Moving Company Late Delivery: What the Date Promised

Ask a moving company when the truck will arrive and you will be given a date. Ask where that date is written down and the ground shifts. The date came out of a phone call, went onto a quote, and the quote is a document that federal rules load with obligations — a description of the shipment, the services, the valuation choice, the form of payment you will be allowed to use at the kerb — without requiring a single word about when your furniture shows up.

That is not an oversight. It is the seam the whole delay problem falls through.

Two boundaries first. This is about an interstate move, one that crosses a state line, and § 375.101 limits Part 375 to carriers moving household goods for individual shippers in interstate commerce — a move that starts and ends inside one state is governed by that state's rules and none of the sections below reach it. And nothing here is professional advice of any kind: no licence to move, broker or adjust, no jobs booked, no referral fee from any carrier. What follows are section numbers and quoted text you can hold against your own paperwork. I pulled Part 375 and Part 370 from the eCFR versioner API on 27 September 2026; title 49 shows a latest issue date of 24 September 2026 and was last amended 17 September 2026. Every quotation below is that text.

The estimate has no line for it

There are four sections in Part 375 that say what an estimate must contain: 375.401, 375.403, 375.405 and 375.409. Together they run to a little under 17,000 characters. The phrases delivery date, date of delivery, pickup date, date for pickup and period of time appear in them zero times. The only date obligation in the lot is 375.401(h), which tells the mover to hand you a dated copy of the estimate — a date on the document, not a date for the truck.

So the figure a salesperson gives you for delivery is not a regulated field. It is a forecast with a signature block underneath it.

The date becomes a term of the contract in exactly one place, and it is § 375.505(b), the list of seventeen items a bill of lading must contain. Items 6 and 7 are the two doors:

(6) For non-guaranteed service, the agreed date or period of time for pickup of the shipment and the agreed date or period of time for the delivery of the shipment.

(7) For guaranteed service, subject to tariff provisions, the dates for pickup and delivery, and any penalty or per diem entitlements due the individual shipper under the agreement.

Read them side by side and the difference is not the word guaranteed. It is the second half of item 7. Item 6 requires a date or a period and stops. Item 7 requires a date and a number attached to missing it. Everything a late truck does or does not owe you comes out of which of those two lines your move sits on, and you can settle that by reading your own bill of lading.

One more piece of timing matters. Paragraph (h) of the same section: the bill of lading "must be provided to, signed, and dated by the individual shipper at least 3 days before the shipment is scheduled to be loaded," and the mover must give you "the opportunity to rescind the bill of lading without any penalty for a 3-day period" after you sign it. The document that first makes the delivery date contractual is also the document you can undo, penalty-free, for three days. That is the widest leverage you will ever have on this particular question, and it is spent by load day. The charges half of the same document is worked through in Binding, Non-Binding, Not-to-Exceed.

"Delivery spread" is a word from the booklet, not from the rule

Search the regulatory sections of Part 375 for spread and you get nothing. Not one occurrence. The word appears four times in the part, and all four are inside appendix A, the consumer booklet Your Rights and Responsibilities When You Move, which 375.213(a)(2) obliges your mover to give you — or link you to — at the moment it gives you the written estimate. The booklet introduces the term as somebody else's vocabulary:

The mover might use the term "delivery spread" as the timeframe in which you can expect your shipment to be delivered. This means that your shipment could arrive anytime during the delivery spread.

Might use. The rule itself never names it, and never limits it. § 375.603 is two sentences long:

You must tender a shipment for delivery for an individual shipper on the agreed delivery date or within the period specified on the bill of lading. Upon the request or concurrence of the individual shipper, you may waive this requirement.

A figure circulates in search results as though it were federal — twenty-one days, described as an FMCSA standard for long-distance moves. It is not in the part. I read every day-count in the regulatory text: three days before loading, ten days before storage-in-transit expires, fifteen days to present an invoice, thirty days to bill charges that could not be resolved, sixty days for an arbitrator, seven and thirty days of credit. None of them is a transit cap. A fourteen-day window is perfectly lawful; so is a longer one, provided it is what your bill of lading says.

Which puts the weight on a booklet sentence that reads like housekeeping and is actually the defence:

Do not agree to have your shipment picked up or delivered "as soon as possible." The dates or periods you and your mover agree upon should be definite.

