Moving Truck Size Calculator

Tell us what you are moving, by home size or item by item, and you get one specific truck size rather than a range. The number that changes the answer most is the one no rental chart asks you for: what your belongings weigh. A moving truck has a payload limit as well as a cubic feet rating, and on an ordinary household load the payload is what runs out first.

By home size (quick) By items (accurate)

What are you moving? (this is everything going on the truck. If you are moving part of a house, use the item list)

What is most of it? (this sets the weight, and the weight is what runs out first)

Can the truck make more than one trip?

No, one trip Yes, I can shuttle

Are you towing a vehicle behind it?

No Tow dolly Car carrier

One way distance (miles, optional) (only used to price the driving and the fuel)

Show a rough rental cost range?

No Yes

Was this calculator helpful?

Data reviewed: August 2026. Figures here come from published sources and change over time. How we verify

How moving truck sizing actually works

Every truck size chart you have read works the same way. It lists cubic feet, it puts a home size next to each one, and it stops. That is half an answer, and it is the half that never goes wrong.

A rental truck has two limits, and only one of them is in its name. The number on the side is length, and the number on the spec page is cubic feet. The other limit is payload: the maximum weight of cargo the truck may legally carry, printed on the same page in smaller type and left out of every sizing tool we could find. It matters because household goods are heavier than people think, and because the two limits do not rise together. One truck in the standard American rental fleet holds 33 percent more space than the truck two sizes below it and is allowed to carry 685 pounds less.

So this page works out both. It turns what you are moving into cubic feet, turns those cubic feet into pounds the way every mover in the country does, and then tells you which of the two limits you hit first. For a bedroom full of furniture it is the space. For a normal apartment it is often the weight, and for a garage it is the weight by a mile.

Everything rounds up, and not out of caution for its own sake. The failure is not symmetric. One size too big costs a few gallons of fuel and some anxiety about parking. One size too small costs a second rental day, a second load, and the drive back, on the day you are least able to absorb any of it.

Two neighbours on this site answer the questions either side of this one. The moving cost estimator prices the whole move, crew and all, where this page only sizes the truck. The storage unit size calculator sizes the room your things sit in when the truck leaves, and it runs on exactly the same item volumes as this page, on purpose, so the same sofa can never be given two different sizes by us.

The formula

volume = every item × its cubic feet, added up
you can fill = the truck's published cubic feet × 85% packing efficiency
weight = volume × pounds per cubic foot for that kind of load
you may carry = the truck's published maximum load − trailer tongue weight
heaviest load this truck takes = (you may carry) ÷ (you can fill)
the answer = the smallest truck where the space AND the weight both fit, rounded UP

Cubic feet are mover's cube figures, which measure the space a thing takes up on a truck rather than the space it would fill in a vacuum. Pounds per cubic foot is the density factor, and the industry standard is 7: every van line in America converts a cubic feet estimate into a shipment weight by multiplying by roughly that number, and published guidance puts normal household goods at 5 to 8. Maximum load is the truck's gross vehicle weight rating minus what the empty truck weighs, which is exactly how the rental companies' own published figures fall out.

The line that matters is the fifth one. Divide what a truck may carry by what you can actually fill and you get a number nobody prints: the heaviest kind of load that truck can be filled to the roof with and still be legal. For a 26 foot truck it is 9.0 pounds per cubic foot. For a 15 footer it is 9.8. For a 20 footer it is 6.6, and normal household goods are 7.

Worked example

A two bedroom apartment, moving in one trip.

A two bedroom apartment comes to about 845 cubic feet: two mattress sets, a sofa and a loveseat, an armchair, four dressers and bookcases, a dining set, a desk, five small tables, two appliances, two TVs, two bikes, and 75 boxes. At the industry standard 7 pounds per cubic foot that weighs 5,915 pounds.

Now size it the way every other calculator does, on space alone. A 20 foot truck is 1,016 published cubic feet, of which you can genuinely fill about 864. Your 845 goes in with 19 cubic feet to spare. Every truck size chart in the country agrees: U-Haul's own page recommends its 20 footer for a 2 to 3 bedroom home.

Then look at the other number on that same page. The 20 foot truck's published maximum load is 5,700 pounds. Your belongings weigh 5,915. Everything fits and the truck is 215 pounds over its weight limit. It will drive away perfectly happily and only mention it at a weigh station, at an insurance claim, or halfway down a long grade.

