How to Compare Moving Companies:
Seven Checks You Can Run Yourself
Seven things you can verify about any moving company before you book, using public databases and questions that have checkable answers. We ran the same seven checks on ourselves and published the results, including the ones we do not pass.
Key Takeaways
- Every credential in this business is public. CAL-T numbers at search.dca.ca.gov, USDOT numbers at safer.fmcsa.dot.gov, both free, both about a minute.
- The company that quotes you is not always the company that loads you. Ask which it is, and get the answer in writing before you book.
- A delivery window of 7 to 21 days usually means your goods wait in a warehouse for a full trailer. Ask for a daily drive rate instead of a window.
- No mover needs your money before move day, and a non-binding estimate is legally allowed to rise at pickup once your furniture is on the truck.
- Check who voted on the award and read the newest reviews rather than the review count. We hold no awards, and our Google rating is 4.6 from 176 reviews.
By the Discount Movers Team · Published & last reviewed August 6, 2026 · Licensed California household mover · CAL-T #201759 issued by the BHGS · US DOT #4372335 · BBB A+ Rated
The Direct Answer
Seven Things You Can Check,
Before You Sign Anything
Compare movers on seven verifiable things, not on price alone. Look up the license yourself at the state and federal databases. Find out whether the company that quotes you is the company that loads you. Get the delivery commitment and the daily drive rate in writing. Refuse deposits. Ask whether the estimate is binding. Check who voted on any award. Read the newest reviews on the platform that verifies them. Every one of these is checkable before you sign.
Check 1 of 7
Look Up The License Yourself,
And Test The Method On Us First
Every legitimate California household mover holds a CAL-T number issued by the Bureau of Household Goods and Services. Every legitimate interstate mover holds FMCSA operating authority and a USDOT number. Both records are public, both lookups take about a minute, and neither one requires you to speak to a salesperson. For the state license, use the Department of Consumer Affairs license search at search.dca.ca.gov and enter the CAL-T number the company gave you. For interstate authority, go to safer.fmcsa.dot.gov and search the USDOT number.
Practice on us before you practice on anybody else. Our CAL-T is 201759 and our USDOT is 4372335. If what we published does not match what the state and federal databases say, you have learned something useful about us and it cost you two minutes.
One detail worth carrying into the other calls you make: California household movers have been regulated by the BHGS since July 1, 2018, when it took over from the Public Utilities Commission. A company still advertising PUC regulation is quoting a credential that stopped existing eight years ago.
How To Check It
Search the CAL-T number at search.dca.ca.gov and the USDOT number at safer.fmcsa.dot.gov, then confirm the legal entity name on each record matches the name printed on your estimate.
Red Flag
If a company will not put a license number in writing before you book, the license number is the problem.
Check 2 of 7
Find Out Who Actually
Shows Up On Move Day
A broker sells your move to a carrier. Brokers own no trucks and employ no crews, and the FMCSA requires them to disclose broker status. The distinction matters because the company that gave you the price is not always the company that has to honor it, and the crew that arrives may never have seen your original estimate.
Ask one question and insist on a written answer: will the truck and the crew on move day be your own employees, or will this move be assigned to another company? Then ask for the USDOT number of whoever actually loads, and look that number up too.
For the record, we are a carrier. Our own trucks, our own crews, our own USDOT number, operating as Discount Moving and Storage LLC trading as Discount Movers, family owned since 1997 and more than 50,000 moves in. Brokers are not illegal and some are competent. They are simply not the people who show up.
How To Check It
Ask in writing whose employees and whose truck will arrive, get the USDOT number of the loading company, and check its entity type on the SAFER record at safer.fmcsa.dot.gov.
Red Flag
If nobody will name the company that will physically load your furniture, assume it has not been chosen yet.
Check 3 of 7
Get The Delivery Commitment In Writing,
And Ask For The Daily Drive Rate
Most interstate carriers consolidate. Your shipment waits in a warehouse until there is enough freight heading the same direction to fill a trailer, which is why the standard industry answer is a delivery window of roughly 7 to 21 days. That is a legitimate business model, and it is also the reason nobody can give you a date.
So ask the question that cuts through it: what is your daily drive rate, and when does the clock start? A company running your goods on a dedicated truck can answer in miles per day. A company that consolidates has to answer in weeks. Both answers are honest. Only one of them lets you book a flight, hand back keys, or tell a new employer when you can start.
Ours, confirmed by the owner: we drive 550 miles per day, starting the day after we load. Within 200 miles, including Los Angeles, we deliver the same day. We tested that formula against 62 of our published route transit times and it matched all 62. Whatever number you are given, get it written next to the price.
How To Check It
Ask for the daily drive rate and the start of the clock, then ask for both to appear on the written estimate beside the delivery date or window.
Red Flag
A delivery window with no daily drive rate behind it means your goods are waiting for other people’s freight.
