Movers Charging More Than Estimated: Which Lines Are Due

There is a telephone call you can require your mover to make, and hardly anyone requires it. It happens the day before the truck arrives and it carries two numbers: the actual weight of your shipment, and the charges assessed against it. When those charges have come in higher than the estimate you signed, that call is what lets the arithmetic on this page be done sitting at a table, rather than in a driveway with a crew waiting and a phone at four percent battery.

The one delivery-day figure of my own that came in at nearly double the estimate arrived as news, at the door, on a clipboard. Nothing in the federal rules required it to arrive that way. I did not know the notification existed, so the first time I saw a number I could check was the moment I had the least ability to check it.

Two boundaries first. Everything below assumes the truck will cross a state line, because § 375.101 applies Part 375 only to carriers transporting household goods "for individual shippers by motor vehicle in interstate commerce." A move that starts and ends inside one state runs on state law and none of the ceilings below reach it. And none of this is professional advice of any kind; it is section numbers and the operations they describe, set out so you can hold them against your own paperwork. Every quotation is the text the eCFR versioner served for title 49 as issued 3 September 2026, title current as of 4 September 2026, read 9 September 2026.

The number does not have to arrive with the truck

Section 375.521 is titled "What must I do if an individual shipper wants to know the actual weight or charges for a shipment before I tender delivery?" and the answer in paragraph (a) is that the mover "must comply with this request." Two conditions attach. The request has to be specific, and you have to supply an address or telephone number where you will receive the communication. The mover may deliver the notice by telephone, in person, fax, email, overnight courier, or certified mail with return receipt.

Paragraph (b) is the part that changes your afternoon: you must receive the notification "at least one full 24-hour day before any tender of the shipment for delivery, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and Federal holidays." Not an hour. Not on approach. A full working day, which is time enough to build the sum below, compare it against the estimate in your folder, and write one email if the two do not agree.

Paragraph (c) lets the mover disregard the 24 hours in three situations. Two of them turn on how the shipment is weighed or scheduled: a back weigh at destination, and a pickup and delivery falling on two consecutive weekdays where you agree. The third is the one that costs money. Where the shipment moves on a non-binding estimate and the maximum payment required at delivery is 110 percent of the estimated charges, the notice falls away - "but only if the individual shipper agrees to waive the 24-hour notification requirement." That is a waiver, not an exemption. Somebody has to ask you for it, and you are entitled to say no.

There is a second reason to make the request early, and it belongs to the weight rather than the money. Section 375.517 gives you a re-weigh on a shipment weighed at origin, but only inside a window that opens "after you inform the individual shipper of the billing weight and total charges" and closes "before actually beginning to unload." The 375.521 notice is what opens that window a day early instead of thirty seconds early. How the two weighings work, and what a re-weigh can and cannot recover, is a separate piece of arithmetic.

Item five of seventeen is where your phone number belongs

The notification does not organise itself. Two pieces of paper have to carry your contact details before it can happen, and one of them has a numbered slot for exactly that.

Section 375.505(b)(5) requires the bill of lading, when a mover transports on a collect-on-delivery basis, to carry "the name, address, and if furnished, the telephone number, fax number, or email address of a person to notify about the charges." Item five of the seventeen. It is a small block, it is frequently left blank or filled in with a name and nothing else, and it is the block the 375.521 notice is meant to land in. Check it before the truck leaves origin, while the driver still has the document in hand, because that is the last moment at which filling it in costs nobody anything.

The request itself needs to say four things and can be three sentences long. That you are requesting notification of the actual weight or volume and the charges under 375.521. The address, telephone number or email at which you will receive it. That you expect it at least one full 24-hour day before tender of delivery, excluding weekends and Federal holidays. And - if your estimate is non-binding - that you are not waiving the 24-hour notice under 375.521(c)(3), since that exception operates only where the shipper agrees.

Send it in writing even though the section does not require writing, and send it before load day rather than after. A request made while the shipment is still in your house is a request the mover can plan around; the same request made from a hotel two states away, on the afternoon the driver calls to say he is an hour out, arrives after the only useful deadline has passed. The related right to watch the weighing itself sits in § 375.513, which entitles you to be told where and when each weighing will take place and to a reasonable opportunity to be present - and that one is easiest to exercise if it is asked for in the same message.

