What Texas movers charge
Most Texas movers price a long haul on weight and distance, and a household leaving the Austin area for Houston, Dallas, or San Antonio usually lands somewhere in the four figures once the truck, the fuel, and two days of crew time are counted. Titan Moving & Delivery quotes those moves in writing before you book, with no deposit taken to get the number. Shorter local work is billed by the hour instead, roughly $120 to $180 an hour for a two-person crew and a truck.
The reason we can quote a run to the Panhandle or the Rio Grande Valley at all is licensing. We hold USDOT 3370717, TxDMV number 008916353C, and interstate authority MC-1789546. All three are public. You can pull them up on the FMCSA and TxDMV databases in about a minute, and we would rather you did.
Your load never gets handed to a stranger
A lot of long-distance quotes in this state come from brokers. A broker sells the job, then sells it again to whichever carrier answers the phone, and the people who show up on load day are not the people who show up on delivery day. Sometimes they are not even the same company.
We move under our own authority, in our own trucks, with our own seven-person crew. The people who wrap your dresser in Del Valle are the people who carry it up the stairs in Fort Worth. Nobody re-sells your household goods in the middle. If something gets scuffed, there is one company to call, and Lee Lucio, who owns the business and answers the phone, is the one who picks up.
Where in Texas we run
We are based at 4200 Burch Dr in Del Valle, just off SH 130 on the southeast side of Austin, which puts a truck on the interstate without fighting through downtown first. From there the common runs look like this.
- I-35 corridor: San Antonio, New Braunfels, San Marcos, Waco, and the Dallas and Fort Worth metro. San Antonio is a same-day load and unload in most cases. Dallas is usually load one day, deliver the next.
- Houston and the Gulf: US 290 or SH 71 to I-10, about three hours with an empty truck and closer to four loaded. Galveston, Beaumont, and Corpus Christi run off the same route.
- West Texas and the Valley: Midland, Odessa, Lubbock, El Paso, Brownsville, McAllen. These are multi-day moves and they get priced that way, with the drive built into the written quote instead of appearing as a surprise line item later.
Every one of those runs starts the same way, with a load-out somewhere in the metro, which is where our mornings actually begin. Going north the trucks take SH 130 and I-35 through Pflugerville and Hutto, into Round Rock, and on up to Georgetown, where a Sun City downsize headed for Dallas is one of the most common statewide jobs we run. West of the highway on the 183 side, Cedar Park and Leander are two-story houses with full garages, and a garage is usually an extra hour before the truck ever points at a highway.
The city itself is the bulk of it, and a load-out in Austin is priced by the building more than by the boxes, whether that is a Rainey Street tower with a reserved freight elevator or a pier-and-beam house in Hyde Park. East of town is our own backyard: the yard sits in Del Valle, Manor is ten minutes up the road, and Bastrop is a straight shot down SH 71, which means an east-side house can be loaded and rolling east before the rest of Austin has finished its commute.
South down I-35 the pattern repeats through Buda and Kyle, and a student household in San Marcos is often the first stop on a truck that is going to Houston the same day. West into the hills is the slow one. A hillside lot in Lakeway or an acreage property in Dripping Springs means a narrow drive, a low limb, and sometimes a shuttle from the road, and we build that into the quote instead of discovering it on the day.
Because we hold interstate authority as well, a move that starts in Texas and ends in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Colorado, or Arizona is the same crew and the same paperwork. Nothing changes at the state line.
What actually moves the price on a statewide move
Four things do most of the work in a long-haul quote, and none of them are mysterious.
Distance and drive time. A truck going to Lubbock is off the board for two days whether it is half full or packed to the roof, and the quote reflects that.
Volume. A one-bedroom apartment and a four-bedroom house with a garage full of tools are not close to the same job. Walk us through the house on a video call and the number gets a lot more accurate.
Access on both ends. Stairs, a long carry from the curb, an elevator you have to reserve, a street a 26-foot truck cannot legally park on. Access is the single most common reason a moving day runs long.
Packing and specialty pieces. If we are packing the kitchen, that is crew hours. If there is a piano, a gun safe, a hot tub, a marble tabletop, or a stacked washer and dryer, those get handled with the right equipment and they get priced on their own line so you can see them.
Full-service work is laid out on our moving services page, and the long-haul specifics live on the long distance moving page.
Who is on the truck
Titan Moving & Delivery is family owned. Eliseo “Lee” Lucio III started it in January 2020, but he did not start moving in 2020. He learned the trade working alongside his father in the late 1990s, and the business is the version he built for himself. He answers the phone and he writes the quotes, which is why the person you talk to on Tuesday knows what your job looks like on Saturday.
The crew is seven people. We are not a franchise, not a van line agent, and not somebody’s dispatch office with a phone number in another state. Across 47 Google reviews we run 4.7 stars, with 44 of them at five, and the reviews are from people whose houses we actually carried.
The other thing that separates us from most Texas movers is a delivery arm. We move single items and specialty pieces, which means we take the things other crews decline: pianos, gun safes, hot tubs, marble tabletops, and appliances. If one of those is going to Houston with the rest of your house, it goes on the same truck.
Red flags when hiring movers in Texas
The moving business has a bad reputation in places, and it earned it. Here is what to walk away from.
No USDOT number, or one that does not come back active in the FMCSA database. In Texas, an intrastate household mover also has to hold a TxDMV number. If a company cannot give you both, that is the end of the conversation.
A large deposit demanded before anyone has looked at your house. A quote given over the phone in ninety seconds with no questions about stairs, square footage, or what is in the garage. A price that only exists verbally. A hostage clause, meaning the load will not come off the truck until you pay more than the estimate said.
Our version is boring on purpose: a written quote, no deposit to get it, and license numbers printed on the page you are reading.
Cheapest day to move
Midweek in the middle of the month is the cheapest and easiest time to move almost anywhere in Texas. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday between roughly the 5th and the 20th are the quietest, because leases turn over at the end of the month and everybody wants a Saturday. Spring and summer are our busiest stretch, so a July Saturday books out further than a February Wednesday.
Tipping is not required and we never build it into a quote. If you want to, the common range in this market is $20 to $40 per mover for a half-day local job and more like $50 to $100 per mover after a long, heavy, all-day move. On a two-day haul across the state, most people tip at delivery rather than at both ends. Cold drinks are appreciated more than you would think in a Texas August.
Getting a quote
Send us the origin and destination, your rough timeline, and a walkthrough of the house, either as a video or a room-by-room list. We come back with a written quote, an honest read on how long it will take, and the license numbers so you can verify us before you commit. If a shorter in-town job is really what you have, the local moving page has the hourly detail. Either way, the quote is free and there is no deposit to see it.