And immediately beside it, the cost of a wide window to you rather than to the mover: "When you and the mover agree to a delivery date, or to a range of dates, it is your responsibility to be available to accept delivery on any of those dates." A twelve-day spread is not twelve days of the mover's exposure. It is twelve days of yours, and the booklet names the penalty for stepping out of them: the mover "is not required to change the dates and can place your shipment in storage at your expense if you are unwilling or unable to accept delivery on the agreed dates."

What guaranteed service buys, and what it quietly gives up

§ 375.301(a) lists five service options many carriers offer: space reservation, expedited service, exclusive use of a vehicle, "guaranteed service on or between agreed dates," and liability insurance. Guaranteed delivery sits in that list as a priced add-on, which is how the booklet's glossary treats it too: "An additional level of service featuring guaranteed dates of service. Your mover will provide reimbursement to you for delays. This service may be subject to minimum weight requirements."

Now the inversion. § 375.601:

Transportation in a timely manner is also known as "reasonable dispatch service." You must provide reasonable dispatch service to all individual shippers, except for transportation on the basis of guaranteed pickup and delivery dates.

And the definition of the term in § 375.103, which says the same thing from the other end: reasonable dispatch "means the performance of transportation on the dates, or during the period, agreed upon by you and the individual shipper and shown on the bill of lading," and the term "excludes transportation provided under your tariff provisions requiring guaranteed service dates."

Buying the guarantee therefore moves you out of the regulation's timeliness standard and into your carrier's tariff. Whether that is an upgrade depends entirely on what the tariff says — which is why item 7's phrase "subject to tariff provisions" is doing more work than it looks like it is doing. The words per diem appear exactly once in the whole regulatory text of Part 375, in that item, and the regulation never says what the per diem is.

The same definition hands the carrier its escape hatch: "You will have the defenses of force majeure, i.e., superior or irresistible force, as construed by the courts." The booklet is blunter. Force majeure is "the only reason your mover would be excused from providing a service as described in the bill of lading," and its example is a major snow storm. The definition's one worked example of bad faith is a mover withholding a shipment over money — a different animal entirely, handled in Movers Holding Goods Hostage.

One published tariff, read end to end

Tariffs are the missing half of this subject and most are not online. One is. ArcBest II's ARC 400 Series tariff, which governs U-Pack container and trailer moves, is posted as a PDF and was issued and made effective 15 March 2026. Its cover page places itself squarely inside this rulebook: goods "transported pursuant to 49 U.S.C. § 13102(12)(C) and 49 C.F.R. § 375.103," USDOT registration 2946400. I read the whole of it on 27 September 2026.

Start with what the customer-facing page says. U-Pack's Guaranteed Delivery page, read the same day: "With a U-Pack reservation, your move date is always guaranteed, but transit times are estimated." One sentence, two different promises. Then the remedy: "If your shipment doesn't arrive on the guaranteed date, U-Pack will reduce your transportation charges by up to 100%."

Now the tariff clause behind it. Guaranteed Service Option: if delivery occurs after the guaranteed date because of the carrier or its personnel or a hired service provider, "charges will be eligible for a reduction not to exceed one hundred percent (100%) of the total charges at ArcBest's discretion." Three qualifiers the marketing sentence does not carry — eligible for, not to exceed, at ArcBest's discretion. The guarantee is also conditioned on you: the equipment must be loaded with the bulkhead installed, you must call for pickup by 12:00 p.m. local time on the specified date, and the shipment must be picked up by 6:00 p.m. on the pickup date shown on the confirmation agreement. "If the shipment is picked up after 6:00 p.m. on the reserved pickup date, the guaranteed delivery date is no longer applicable." A crew running late at origin can extinguish the promise at destination. And the guarantee "will not apply in connection with shipments experiencing a delay due to severe weather, acts of God, terrorism, natural disaster, labor disputes, strikes, protests or your inability to receive a trailer(s) or moving container(s)."

Then rule 11, headed simply Delay, which is where the hotel bill goes to die:

Neither ArcBest, personnel nor service providers will be liable to any extent or in any amount to anyone for loss or damage of any kind including, but not limited to, loss of market, loss of value, loss of use, or indirect, consequential, punitive, multiplied, incidental and/or any other indirect damages, expenses and/or costs caused by or resulting from any delay in providing or failure to perform service or any other acts or omissions by ArcBest, personnel or service providers.

Put the two together and the shape of the deal is visible. Without the add-on, transit is an estimate and rule 11 disclaims the consequences of missing it. With the add-on, the ceiling on your recovery is the freight charge itself, discretionary. Neither branch reaches the rent you paid twice or the fortnight of restaurant meals. Whether a clause that broad survives a challenge is a question for a court and not for this page — but it is what a claims desk reads from, and knowing that before you sign is the point.

