How the pages are built
Updated
Every figure has a source
A price, a date, a limit or a rate goes onto a page only if it came from a page that was actually retrieved, and that page is saved with its address and the date it was fetched. A figure that cannot be traced like that is left out instead of estimated. When cost guides are added, a source that publishes a low, a middle and a high value will be shown that way, and a source that publishes one number will be shown as one number.
The sources behind the pages
These are the pages the site is built from today. Each one was fetched as raw HTML or PDF and saved with its address, the date and a checksum, and the text each page relies on was read from that saved copy:
- 49 CFR Part 375, the federal consumer-protection rules for interstate household goods moves (eCFR).
- FMCSA, Protect Your Move, with its moving-fraud, red-flags and movers-vs-brokers pages.
- FMCSA, Your Rights and Responsibilities When You Move, the Ready to Move brochure and the Protect Your Move brochure (PDFs).
- USPS, Standard Forward Mail and Change of Address.
- IRS Topic 455, Moving expenses, and Publication 3, Armed Forces' Tax Guide.
- CFPB, Loan Estimate and Closing Disclosure explainers.
- U-Haul and Penske published truck-size pages, cited as each company's own figures on the date checked.
When a page needs a fact none of these contain, the fact is left out until a source for it has been saved.
Why there are no cost guides yet
Moving prices change with distance, season and the size of the household, and most published "average cost" tables are other sites' estimates. A cost guide goes up here only when its figures come from named, dated sources that have been saved and checked, so the cost guides are being added after the checklists rather than filled with guesses.
Quotes and paraphrase
Words inside quotation marks from a US government page are quoted exactly. Everything else is a plain-English paraphrase that keeps the source's meaning and names the agency or section it comes from. Material from companies and other organizations is paraphrased in short form with attribution, and no one's table is copied.
Rights and rules, not advice
Pages about moving rights, home buying, selling and renting explain what an agency publishes and say where to go next. They are not legal, tax or mortgage advice.
No company is named or accused
Scam and safety pages teach how to check a company: where to look it up, what to ask, what to keep. They never name a company as a bad actor.
Checking and staleness
Each tool carries the date its source was last checked. A daily job reports any tool whose next check date has passed, and the page is then re-checked against its source.
No calculators
Calculators are a different job, and a dedicated site already does it well. Where arithmetic would help, a page links to the matching calculator at Calcimator.