There are two ceilings and your estimate already picked one

Section 375.703 is one paragraph long in each direction and it is the whole schedule.

On a binding estimate, paragraph (a): the maximum is "the exact estimate of the charges," plus charges for additional services requested by the shipper after the bill of lading was issued, plus impracticable operations as defined in the carrier's tariff, capped at 15 percent of all other charges due at delivery.

On a non-binding estimate, paragraph (b): the maximum is "110 percent of the non-binding estimate of the charges," plus the same two additions on the same terms.

So 110 percent is not a general moving rule. It is paragraph (b) of a two-paragraph schedule, and which paragraph governs your move was fixed when the estimate was written rather than when the truck arrived. A demand for 110 percent of a binding estimate is a demand for ten percent more than the ceiling - and § 375.403(a)(7) closes the usual escape route, because once a shipment is loaded without a new estimate having been executed, "failure to execute a new binding estimate or a non-binding estimate signifies you have reaffirmed the original binding estimate."

If your paperwork says something else - guaranteed price, not-to-exceed, price protection - that language is a tariff product sitting on top of one of the two boxes rather than a third box. The regulation recognises two, and which of the two is ticked is what decides the sum. That distinction, and what a not-to-exceed offer actually buys you afterwards, is worked through in Binding vs Non-Binding Estimate.

One line on the bill of lading exists to record the answer, and it is worth finding before any argument starts. Section 375.505(b)(11) requires item eleven of seventeen to be "the maximum amount you will demand at the time of delivery to obtain possession of the shipment," on every collect-on-delivery move. The carrier wrote its own ceiling into the contract before it had met you. A copy of that contract is on the truck, because 375.505(c) requires it to accompany the shipment at all times.

Who asked for it decides which column it sits in

One question sorts almost every disputed line, and it is not a question about the service. It is a question about who asked for it.

Services you requested after the bill of lading was issued are collectible in full at delivery. Section 375.405(b)(10), for non-binding estimates: the mover "may require full payment at destination for these additional services" as well as up to 110 percent of the estimate. Section 375.403(a)(9) does the same for binding estimates and adds a condition worth holding the mover to - it "must prepare a new binding estimate and have the new binding estimate signed by the individual shipper." No new signed binding estimate, no line at the door.

Services the mover decided were necessary behave in the opposite way, and the paragraph that says so is easy to read past. Section 375.405(b)(9), and 375.403(a)(8) in identical words, cover the case where the mover believes "additional services are necessary to properly service a shipment after the bill of lading has been issued." Disclosure comes first, and a decision window follows - at least one hour, and it belongs to you rather than to the crew. Say yes and a signed written attachment becomes an integral part of the bill of lading contract. Then comes the sentence that decides when the money is owed:

You must bill the individual shipper for the additional services after 30 days from delivery.

Agreeing does not pull the charge forward. Refusing does not change the timing either - the same paragraph tells the carrier to do only what the delivery itself requires and to invoice for it later, "except that you may collect at delivery charges for impracticable operations that do not exceed 15 percent of all other charges due at delivery." That exception is the only mover-initiated money the rule lets through the door, and 375.703 confirms the split from the other end by listing only "additional services requested by the shipper" among the amounts that may be demanded to obtain possession.

A third category never reaches delivery day at all. Section 375.401(f) puts a duty on the mover before the bill of lading is ever written: determine the charges for accessorial services "such as elevators, long carries, etc." Miss that step - fail to ask, fail to price it - and the same sentence states the consequence. The mover "must deliver the goods and bill the shipper after 30 days for the additional charges." Delivery is not made conditional on the omission being fixed at the door. What each of those items means, and where on the quote sheet it should have been settled, is a question for the estimate rather than for the driveway.

So there are three questions to put to any line the driver reads out, in this order. Did I ask for this after the bill of lading was issued? Is it an impracticable operation as the tariff defines one? Is it an accessorial the surveyor should have priced? The first puts the line in the sum. The second puts a capped portion of it in the sum. The third takes it out entirely and gives it a due date a month away.