This is one carrier's published tariff for a container and freight operation. A van line's rules tariff will read differently, possibly much better, and there is no way to guess which. § 375.213(b)(2) is the lever: before a bill of lading is executed, your mover must furnish "a notice of the availability of the applicable sections of your tariff for the estimate of charges, including an explanation that individual shippers may examine these tariff sections or have copies sent to them upon request." Ask for two rules by name — the guaranteed-service rule and the delay rule — and read them in that order.

The duty that survives a slipped date

One obligation attaches the moment the window is missed, whatever the tariff says, and it belongs to shippers on both branches. § 375.605 requires the mover, "as soon as the delay becomes apparent," to notify you at its own expense by one of six listed means: telephone, in person, fax, e-mail, overnight courier, or certified mail with return receipt. It must then advise you of the dates or periods it "expect[s] to be able to pick up and/or deliver the shipment," and "must consider the needs of the individual shipper in your advisement."

The four record duties in paragraph (b) are the part to use. A written record of the date, time and manner of notification. A written record of the amended date or period. Retention for one year from the date of notification. And (b)(4): "You must furnish a copy of the notice to the individual shipper by first class mail or in person if the individual shipper requests a copy of the notice."

Paragraph (b)(4) is the one to write down. A phone call is not evidence. A copy of the notification is a dated document, produced by the mover, containing the mover's own revised date — and it exists on request, for a year, whether or not anybody ever files a claim.

Two adjacent timing rules people conflate with it. Appendix A states flatly that "the mover is required to give you a 24-hour advance notice of when they plan to arrive with your shipment." § 375.521 is narrower: that notice is owed on a collect-on-delivery shipment where the shipper "specifically requests notification of the actual weight or volume and charges," and it may be disregarded in three named circumstances. So make the request — the same call described in Movers Charging More Than Estimated.

And early arrival is governed too. § 375.607 lets the mover, if you will not take an early delivery, warehouse the shipment near destination at its own expense, with immediate written notice of the warehouse's name and address; it keeps bill-of-lading responsibility and carries "the charges for redelivery, handling, and storage" until it finally delivers. Read that section with one thing in mind — Part 375 addresses the carrier as you throughout, so the phrase "at your own expense" in 375.607(a) means at the mover's, not yours. Paragraph (c) then lets it cap that responsibility "up to the agreed delivery date or the first day of the period of time of delivery." Early storage is the mover's cost only until your window opens; after that the meter can become yours, which is the door into Storage in Transit vs Self Storage.

Filing on a date rather than on a dresser

Delay is not a footnote in the claims rules. It is in the operative sentence. § 370.3(a) opens: "A claim for loss or damage to baggage or for loss, damage, injury, or delay to cargo, shall not be voluntarily paid by a carrier unless filed" as the section directs. And § 370.9(a) puts a carrier receiving "a written claim for loss or damage to baggage or for loss, damage, injury, or delay to property transported" on the clock to "pay, decline, or make a firm compromise settlement offer in writing to the claimant within 120 days."

Part 375 names one act as producing such a claim, and it names it twice. On the binding branch, 375.403(a)(10) says that failing to hand over a shipment after the shipper offers the binding estimate plus properly added charges "constitutes a failure to transport a shipment with reasonable dispatch and subjects you to cargo delay claims pursuant to part 370 of this chapter." 375.407(b) carries the same clause over to the non-binding branch at 110 percent. Search the regulatory text of Part 375 for delay and you find five occurrences: those two, and three inside the notification section quoted above. So the only delay Part 375 spells out for you is not a truck stuck somewhere in Nebraska — it is a truck parked outside your new house with the doors shut over money. Ordinary lateness still reaches part 370 on the strength of 370.3(a) alone; it just never gets a sentence of its own.

The minimum contents in 370.3(b) are three, and they are the same three whether the subject is a smashed sideboard or a fortnight in a hotel: facts sufficient to identify the shipment, an assertion of liability, and a claim "for the payment of a specified or determinable amount of money." Note what 370.3(c) then excludes — bad order reports, damage notations on a delivery receipt, inspection reports — none of which counts as a claim on its own. A text-message thread with the dispatcher is in that same category.

