What storage unit movers do
Most people searching for storage unit movers want one of three jobs done: get a household into a unit, get it back out, or shift everything from one unit to a bigger or closer one. We do all three, usually at about $120 to $180 an hour for a two-person crew and truck, quoted in writing before you book. Start with the part nobody says out loud: we do not rent storage. We do not own a facility, we do not sell containers, and we will not hold your things. You rent the unit from whichever facility you choose. We load it, unload it, or empty it.
Titan Moving & Delivery is family owned out of Del Valle, seven crew. Owner Lee Lucio started in the trade alongside his father in the late 1990s, and he still quotes the jobs himself.
Will movers go to a storage unit
Yes, and it is steady work for our crew, but not every mover treats it as a real job. A storage facility is a different environment than a house. There are gate codes and access hours, and if the facility closes at 6 and we start at 4, that is a problem we need to know about on the phone, not at the gate. There are elevators and long interior hallways in the climate-controlled buildings, which means a longer carry from the truck than most people expect. There are drive-up units where the truck backs right to the roll-up door, which is the fastest version of this job by a wide margin.
Tell us which kind you have when you call. Drive-up, ground floor interior, or upper floor with an elevator changes the hours, and the hours are the price.
How much do movers cost for a storage unit
The same hourly math as any other job. Two movers and a truck run roughly $120 to $180 an hour in the Austin area, and the total is the hours plus the drive between your home and the facility.
Three things set the hours.
- Carry distance: a drive-up unit where we back the truck to the door is fast. A third-floor climate-controlled unit at the end of a hundred-foot hallway can double the time for the exact same furniture.
- Access hours and gates: facilities with a hard closing time force us to work in a window. If the unit is only reachable from 9 to 5, we schedule around it.
- How the unit was packed the first time: if we are emptying a unit that was loaded floor to ceiling with no aisle, everything comes out in the order it went in, and that is slow.
How much does it cost to move a 10×10 storage unit
A 10 by 10 is roughly the contents of a two-bedroom apartment, which is around 800 cubic feet of space. Loading or unloading one is usually a three to five hour job for two movers, so most 10 by 10 jobs land somewhere around $400 to $800 depending on the carry, the stairs at the home end, and how much of it is furniture versus boxes.
If the unit is a drive-up and the home is a ground-floor house with a driveway, you are at the low end. If the unit is upstairs at a climate-controlled facility and the home is a third-floor walk-up apartment, you are at the high end and it may take a third mover to keep the clock down. We will tell you which one you are before we book, not after.
Bigger and smaller sizes scale about how you would expect. A 5 by 10 is often two to three hours. A 10 by 20 holding a full house is usually a full day and a bigger crew.
Packing a unit so it stays accessible and nothing gets crushed
Anybody can throw a household into a metal box. Doing it so you can still get to the Christmas decorations in December, and so the box spring is not resting on a lamp, is the actual skill.
We build a unit the way we build a truck. Heavy and square goes on the bottom and against the back wall: dressers, appliances, filing cabinets, the sturdy boxes. Mattresses and box springs stand on edge along a side wall rather than lying flat, because flat is where they get used as a shelf and get ruined. Sofas go on end when the frame allows it, which frees a surprising amount of floor. Fragile items ride on top of the heavy stuff, never under. Anything with a motor or a compressor stays upright.
Then we leave an aisle. A center aisle costs you maybe a foot of depth and it is the difference between grabbing one box in five minutes and unloading half the unit on a Saturday. If there are things you know you will need before the rest, say so and we will build the front of the unit around them.
Boxes make all of this work, and a unit loaded with garbage bags and loose piles does not stack. If you want the boxes packed properly before the truck comes, our packing service handles that.
Load out, hold, and load back in
This is the most common storage job we run, and it usually starts with a phone call that begins “our closing moved.” You have to be out of the old place on the 15th and you cannot get into the new one until the 30th. The furniture has to live somewhere for two weeks.
The pattern is simple. You rent a unit, sized with our help if you want it, close to the new address rather than the old one so the second trip is short. We load the house into the truck and into the unit on move-out day, packed tight, with the things you need in that two-week gap staged at the front. When the new place is ready, we come back, empty the unit, and put the household into the new house.
Two moves means two labor charges, and there is no way around that. What we can do is keep the second one short by loading the unit in the order the house will come out of it, and by putting the unit near the destination. Book both dates at once if you can. Spring and summer weekends fill up.
Where you rent the unit is worth thinking about before you sign. If the new house is out in Manor or Hutto, a facility on that side of the metro shortens the second trip by most of an hour, and on an hourly job the drive is billed like everything else. A drive-up unit ten minutes from the new address beats a cheaper one across town almost every time.
Unit to unit, and unit to a truck you rented
Moving between units happens more than people think. You outgrew a 5 by 10, or you are consolidating two units into one, or you found a facility ten minutes closer and cheaper. If both units are at the same facility, this is often a short job and there is barely any drive time. If they are across town, it is a normal load-and-drive.
You can also hire the crew without the truck. If you rented a truck, a POD or a container yourself and just need it loaded into or out of the unit, that is labor-only moving help, and it is priced by the hour with no truck charge.
What is the cheapest way to move your stuff
Honestly: get rid of things before they go in the unit. Storage rent adds up quietly, and people pay a hundred dollars a month for years to store furniture worth less than the rent. Sort before move-out day, not after, and rent the smallest unit your things actually fit into. Every foot of unit you do not rent is money you keep.
After that, the cheap levers are the ones you control. Book midweek instead of a Saturday at the end of the month. Choose a drive-up unit over an upstairs one if the facility offers it. Have everything boxed and stacked by the door before we arrive so the crew is carrying, not sorting. And pick a facility near the destination, not near the old house.
Getting a quote
Tell us the facility, the unit size, whether it is drive-up or interior, the access hours, and what is going in or coming out. Lee will give you an hourly rate and an honest window of hours in writing. There is no deposit to get a quote, and if the job runs shorter than estimated you pay for the time you used.
Titan Moving & Delivery is licensed and insured, with our own interstate authority. Our numbers are public on the FMCSA and TxDMV databases, and they are worth checking before you hand anyone your household. We hold 4.7 stars across 47 Google reviews, 44 of them five stars. For the full list of what the crew handles, see all our moving services.