Fifteen percent of a figure you have to build first

The 15 percent cap gets quoted constantly and almost always against the wrong base.

All eight places the ceiling appears - § 375.407(d), § 375.405(b)(9) and (b)(10), § 375.403(a)(8) and (a)(9), § 375.703(a) and (b), and § 375.707(a)(1)(iii) - use one form of words: charges for impracticable operations may not exceed "15 percent of all other charges due at delivery." Other is the operative word. The base excludes the impracticable-operations charge itself, and it is not the estimate. It is the estimate-side ceiling plus whatever you requested after the bill of lading was issued, which means the cap cannot be worked out until the two lines above it already exist.

Three candidate bases produce three different numbers on the same move. Only one of the three is named anywhere in the text. Take a non-binding estimate of $8,240 and $340 of services you asked for after signing. Fifteen percent of the estimate is $1,236. Fifteen percent of every charge including the impracticable operation itself works out at $1,659.53, because that reading solves for a figure appearing on both sides of its own equation. Fifteen percent of all other charges due at delivery - what the text actually says - is 15 percent of $9,064 plus $340, which is $1,410.60. More than four hundred dollars separates the outer two answers on one average-sized move, and the wording that settles it is a single adjective the rule repeats in every paragraph where the cap appears.

Which leaves the question of what may sit on that line at all. Part 375 never defines an impracticable operation. The definition lives only in the booklet's glossary, it turns on physical impossibility with the carrier's normally assigned road-haul equipment, and it hands the list of qualifying services to the mover's own tariff. The full wording, and why the clause "even if you do not request these services" carries most of its weight, sits with the rest of the quote sheet.

For the sum on this page only the consequence matters: because the tariff supplies the list, the tariff is what you ask to see when a line is read out under that name. A street that will not take a 53-foot trailer is a plausible candidate. A fourth-floor walk-up recorded on the survey sheet is not, and 375.401(f) rather than the tariff is the reason.

The sheet, for a 7,400-pound shipment

The figures below are invented. Only the operations performed on them come from the rule, and they are the operations to perform on your own.

A non-binding estimate of $8,240. Actual charges on actual weight, notified the day before under 375.521, of $9,880. Two days before delivery you telephoned and asked for unpacking and debris removal: $340. The mover decided in transit that a piano needed crating and you agreed in writing: $475. The street at destination will not take a 53-foot trailer, so a shuttle is required, tariff charge $1,600. The destination building charges for elevator use and nobody asked you about it at the survey: $190.

The clipboard total on that move would read $12,485.00. The gap is $1,670.40, and none of it disappears. It reappears on a different clock: $816 of actual charges above the 110 percent ceiling, $189.40 of shuttle charge above the cap, $475 for the crating, $190 for the elevator. Add those and you get $1,670.40 exactly. The reconciliation is what tells you the sum is right rather than merely smaller than the one on the clipboard. Nothing in Part 375 forgives a charge because it was presented late. It re-times it, and the re-timing is what lets your furniture come off the truck while the argument is still open.

What then happens to the balance - the 15-day presentation window, the seven-day credit period that extends automatically to 30, the one percent service charge - runs through subpart H of Part 375, and the route from a refused delivery to a federal complaint file is a different day's problem.

The invoice is owed at the moment you hand over money

An arithmetic argument needs the mover's numbers itemised, and the entitlement to that itemisation is not something to negotiate for.

Section 375.215 requires "an honest, truthful invoice that includes all the information required by subpart A of part 373 of this chapter." Follow that cross-reference and § 373.103(a)(1) turns out to require, among eleven items, the "[e]xact rate(s) assessed" and the "[t]otal charges due, including the nature and amount of any charges for special service and the points at which such service was rendered."

That last clause is a checking tool. A shuttle charge has to be attached to a place. If the invoice says impracticable operations and gives no service, no rate and no location, it is missing content that Part 373 requires, and the figure cannot be tested against the tariff it supposedly comes from.

