Two rules of thumb, both of them loose
Every truck-size estimate is the same two steps. Turn the home into a volume, then compare the volume with a truck. The first step is where all the error lives, and it is worth seeing how little precision is available. A furnished room is commonly reckoned at somewhere between 150 and 250 cubic feet of goods. That is not a narrow band — it is a spread of two thirds around the low figure, and it has to be, because a spare bedroom with a bed and a lamp and a spare bedroom with a bed, two wardrobes and forty boxes of books are both one room.
Multiply out and the home-size figures fall where you would expect: a one-bedroom apartment somewhere near 400 to 650 cubic feet, a two-bedroom apartment 600 to 1,000, a three-bedroom house 1,000 to 1,750, a four-bedroom house 1,350 to 2,250. Those ranges are the honest form of the answer. Anyone quoting you 812 cubic feet for a two-bedroom is quoting a midpoint with the uncertainty filed off.
Which is why both halves of the calculation are editable here. If you have already boxed the study and you know it is thirty medium boxes and a desk, put a real number in rather than accepting 200 cubic feet for it.
What the published cubic feet is measuring
Rental companies publish a capacity figure for each truck length, and the figure is honest about the box while being quietly optimistic about the load. Two things are worth knowing.
| Nominal size | Commonly published | What that includes |
|---|---|---|
| Cargo van | around 245 cu ft | Floor to roof, no loft |
| 10 ft | around 400 cu ft | Box plus the over-cab area |
| 15 ft | around 764 cu ft | Box plus a deep over-cab loft |
| 20 ft | around 1,015 cu ft | Box plus loft |
| 26 ft | around 1,680 cu ft | Box plus loft |
First, the loft over the cab is counted. It is real space and you can load it, but it is above head height, you are passing things up into it, and it is the awkward part of the truck rather than the useful part. Second, the numbers differ between companies for the same nominal length, sometimes by a hundred cubic feet or more, because the boxes are genuinely different and because measuring conventions differ. The figures in the table are typical of what one large company publishes and should be treated as orientation, not specification. Take the number off the page you are booking from.
Then discount it. A load made of rectangular boxes and flat furniture packs tightly; a load made of a sofa, a bicycle, a floor lamp and a mattress does not. Eighty to ninety percent of published capacity is what a careful load reaches, and the default here is 85.
Two trips is a real option, not a failure
The default assumption is that everything must go in one load, and for a long-distance move it must. For a move across town it often should not. A 15 foot truck twice can be cheaper than a 26 foot truck once, it is easier to park on both streets, it does not need the wide turn, and you are not driving something the size of a bus for the first time on the day you are already exhausted.
What kills the two-trip plan is distance. Each extra trip is two crossings, plus the reload, plus the unload, and at anything over half an hour each way it stops being a saving and becomes a second moving day. The mileage field above exists to put that in front of you as a number rather than as an assumption.
Measure the doorway and the load height
The truck is almost never what stops a move. The front door is, or the turn at the top of the stairs, or the lift in the building at the other end. Before the truck size matters at all, walk the route with a tape at both ends and write down the narrowest clear opening, the tightest turn, and the ceiling height where you would need to tip something upright. If a piece will not leave the old place, its cubic feet were never on the truck anyway. The furniture fit checker does that arithmetic.
At the truck end, the number to have is the height of the roll-up door opening, which is lower than the inside of the box — sometimes by half a foot. A tall wardrobe or a fridge that stands comfortably inside may still have to be tilted through the doorway to get there, and a fridge tilted is a fridge you should stand upright for some hours before plugging in. Ask the counter for the door opening dimensions, or measure them when you collect it, before the first item is on the ramp.
Questions people ask
What size moving truck do I need for a 2-bedroom apartment?
On the usual rule of thumb a two-bedroom apartment is 600 to 1,000 cubic feet, which straddles the 15 and 20 foot sizes. If you are at the sparse end — one bed, a sofa, a table, thirty boxes — a 15 footer at around 764 published cubic feet is enough. If there are bookcases, a home office, bicycles and a storage cupboard, you are over 800 and the 15 will not do it in one load. The honest answer is to walk the rooms and count rather than to accept a bedroom count as a proxy, because two apartments with the same floor plan differ by a factor of two in what is in them.
Is the published cubic feet what I can actually load?
No, and the gap is worth planning for. The published figure measures the whole box including the loft over the cab, which is real volume but is above head height and awkward to load, and the number assumes perfect packing. Household goods do not pack perfectly: a sofa, a mattress and a bicycle leave air around them no matter how you stack. Somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of the published number is what a careful load reaches, and less than that if you are loading in a hurry. Rental companies also publish different figures for the same nominal truck length, so use the number from the company you are actually booking with.
Is it better to make two trips in a small truck or one in a big one?
It depends almost entirely on the distance and hardly at all on the cubic feet. Across town, two trips in a 15 footer is frequently the better move: cheaper, easier to park at both ends, and you are not driving a 26 foot box through residential streets. Beyond about half an hour each way, the second trip costs you the fuel, the mileage charge and most of a day, and a single larger truck wins. Factor in that the second load is done when you are already tired, which is when things get dropped.
How many cubic feet is a room of furniture?
Commonly quoted as 150 to 250, and that spread is the real answer rather than a hedge. The figure has to cover a bedroom with a bed and a chest of drawers and a bedroom with a bed, two wardrobes, a desk and the contents of a loft. Storage furniture is what moves the number: bookcases, wardrobes, filing cabinets and their contents add volume fast, while a large empty-looking living room may be a sofa and a television. If you can, count the actual pieces and boxes for the two or three rooms that dominate rather than applying one figure to everything.