The guide
Man with a Van Prices in London: Hourly Rates Explained in full
What the hourly rate includes
An hourly van rate should be all-in: the van, the fuel, the driver's labour, blankets, straps and a trolley. If any of those appear as a separate line later, the headline rate was not the rate.
Charging starts when the crew arrives at your collection address and stops when the last item is inside the destination. The drive between the two addresses is inside the hour you are already paying for, which is why a cross-London job and a same-street job cost the same per hour.
- £45 per hour — one mover and a Luton van, two-hour minimum
- £65 per hour — two movers and a Luton van, two-hour minimum
- £69 — single item collected and delivered locally
- £220 — studio or 1-bed flat move, £340 for a 2-bed
Why two movers is often cheaper than one
The instinct is to book the cheaper hourly rate. On a ground-floor job with a driveway that is usually right. On a third-floor walk-up it is almost always wrong: one mover carrying a double mattress, a sofa and twenty boxes down three flights will take more than twice as long as two movers doing it together.
The arithmetic is simple. Four hours at £45 is £180; two and a half hours at £65 is £163 — and you get your afternoon back. Tell us the floor number and whether there is a lift and we will tell you honestly which booking is cheaper.
The two-hour minimum and 30-minute billing
Every London van company has a minimum because a two-hour job still costs a whole morning once travel is counted. What differs is what happens after it. Rounding up to the next full hour turns a fifteen-minute overrun into £45; billing in 30-minute blocks turns it into £22.50.
Ask which one applies before you book, and get the answer in writing. It is the single most common source of a bill that does not match the quote.
Parking, ULEZ and the Congestion Charge
London adds three costs a van job outside the capital does not have. Parking is the big one: if the van cannot stand legally near the door, you are paying hourly for a long carry. Where a bay suspension is worth the council fee we will say so and quote it up front.
Every van we run is ULEZ-compliant, so ULEZ never appears as a surcharge. Where a job crosses the Congestion Charge zone the daily charge is shown as a line on the quote before you book, not discovered on the invoice.
How to make an hourly booking cost less
You are buying time, so the cheapest thing you can do is be ready. Boxes sealed and stacked by the door, beds dismantled or booked to be dismantled, the lift reserved, and someone at the other end who knows which room things go in.
Two hours of preparation the night before regularly saves an hour of crew time. On a two-person booking that is £65 back in your pocket for work you would have had to do anyway.
- Seal and stack boxes by the front door before the slot starts
- Book the goods lift and tell us the reference
- Clear the hallway, and take pictures off the walls in advance
- Have parking identified at both ends, not just the collection