Moving Companies in Des Moines, IA
A local crew in the Des Moines area typically runs about $142 an hour, with full local jobs falling somewhere between $922 and $4,878 depending on your home's size and how many movers the job needs. Moves leaving the region entirely are priced differently — by the total weight of your things and the distance traveled, not by the clock.
That hourly clock usually starts when the truck leaves the company's lot, not when it reaches your door, so clearing the driveway and having small items already boxed up before the crew arrives helps keep billed hours down. Extra charges can appear for carrying items more than 75 feet from your door to the truck, hauling boxes up stairs with no elevator, or shuttling belongings from a larger truck that can't fit down a narrow street — flagging these details in advance avoids sticker shock later.
Standard liability coverage included with most movers is minimal: it pays out at $0.60 per pound per item, so a broken 10-pound television nets about $6 no matter what it actually cost. Keep medications, ID, and chargers in your own car, since movers won't carry hazardous items like propane or aerosols regardless. Free boxes are often available at local liquor and grocery stores weeks before your date, well before paying the moving company for them.
The movers listed below serve this area at those rates.
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Quotes from movers in Des Moines, IA
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Best Movers in Des Moines, IA
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Who's moving to Des Moines, IA
Federal tax-filer migration data for Polk County.
57% arrived from elsewhere in Iowa. Most arrivals are in-state moves, so a regional company will usually cover it — check interstate authority only if you're crossing a state line.
See licensed movers41% of departures stayed under 50 miles. Short local moves are usually priced by the hour, so a regional company is often the cheaper call.
See the full picture — 5-year trend, state flows and top routes
Des Moines refills from a distance: nearby counties pull households out, and the rest of the country more than replaces them. Head count stayed flat all the same — arriving households are smaller (1.56 people on average) than the ones leaving (1.63), so the city gained homes without gaining residents.
Each bar shows that state's in/out split — rows are ranked by total volume.
Households arriving from another state report $67,493 in average annual income; those relocating from elsewhere in Iowa report $64,014. Long-distance arrivals are the higher-budget half of the market.
How this works: IRS SOI County-to-County Migration Data, 2022-2023. The IRS compares the address on consecutive tax returns, so every move here is a real filed household. The catch: it publishes annually with about a two-year lag, counts Polk County rather than city limits exactly, misses people who don't file a return, and leaves 29% of moves unattributed to a specific county, because flows too small to publish are grouped into regional buckets instead. See the whole state on the Iowa migration page →
How much truck space do you need?
I’m moving a that’s .
Industry rules of thumb — about seven pounds per cubic foot, and published rental-truck capacities. Not our carrier records, not a quote. Bring both numbers to the call and what you get back will finally be comparable.