Check 4 of 7
Treat Any Deposit
As A Red Flag
There is no operational reason for a moving company to hold your money before move day. The trucks are already owned. The crews are already employed. The fuel is bought on the day. A deposit does one thing: it shifts risk from the company to you, and it makes walking away expensive at exactly the moment you learn something you do not like.
Deposits are also a common tell for a booking fee, which is money paid to whoever sold you the job rather than to whoever carries your furniture down the stairs. Ask plainly whether anything at all is due before the crew arrives, including a card kept on file, an authorization hold, or a nonrefundable date reservation. Then ask what happens to that money if the delivery date slips or the price changes at pickup.
Our policy is simple and easy to test: no deposit ever, no online payment, and nothing charged before move day. You pay when the work is done. If another company cannot match that, it should at least be able to say in one sentence what the money is for.
How To Check It
Ask what is due before the crew arrives, in any form, and ask for the refund terms of that amount in writing.
Red Flag
Money that changes hands before your furniture does is leverage, and it is not yours anymore.
Check 5 of 7
Know Whether Your Estimate
Is Binding, And What It Excludes
A non-binding estimate is a projection, and it is legally allowed to rise at pickup once the crew reweighs or recounts. That is where a price doubles. Not on the sales call, but in the driveway, with your sofa already on the truck and your lease ending Tuesday. A binding estimate or a written flat rate cannot move unless you add services. Ask which one you are being given, and ask for the word itself in writing.
For long distance, our rate is flat and locked in writing before we load, never hourly. Local work is different, and we should be straight about that: hourly pricing is neither binding nor non-binding, it is a rate, and the hours are the hours.
What you can pin down is everything around the rate. Ours is $119 per hour cash for 2 movers, $169 for 3, $219 for 4 and $269 for 5, with three hour minimums of $357, $507, $657 and $807, a flat $75 fuel fee, and 25 free boxes. Ask any company you call for that same itemized list before you book anything.
How To Check It
Ask whether the document is a binding estimate, a written flat rate, or a non-binding estimate, and get the itemized list of what triggers a change.
Red Flag
If nobody will say the word binding, assume the number you were quoted is the lowest number you will ever see.
Check 6 of 7
Check The Award,
Not The Badge
Badges are cheap. Awards are specific. Before a trophy graphic on a website means anything to you, ask four questions: who voted, how many of them, covering what geographic area, and in what year. A real award names the awarding body, the category, the region and the year, and the awarding body publishes its methodology.
A badge that names none of those is usually a paid directory placement or a graphic somebody made in house, and there is an entire industry selling them by the year. The same test applies to any seal sitting in a footer with no link to the record behind it.
Here is where we fail our own check, and we would rather tell you than have you find it. We hold no awards. None at all. We hold a BBB A+ rating, which is a rating issued by one organization against its own published criteria, and a rating is not an award. We are not going to dress ours up as one, and you should not accept anybody else dressing one up either.
How To Check It
Ask for the awarding body, the year, the category and the voting pool, then search for that award independently of the company’s own website.
Red Flag
An award with no year, no region and no voting body attached to it is decoration, not evidence.
Check 7 of 7
Read Reviews For Recency And Platform,
Not Raw Volume
Volume is the easiest number to inflate and the least useful one to read. Two things matter more. First, recency. Sort to the newest reviews and read the last ninety days, because a crew that was excellent in 2019 tells you nothing about the crew arriving next month. Second, platform. A rating on a platform that verifies the reviewer carries more weight than a wall of testimonials a company typed onto its own site.
Watch for one specific blur. A company shows a large total review count gathered from every platform it appears on, then sets a star rating beside it, so the rating looks as though it was earned across all of them. Those are two separate facts.
Ours, stated separately and deliberately: our Google rating is 4.6 stars from 176 Google reviews. Across Google, Yelp, Customer Lobby and Facebook we have 596 reviews in total. The 4.6 is not the average of 596 and we will not present it that way. A 4.6 means some customers were unhappy. Read those ones.
How To Check It
Sort each platform by newest, read ninety days of reviews including the low ones, and confirm which platform the advertised star rating actually comes from.
Red Flag
A star rating printed next to a combined review total from several platforms is two numbers pretending to be one.
Our Own Scorecard
The Same Seven Checks,
Run On Discount Movers
A checklist is only worth reading if it applies to whoever wrote it. So here is our own scorecard, run honestly against the seven checks above and published on our own site. We do not pass all seven, and a page like this one would not deserve your time if we did.
Four passes, two partials and one flat no, out of seven. We are not going to round that up either.
FAQ
Comparing Movers,
Common Questions
The Point Of All This
Ask Three Companies,
Not Just This One
Take these seven questions to three companies and hire whichever one answers them best. If that turns out not to be us, this page still did its job. We published our own numbers here, including the ones that do not flatter us, because a checklist whose author quietly fails it is just an ad in a costume. Ours is above, with a no in it and two partials.
Related: If your movers do not show up
Run The Seven Checks On Us
No deposit, nothing charged before move day, and a flat rate in writing on long distance before we load.
📞 (858) 490-0155