The booklet gives two routes and it matters which one you are on. Under the heading Delay Claims: "Delay claims are processed when you have contracted with your mover for guaranteed service for pickup and delivery. Your mover will outline on the bill of lading any penalty or per diem entitlements when there is a pickup delay and/or delivery delay." That is item 7 again, arithmetic rather than argument. For everybody else the booklet is more cautious and still not nothing:

If your mover fails to pick up or deliver your shipment on the agreed date or during the delivery spread, and you have expenses that you otherwise would not have, you may be able to recover these expenses from the mover through a delay of shipment claim. Ask your mover before you move what payment or other arrangements you can expect if your shipment is delayed through the fault of the mover.

May be able to. Read that against rule 11 of a real tariff and you can see why the booklet hedges, and why its "ask before you move" is the operative instruction rather than a pleasantry.

The clocks come from three documents, and it is worth knowing which is which. The filing deadline is your own bill of lading's: 370.3(b) counts a claim as filed "within the time limits specified in the bill of lading or contract of carriage," and 49 U.S.C. 14706(e)(1) forbids a carrier to write that period shorter than nine months. Appendix A states it as nine months from the date of delivery, "or in the event of loss for the entire shipment, from the date your shipment should have been delivered." After filing, 370.5(a) gives the carrier 30 days to acknowledge receipt in writing and 370.9(a) gives it 120 days to pay, decline or make a firm compromise settlement offer — and if it cannot dispose of the claim in that time it owes you a written status letter at 120 days and at "each succeeding 60-day period while the claim remains pending."

One thing not to carry across from a damage claim: the depreciation formula in 370.9(b), which makes the carrier "use the replacement costs of the lost or damaged item as a base to apply a depreciation factor," is about items. A delay claim is built from receipts, not from a depreciation schedule. The format itself is set out in Moving Damage Claim: Two Clocks and One Format Rule.

Where the arbitration route stops

§ 375.211(a) defines the mandatory scope of the arbitration program your mover must run: "disputes about property loss and damage and disputes about whether carrier charges in addition to those collected at delivery must be paid." The statute behind it, 49 U.S.C. 14708(a), uses the same two categories — "damage or loss to the household goods transported" and whether additional charges must be paid.

Delay is in neither list. That does not mean arbitration is unavailable; a carrier is free to write its programme wider than the federal floor, and 375.213(b)(3) requires it to hand you "a concise, easy-to-read, accurate summary of your arbitration program" before the bill of lading is executed. Read the scope sentence in that summary rather than assuming, because where the programme does reach, 14708(b)(6) makes the outcome binding on both parties for claims of $10,000 or less when the shipper requests it, and 14708(b)(5) stops the carrier charging you more than half the cost of instituting the proceeding.

One deadline in the same statute is keyed to precisely the date this page is about, and it is the shortest clock here. Subsection 14708(d) awards a prevailing shipper reasonable attorney's fees in court, but only where all the conditions in (d)(1) to (d)(3) hold, and the first is that the shipper "submits a claim to the carrier within 120 days after the date the shipment is delivered or the date the delivery is scheduled, whichever is later." On a late shipment the actual delivery is the later of the two, so the 120 days runs from the day the truck finally arrives — and if it never arrives, from the date it was promised.

One more record-making obligation worth using in the meantime. § 375.209 requires every mover to maintain a complaint procedure with a telephone number and "a system for recording in writing all inquiries and complaints received from an individual shipper by any means of communication." A complaint lodged on day three of an overrun window is a dated entry in the carrier's own system, which is a different object from an unanswered call.

Those daily figures you keep finding belong to a different programme

Search for compensation figures and you will meet a per-day rate. It comes from the Department of Defense personal property programme, not from FMCSA. The inconvenience claims fact sheet dated March 2026 describes an inconvenience claim as "a payment directly to you from your moving company to account for inconveniences associated with their inability to meet the agreed and/or required dates," then immediately adds that "an IC is not an entitlement." What triggers it is a missed required delivery date while you hold a residence and are available to receive, or an inability to deliver "within seven government business days" of the date you ask for; what it pays runs against a per diem rate; and the moving company itself supplies the DP3 Shipment Inconvenience Claim Form you fill in and hand back, with a local transportation office to call for help. Every one of those parts is a military-move construct. Search Part 375 and appendix A for required delivery date, inconvenience or any per-day figure and you get nothing at all.

The same question, sorted by the day you are standing on

Two lines on one page decide most of this, and both reach you three days before anybody touches your furniture. Item 6 gives you a window; item 7 gives you a window with a number beside it and sends you to a tariff to find out what the number is. So the question worth asking a mover is not whether delivery is guaranteed — everyone says yes — but which of those two items your bill of lading will carry, and what the tariff rule headed Delay says on the day it does not hold.