The consumer booklet reproduced at appendix A to Part 375 is blunter still. It says that at the time you pay transportation charges the mover "must give you an invoice identifying the service provided and the charge for each service"; that except on a binding estimate the invoice "must specifically identify each service performed, the rate or charge per service performed, and the total charges for each service"; and then: "If this information is not on the invoice, do not accept or pay the invoice."

One more item can quietly move the whole sum, and it sits at § 375.505(b)(14). Where a mover prices from a minimum weight or volume, the bill of lading must state the minimum rates and the minimum charges applicable to the shipment; where it does not, the tariff has to provide how final charges are computed from actual weight or volume. On a small shipment billed at a minimum, a re-weigh that comes in lighter changes nothing at all, and it is cheaper to learn that from item fourteen than from a scale ticket.

When part of the load is somewhere else

A partial delivery is where a full demand most often turns up, and the prorating rule that answers it - § 375.407(c) on a non-binding estimate, § 375.403(a)(11) on a binding one, both keyed to delivered weight over total weight - is worked through with the regulation's own example in Movers Holding Goods Hostage. Three further sections sit around it and are worth knowing by name, because they decide what else the driver may add once the load has been split.

Two trucks. Section 375.705 gives the mover a choice of three when a shipment travels on more than one vehicle: defer all charges until the whole shipment is delivered; collect the percentage of total charges represented by the portion being tendered; or, where total charges cannot reasonably be calculated, charge for the portion delivered, with the sum of the separate portions capped at the charges due for the entire shipment. Which of the three the mover picked is a fair question at the first delivery, because only the first of them means nothing is owed on the day.

Part of it is gone. Section 375.707 prorates the same way and then lists exactly four things collectible at delivery: the prorated percentage, services you requested after the bill of lading, impracticable operations within the 15 percent, and "[a]ny specific valuation charge due." Paragraph (b) puts the cost of working out the proportion not lost on the mover - "at your own expense" - and paragraph (c) withdraws the whole protection where the loss was down to an act or omission of the shipper. Paragraph (d) is the one to keep hold of afterwards: the shipper's rights under this section are "in addition to, and not in lieu of" any other rights over goods partially lost in transit. Paying a prorated demand at the door settles the delivery. It settles nothing about the claim.

All of it is gone. Section 375.709 forbids the mover from collecting "any freight charges (including any charges for accessorial or terminal services)" when a shipment is totally lost or destroyed in transit, subject to the same shipper-fault exception - with one carve-out running the other way, because the specific valuation charge is still collected. The booklet explains why: if you took Full Value Protection, "you will be required to pay the premium to process your claim for the total loss."

Tendering short has a storage bill behind it

The ceiling is not a target. It is the point at which refusal becomes a violation, and arriving under it has a named consequence.

The booklet states it without softening: "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 getting it out again is its own transaction - "you will have to pay the required charges and storage fees, if listed in the tariffs, after your shipment arrives at the residence." The non-binding paragraph runs the same way at 110 percent, with one word loosened: there you "will likely have to agree to pay" those charges and fees. Elsewhere the booklet names the right the mover is exercising when it does this. If the transportation charges due at delivery are not paid, "your mover has the right, under the bill of lading, to refuse to deliver your shipment."

Which is the argument for building the sum the day before rather than defending one on the day. A figure worked out at a table, against an estimate you can see and a notification you asked for in writing, is a figure that can be tendered with a straight face - and the tender is the act that matters, because 375.407(b) attaches the violation to the moment the shipper "offers to pay," not to the moment the mover accepts.

The form that offer takes is fixed too, and not by the driver. Section 375.217(a) ties the payment method at delivery to the method written on the estimate, and § 375.505(b)(4) carries that same method onto the bill of lading. So a demand for cash at the kerb, on a move whose paperwork says credit card, is a second question with its own section number rather than a detail of the first.

None of this makes the conversation at the kerb pleasant. It makes it short. The mover reads out a total, you read three lines back, and what remains in dispute is which column two of them belong in - a question with a paragraph number attached rather than a volume setting. The document that settles it is already on the truck, and the number that settles it was available to you a full working day before the truck turned in.