The guide
Long Distance Moving Costs from London: Mileage Pricing Explained in full
The two halves of a long-distance price
Every honest long-distance quote is two separate jobs added together. The first is the London load: crew time, measured in hours, decided by stairs, kerb distance, how much you own and how packed it already is. The second is the road: mileage, measured on the route the lorry actually drives.
Firms that quote a single opaque number are hiding which half they have padded. When the price is published as a formula, you can check both halves yourself before you speak to anyone.
- £65 per crew hour, including VAT, fuel, blankets, straps, trolley and transit insurance
- £1.50 per road mile, measured on the driven route
- 1 hour loading + 1 hour unloading included as the baseline for a studio or 1-bed
- Congestion Charge, ULEZ and bay suspensions quoted as separate visible lines
Worked examples you can check
A 1-bed from London to Birmingham is 2 crew hours (£130) plus 120 road miles (£180) — £310. A 2-bed to Manchester is 4 crew hours plus 200 miles — £560. A 3-bed to Edinburgh is 6 crew hours plus 400 miles — £990, run over two days.
Notice what changes and what does not. Doubling the distance does not double the price, because the crew half stays the same. Doubling the house size does, because the crew half is where the labour lives. That is why a small load going a very long way is often better value than people expect.
- London to Birmingham, 1-bed, 120 miles — £310
- London to Manchester, 2-bed, 200 miles — £560
- London to Leeds, 3-bed, 195 miles — £685
- London to Edinburgh, 3-bed, 400 miles — £990 over two days
What makes the crew hours move
Stairs are the biggest single factor. A third-floor walk-up in a Victorian conversion can add two billed hours over a ground-floor flat with the same contents, because every item is carried rather than trolleyed.
Parking distance is second. If the lorry has to stand forty metres away because the bay was not suspended, every box takes twice as long to load. In central boroughs a suspension fee of £30 to £70 routinely saves more than it costs.
Readiness is third and it is entirely yours. A home where everything is boxed, labelled and stacked by the door loads at roughly twice the speed of one where the crew is waiting for the kitchen to be emptied.
What makes the mileage move
Road miles are not map miles. A south London departure crosses the M25 before it starts heading north, which adds real distance to a Manchester or Leeds run; a north London departure joins the M1 almost immediately.
We quote the driven distance from your actual postcode rather than from a notional 'London' centre point, so two customers moving to the same city from opposite ends of the capital do not pay the same wrong number.
Six questions that expose a bad quote
Any of these answered vaguely is a sign the number will grow on the day.
- Is this price fixed, or an estimate that can be revised on the day?
- Is my load carried by one crew door to door, or transferred at a depot?
- How many crew hours are you assuming, and what happens if it takes longer?
- What mileage figure are you using, and is it road distance?
- Are Congestion Charge, ULEZ and parking included or extra?
- Is the overnight stop on a long run priced already, or added later?
When a long-distance move is cheaper than you think
Two situations consistently surprise people. The first is a small load going a very long way: a 1-bed to Glasgow is mostly mileage, and mileage is the cheap half. The second is midweek in the middle of the month — Fridays and month-ends carry demand, not surcharges, but they book out first.
The genuinely expensive long-distance move is a large, unpacked home with no parking and a Friday completion. Fix any one of those three and the price drops.