they must tell you, and if you refuse to buy that service they "must refuse to accept the shipment" and make a written note of the refusal. That is a rule with an odd shape until you see what it is for. It stops a crew from loading a job they already know needs a crane, staying quiet about it, and producing the problem at the far end.

The half of the trip the surveyor never looks at

A survey inspects the goods. It does not inspect where they are going. That gap is where a surprising share of delivery-day arguments start, because the charges that grow fastest are access charges, and access is a property of the destination as much as the origin.

Things nobody sees on a video walkthrough of your current living room: whether a 53-foot trailer can turn into the new street, whether the building requires a booked service elevator and a certificate of insurance, how many feet lie between the legal parking spot and the door, how many flights of stairs, and whether the road is posted against heavy vehicles. Each of those becomes a shuttle charge, a long carry, a stair charge or a waiting charge with a different name on a different tariff. The vocabulary is worth learning before the estimate arrives, because a quote reads very differently line by line once you know which lines are conditional.

The leverage is that section 375.401(f) does not carve out the destination. Accessorial charges must be determined before the bill of lading is prepared, and a shuttle at the far end is an accessorial charge. So the question to put in writing is narrow and answerable: what access assumption at the destination is this price built on, and what is the charge if that assumption is wrong?

If you do not yet have a destination address, which is common with corporate relocations and with anyone still buying at the other end, say that in writing too and ask what the estimate assumes in its absence. An assumption stated on paper is arguable. An assumption in a salesperson's head is not.

What to walk the camera past, and what people leave out of frame

Whether the surveyor is standing in the room or watching through your phone, the estimate is only as good as the inventory behind it. The places that get missed are consistent, and they are mostly the places you do not think of as rooms:

• The garage, including anything hanging on the walls and the contents of shelving units
• The loft, attic, crawl space, basement corner, and the shed or any outbuilding
• Under and inside beds, ottomans and window seats
• Wardrobes and dressers, if you are not paying for a full pack
• The second refrigerator, and the chest freezer in the utility room
• Exercise equipment, which is heavy out of all proportion to its footprint
• Gun safes, pianos, slate pool tables, marble tops, riding mowers, motorcycles, kayaks
• Anything that has to be disassembled, and anything currently bolted to a wall or a floor
• Plants, and anything that cannot legally ride on a moving truck at all

Two more things to say out loud while someone is looking. First, how many boxes you intend to pack yourself against how many you want the crew to pack. That split changes the carton line on the estimate and it changes what the inventory looks like on load day. Second, anything you are undecided about. Items you might leave behind are better declared and struck later than discovered on the morning of the move, because the moment additional goods appear, 375.403(a)(6) and 375.405(b)(7) put the mover in a position to require a new estimate or to decline the job outright.

Ask for the cube sheet or the estimated weight, not only the total. A total is a conclusion. The cube sheet is the reasoning, and it is the one part of the estimate you can check against reality yourself, room by room, while there is still time to argue about it.

Where you are standing on the calendar

The survey matters most early. Here is what is still open at each stage.

Before the estimate is signed. You are owed a survey, or a waiver you signed knowingly. You are owed the written estimate with the binding or non-binding box ticked, the payment form named, the accessorials priced, the liability election notice attached, and a dated copy in your hand. You are also owed two consumer publications at that point under 375.213(a): the Ready to Move? brochure and the contents of appendix A, Your Rights and Responsibilities When You Move, either as copies or as links on the mover's website.

Between signature and loading. The estimate can still be amended by mutual agreement under 375.401(i). Under 375.505(h) the bill of lading has to be provided to you, signed and dated, at least three days before the shipment is scheduled to load, and you have a three-day window after signing it to rescind without penalty. That window is the last cheap exit in the whole process.

Once loading starts. The survey is history. Under 375.401(i) the estimate cannot be amended at all, and under 375.403(a)(7) and 375.405(b)(8) the absence of a new signed estimate counts as reaffirmation of the one you already have. Everything after that point is a question about collection limits and claims, not about the estimate.

Appendix A is the longer of those two publications, and it is worth knowing where in it the survey actually appears, because the answer explains why so few people arrive at an estimate knowing any of this. The booklet runs to roughly 7,800 words. The sentence telling you to steer clear of a mover who refuses to survey turns up about a thousand words in. The paragraph that states the obligation itself — "Your mover must provide an estimate based upon a physical survey of your household goods... A physical survey must be performed unless you waive this requirement in writing" — comes fewer than four hundred words after that, under the heading Estimates. Neither sentence is hard to read. Both are easy never to reach, which is why most people first hear about the survey requirement from a mover explaining why they are not doing one.

Booking the survey: two sentences worth sending

When you set up the appointment, whether it is a visit or a video call, put these in the email so that the answer exists in writing before anyone quotes you.

Will this survey be conducted by the carrier that will hold the bill of lading, or by a broker? Under 371.113(a) a broker's estimate has to rest on a survey conducted by the authorised motor carrier, so the answer tells you whether the estimate you are about to receive is built on the foundation the rule requires.

What destination access does this estimate assume, and which line items change if that assumption is wrong? This is a question 375.401(f) already obliges them to have answered. Asking it early costs nothing and it dates the answer.

If a company declines to survey at all and will not produce a waiver for you to sign, there is no need to argue about it. FMCSA takes complaints about household goods carriers and brokers through its file a complaint page, and appendix A to Part 375 gives (888) 368-7238 for a mover refusing to release a shipment unless you pay something it is not entitled to charge. Neither of those is a fast remedy. Both beat a signature on a number nobody ever verified.

Nothing here is legal advice, and this site does not book moves, broker them, or take a referral fee from any carrier. Where a number matters to your decision, open the linked section and check the date at the top of the eCFR page. Part 375 has been amended more than once since 2022 and will be again, and the survey rule in particular is only four years old.