The three crews
| Move | Crew + truck | Hourly rate |
|---|---|---|
| Apartment or unitwalk-up flats, beachfront units | 2 movers + 1 truck | $250/hr |
| House, 2–3 bedslope-street homes, semis | 3 movers + 1 truck | $350/hr |
| Large home or office, 4+long-held family homes, the ridge | 4 movers + 2 trucks | $500/hr |
One rate per crew, without the wink
Three crews, three numbers, and that's the whole card. No weekend loading, no surge, no "fuel levy" appearing on the invoice, no discount theatre where an inflated rate gets marked down to the real one. The day costs the hours it takes at the rate of the crew you booked, and both halves of that sentence are written down before anyone lifts anything.
What actually drives the hours
Furniture volume sets the floor, and access sets the rest. In this suburb, access is the interesting part:
- Carry distance, door to tailgate. Twenty metres of level footpath and forty sandstone garden steps are very different numbers wearing the same tape-measure length.
- Vertical metres. Every flight of stairs and every metre of slope is time. Not a problem, not a surcharge: time, counted honestly in the estimate instead of discovered on the day.
- The standing position. A truck that stands close and legal keeps every carry short. This is most of why we plan the kerb and the crest before quoting; the plan is what keeps your hours down.
- Packing readiness. A fully cartoned home loads at twice the pace of a half-packed one. If you're packing yourself, finishing before 7am on the day is worth more than any discount.
Why the bigger crew is often the cheaper one
The counter-intuitive bit of hourly pricing: on hard access, more hands finish disproportionately faster. Three movers on a walk-up split into a stair team and a tailgate team; the stairs never wait for the truck or the truck for the stairs. The rate rises $100 an hour and the hours fall further. When we suggest a bigger crew on your callback, that's the arithmetic we're doing, out loud, and you can veto it.
How to read anyone's hourly quote
Ours or a competitor's, the same three questions expose an honest number:
- Did they ask about stairs, slope and parking before giving hours? A quote that never asked can't have counted.
- Is travel/callout stated plainly up front, rather than appearing on the invoice?
- Does the crew size come with a reason: this street, this volume, this carry?
If the answers are yes, you're comparing real numbers. That's the comparison we're happy to be in.
Three crews: $250, $350 and $500 an hour, one rate each. Volume sets the floor, access sets the rest, and on this terrain the crew that costs more per hour regularly costs less per move.