Guide
How interstate moving scams actually work
Last updated
Almost all interstate moving fraud runs the same play. A quote comes in well below the others. Your things get loaded. Somewhere between origin and destination the price goes up — often several times over — and the leverage for collecting it is that the company is holding everything you own.
That is the shape. The variations are mostly about how the low quote is made to look credible up front. Below is what each stage looks like from the customer's side, and which parts you can check against the federal record before any money moves.
This page describes patterns, not companies. Nothing here says a specific carrier is or isn't a scam, and no page on this site does. We publish what the federal record states; you draw the conclusion.
Stage one: the estimate that is too good
The sight-unseen quote
A binding-sounding price produced over the phone or from a web form, without anyone surveying what you actually own. It is cheap because it is fictional. For interstate moves, federal rules require the mover to base an estimate on a physical or virtual survey of the goods — a company skipping the survey entirely has skipped the step that makes an estimate mean anything.
“Binding” that isn’t
Estimates come in different kinds and the label matters. A binding estimate fixes the price for the goods and services listed. A non-binding estimate is a good-faith guess, and the final charge can differ. The important protection is the 110% rule: on a non-binding estimate the mover must release your shipment on payment of no more than 110% of the estimated charges, and bill you the remainder afterwards. Charges for services you genuinely added later sit outside that. A verbal assurance that a price is "locked in", with a document that says otherwise, is the document winning.
The large deposit
Reputable interstate movers commonly take no deposit at all, or a modest one. A demand for a large share of the total up front — especially by wire transfer, cash, or an app that makes reversal impossible — is the single clearest warning sign on this page, because it is the point at which you lose the ability to walk away.
If you have a quote in front of you already, the deposit is one of eight things worth checking on it: work through the estimate you were given.
Stage two: the paperwork
Blank or incomplete documents
Never sign a blank bill of lading, a blank inventory, or an estimate with empty fields "to be filled in later". The bill of lading is the contract and the receipt; whatever is written on it when a dispute starts is what governs. Blank space is space someone else fills in.
No “Your Rights and Responsibilities” booklet
Interstate movers are required to provide FMCSA's consumer booklet — in practice, a link or a PDF is fine. A company that has never mentioned it is either unaware of the rules that govern its own industry or is not planning to follow them. What the booklet covers.
The name on the truck isn’t the name on the contract
Sometimes ordinary: you may have hired a broker, which arranges moves and hands the job to a carrier. Brokers are legitimate and regulated, but they are not who moves you, and their quote is not binding on the carrier who shows up. Ask, before booking: which USDOT number will be on the truck? Then check that carrier, not the broker.
Stage three: delivery, and the price going up
If a mover is refusing to deliver until you pay more than you owe, that is not a billing dispute — it has a specific name, a specific federal complaint channel, and a hotline. Read this before you pay anything, because paying in full is usually the point at which your leverage disappears.
What you can check in the federal record beforehand
Not everything above is checkable. These are:
- Whether the company exists as a registered carrier. Get the USDOT number and look it up.
- Whether its operating authority is currently active and covers household goods. Selling interstate moves without it is the most consequential thing on this list and among the easiest to verify.
- Whether insurance filings are on record. A missing filing on an active authority is a real inconsistency.
- Whether an out-of-service order is in force. A carrier under one is prohibited from operating at all.
- How long the USDOT number has been registered. Operators who dissolve and re-register under new names leave a trail of recently registered numbers. A new number isn't proof of anything — every honest company was new once — but paired with other flags it's informative.
- Complaint history, in the National Consumer Complaint Database, searched by USDOT number.
Try a company name, or a USDOT number like 76830.
Search by company name or USDOT number. Every profile links straight back to the FMCSA systems behind it.
What the record can’t tell you
It is worth being straight about the limits. The federal record will not tell you whether a company packs carefully, shows up on time, or is pleasant to deal with. A carrier with clean paperwork can still do a bad job. What the record does well is catch the specific, serious cases — no authority, revoked authority, an open out-of-service order, missing insurance — that no amount of persuasive salesmanship can talk its way around.
A complaint count of "not yet verified" on this site means we have not checked that carrier. It does not mean zero complaints. The complaint database publishes no bulk feed, so we check carriers on a rolling schedule and label the field honestly until then.
Where this comes from
This page summarises federal rules in plain language. It is not legal advice, and the authoritative text is the regulation itself.
- FMCSA — Protect Your Move ↗ The federal consumer campaign, including its own red-flag list.
- FMCSA National Consumer Complaint Database ↗ Where to file, and where to search complaints against a USDOT number.
- 49 CFR Part 375 — Transportation of household goods; consumer protection ↗ The estimate, documentation and delivery rules referenced here.