What We Verify and What We Leave Blank

Researched and written by Daniel Harper · Reviewed by Amanda Brooks · Last reviewed August 2026

We publish no numeric score for moving companies

There is no star rating, no score out of five, and no ranked winner anywhere on this site. A number on a five-point scale reads as a measurement whatever label sits beside it, and a defensible measurement of a moving company would need inputs we do not hold for most of the companies we list: a complete federal compliance record, a sourced accreditation profile, and a verifiable review aggregate. Where those are missing, a score is an invention rather than a summary.

We also emit no rating value in the structured data attached to a company page. A rating inside a review of a named business is a machine-readable factual assertion, and we make none. What each profile carries instead is the sourced record: federal registration and operating authority, founding year, headquarters, coverage, services, and an estimated price range labelled by scope. Everything we cannot source is left blank rather than filled with a plausible value.

How we research state regulator records

Each state page describes the agency that licenses intrastate household-goods movers in that state, the instrument it uses, and whether it regulates rates, licensing, and brokers. Every one of those statements is taken from the regulator's own site or the state's published rules, and each record stores the source URL and the date we read it. A state we have not researched carries no agency claim at all, because the absence of a licensing program is itself a claim that needs a source. Rate and licence regimes are stored as fixed categories rather than free prose, so two pages cannot describe the same state differently.

The agency itself can change. We hold three state records where a state source names a transfer of the function and the date it took effect: California moved household goods movers from the California Public Utilities Commission to the Bureau of Household Goods and Services with effect from 1 July 2018; New Hampshire moved household goods movers from the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission to the New Hampshire Department of Safety with effect from 1 January 2023; New Mexico moved household goods movers from the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission to the New Mexico Department of Transportation with effect from 1 July 2024. Where that is documented, the state page names the current agency and the earlier one, so a reader who has been sent to a superseded regulator can see what happened. Older guidance, including guidance still published elsewhere, may name the agency that used to hold the function. We record a transfer only where a state source states it, and we make no claim either way about any state whose record does not carry one.

How our cost ranges are built and labelled

The cost ranges on this site are editorial estimates. They describe what a move of a given size typically costs, not what any specific customer was quoted or paid. Every range is drawn from one dataset, so the figure on a state page, a route page, and a company page for the same move type always agrees. A build-time check fails the release if two modules ever disagree about the same home size, move type, and scope.

Each range carries a scope. A national range applies across the United States. A state or metro range applies only where local data exists. A company range is our estimate for that specific mover and is labelled as such. Where we hold only a wider-scope figure, the page says so instead of presenting a national number as a local one. We publish no medians or sample sizes unless a real dataset supports them. The national ranges are currently unverified against an external dataset: they are our editorial position and have not been traced to a published dataset, and the page says so rather than implying otherwise.

What we publish only with a source

Licensing and operating authority: the federal FMCSA register, stored with the identifier we read.
State regulator agencies, rules, and rate instruments: the regulator's own published material.
Federal requirements such as the broker surety bond: the eCFR text, cited and linked in place.
Company facts such as founding year, headquarters, coverage, and services: official company sources.
Third-party accreditation grades: only when the record stores that company's own profile URL and the date it was read.

What we deliberately leave blank

A field with no source stays empty and the page renders without it. Today that includes accreditation grades for every company on the site, per-company complaint statistics, and any claim that a company holds a particular bond or insurance policy. It also includes negative claims: we do not say a state has no licensing program unless we can point at the rule that says so. A blank field is a finished piece of work. A plausible value in a blank field is a failure.

Editorial independence

Bestmovers.info may earn a referral fee when readers request quotes from a listed company. Those fees fund the operation but do not influence which companies appear or what we publish about them. Companies cannot pay for a listing, a position in any list, or the removal of criticism. Our full corrections process is on the editorial policy page.

Data freshness

Company profiles carry the date each federal field was pulled, shown on the profile itself, and are refreshed on a rolling basis rather than on a fixed cycle we enforce in code. Cost ranges are reviewed semi-annually and every table carries its own review date. Regulator records carry the date each source was last read, shown on the page rather than held internally.

Primary sources

FMCSA SAFER company snapshot, safer.fmcsa.dot.gov
Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, ecfr.gov
State public utility and transportation regulators, per state
US Census Bureau American Community Survey migration flows