Hiring a Van to Move House: Your Questions Answered

Hiring a van and doing the move yourself looks like the cheaper option, and for some moves it genuinely is. The trouble is that most of the real cost sits in things you cannot see from a hire company's booking page: how much space your belongings actually take up, what your licence lets you drive once the van is loaded, and who carries the loss if a wardrobe goes over on a corner. Below are the questions we are asked most often by people weighing a self-drive van against booking a crew, answered plainly by people who load vans across Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire every working day.

How big a van do I need to move house?

Bigger than most people estimate, because van size is decided by volume rather than by the number of bedrooms. Two houses with the same room count can differ enormously once you account for the loft, the garage and the shed. A single room of furniture usually fits one load. A family house with a full loft rarely does. Before you book anything, walk every room including the loft, garage, shed and the cupboard under the stairs, and write down the large items rather than guessing from the floor plan. Our free pre-move survey exists to settle exactly this question and turn it into a fixed written price.

How many Luton van loads does a three-bedroom house take?

There is no fixed answer, and anyone who gives you one over the phone without seeing the house is guessing. It comes down to furniture bulk rather than floor area: a three-bedroom house with two sofas, a piano and a packed garage takes far more space than a three-bedroom house that has just been decluttered. What we can say is that return trips are where self-drive moves come unstuck. Each one is a full round journey plus loading and unloading at both ends, and if the two properties sit an hour apart the day disappears fast. We plan house removals around a single loaded run wherever the volume allows, which takes the return legs out of the equation entirely.

Can I drive a 3.5 tonne van on my licence?

Check before you book, because it is not automatic. What you may drive depends on the categories printed on your driving licence, and those depend on when you passed your test. Your photocard lists them, the DVLA's online licence checking service confirms them, and the hire company will ask to see them anyway. Two things catch people out beyond that. Weight limits apply to the loaded van rather than the empty one, so a van you can legally drive off the forecourt can be over its limit once the contents of a house are in the back. And hire agreements often set a minimum age or a minimum number of years held. Read both before you pay a deposit.

Is hiring a van cheaper than booking a removal company?

Sometimes, and less often than the headline day rate suggests. People tend to compare the hire fee against a removals quote and stop there. The self-drive column also has to carry fuel for every leg, the insurance excess you would be liable for, blankets and straps, boxes and tape, an extra day's hire if you run over, and the time of whoever you have asked to help. For a single room or a small flat the sums can still favour doing it yourself, and we will tell you so. For a full house, particularly one with stairs at both ends or a narrow lane to reverse down, the gap is usually narrower than expected. The only way to know is to compare a real number with a real number, so get a fixed quote and set it beside your van hire total.

Are my belongings insured in a hire van?

Usually not, and this is the point people miss most often. Van hire insurance covers the van. It is there for damage to the vehicle and to other road users, not for what is in the back, so a sofa that shifts and splits or a box of glassware that goes over on a roundabout is generally your own loss. Some home contents policies extend to goods in transit and some do not, so if you are moving yourself, ring your insurer and ask that specific question before moving day rather than after it. When you book us, goods in transit cover up to £50,000 per load is included at no extra cost, alongside public liability cover up to £2.5m.

Can I hire a van for a day, or even an hour?

Most hire companies work in days, some offer half days, and a few now run hourly self-service hire. The practical problem is rarely the booking window, though. It is the collection and the return. A van picked up first thing and due back before the depot closes sounds like a full working day, and it is not: you lose time to the counter queue, the walk-round damage check and the drive to the property, then the same again in reverse at the end. If your move is small and local, a man and van booking gives you that flexibility with two people who lift for a living, and no depot at either end of the day.

What do people underestimate most when they move themselves?

Loading order. Almost everything else can be fixed with more time, but a van packed in the wrong order has to come out and go back in again. A van is loaded heaviest and squarest first, tight against the bulkhead, with the weight kept low and spread across the axle, then soft and awkward items wedged into the gaps so nothing can travel on the first roundabout. Protection is the second thing. Wrapping is not decoration, it is what stops a table leg working its way into an upholstered arm over twenty miles of Dorset lanes. The third is stamina: most people are fine for the first couple of hours and slow badly after that, which tends to be exactly when the heavy items are still waiting and when backs get hurt. If you would rather pack yourself but have the fragile work done properly, our packing service can cover part of the job rather than all of it.

When is hiring a van genuinely the right call?

When the volume is small, the distance is short, and nothing in the load would be painful to lose. A student room, a one-bed flat of flat-pack furniture, a spare room of boxes going to a relative's garage: those are jobs a hired van and two willing people can do well, and we would rather say so than sell you something you do not need. It stops being the right call when any of three things appear. Stairs at both ends. A genuinely heavy or fragile item such as a piano, a stone worktop or a wardrobe that will not come apart. Or a completion date that cannot move. Those are the moves where one bad lift costs more than the whole quote, and our man and van versus full removal service comparison takes that decision further.

What if I start the move myself and run out of time?

Ring us, and ring us early. We hold some capacity for short-notice work from our yards at Shaftesbury, SP7 and Yeovil, BA8, and a half-finished move is a job we can pick up, though the later in the day the call comes the harder it is to crew. The version we see most is a completion where the keys arrived late and the volunteers had to leave for work. If you suspect you might be short, asking a week out costs far less than asking at four in the afternoon on moving day. If the new property is not ready at all, storage can hold the load until it is.

How do I compare van hire against a removals quote properly?

Put the two full columns side by side rather than the two headline figures. On the self-drive side: the hire fee for every day you need it, fuel for each leg, the insurance excess, packing materials, and the time you and your helpers are giving up. On the booked side: one number covering the crew, the vehicle, the wrapping, the loading and the cover. Ours is a fixed written price rather than an hourly rate that grows if the day runs long, it is quoted by our own crew rather than a subcontractor, and it comes back to you within the hour once we have the details. Get your fixed quote within the hour and you will have a real number to weigh, whichever way you end up deciding.