So the answer is a 26 foot truck: 1,682 published cubic feet, about 1,430 you can fill, and 12,859 pounds of maximum load. Your load leaves 585 cubic feet and 6,944 pounds spare, which is 59 percent full by space and 46 percent by weight. That feels like a lot of empty truck, and it is. It is also the only size on the ladder that can legally carry a two bedroom apartment in one go.

Two honest escape routes, both of which this calculator will give you if you ask for them. If your load really is light (a furnished apartment, few boxes, nothing from a garage) then at 5 pounds per cubic foot it weighs 4,225 pounds and the 20 footer works. And if you can shuttle, a 20 foot truck loaded twice does it, because half a load is half the weight, which is the part nobody explains.

The payload trap, which is the whole point of this page

Here is the arithmetic that turns a vague warning into something you can act on. Take each truck's published maximum load, divide it by the cubic feet you can realistically fill, and you get the heaviest kind of load that truck can be filled to the roof with before it is over its rating.

Cargo van: 4,030 lb over 209 cu ft = 19.3 pounds per cubic foot
10 foot truck: 2,850 lb over 342 cu ft = 8.3 pounds per cubic foot
15 foot truck: 6,385 lb over 649 cu ft = 9.8 pounds per cubic foot
17 foot truck: 6,160 lb over 735 cu ft = 8.4 pounds per cubic foot
20 foot truck: 5,700 lb over 864 cu ft = 6.6 pounds per cubic foot
26 foot truck: 12,859 lb over 1,430 cu ft = 9.0 pounds per cubic foot

Now compare that list to what things actually weigh. Household goods run 5 to 8 pounds per cubic foot, and the figure movers estimate with is 7. A house with a lot of books, files, and a full kitchen runs nearer 9. A garage or workshop move, with tools, hardware, paint and spare parts, runs past 12.

Read the two lists together and one row stands out. The 20 foot truck cannot be filled with ordinary household goods and stay legal. Not because anybody did anything wrong: it sits on the same 14,500 pound chassis as the 15 and the 17 footers, and every foot of extra box is a foot of extra steel that comes out of the payload. The 15 footer has the highest weight ceiling per cubic foot of any truck people actually move house in, and almost nobody knows it.

None of this means the trucks are dangerous or that everyone is breaking the law. Plenty of people move a two bedroom apartment in a 20 foot truck and arrive perfectly fine. Two things make that work: an apartment load is usually lighter than the industry average, which is built on houses with garages and basements, and nobody weighs a rental truck. Neither of those is a reason to plan on being over, and neither of them helps if the day goes wrong.

What each truck actually holds

These are the published figures from the rental company that prints the most of them, with two columns nobody else puts next to each other. The last column is the honest one: the biggest home each truck carries once its weight limit is taken into account, at the industry standard 7 pounds per cubic foot.

Truck	Published space	You can fill	Maximum load	Heaviest load it takes	Biggest home it carries
Cargo van	246 cu ft	209 cu ft	4,030 lb	19.3 lb per cu ft	One room or a large closet
10 foot truck	402 cu ft	342 cu ft	2,850 lb	8.3 lb per cu ft	Studio apartment
15 foot truck	764 cu ft	649 cu ft	6,385 lb	9.8 lb per cu ft	1 bedroom apartment
17 foot truck	865 cu ft	735 cu ft	6,160 lb	8.4 lb per cu ft	1 bedroom apartment
20 foot truck	1,016 cu ft	864 cu ft	5,700 lb	6.6 lb per cu ft	1 bedroom apartment
26 foot truck	1,682 cu ft	1,430 cu ft	12,859 lb	9.0 lb per cu ft	3 bedroom house

Look down that last column. At a normal household density, the 15 foot truck, the 17 foot truck and the 20 foot truck all top out at exactly the same place: a one bedroom apartment. You are paying for five extra feet of box twice over and getting no more household in it, because the weight limit stopped moving.

The 26 foot row is the other thing worth noticing. It is the only truck on the ladder with real weight to spare, and that is not generosity. It is the only one on a 25,999 pound chassis, and it sits at 25,999 rather than 26,001 because 26,001 pounds is where a commercial driver's licence starts. Every 26 foot rental truck in America is built two pounds under that line. It is also the ceiling of the consumer fleet: to carry more, the truck would have to weigh more, and then you would need a different licence to drive it out of the lot.

Two trucks with the same name are not the same truck

We read the published specifications from all three national companies, and the pattern is genuinely interesting.

On space they agree almost exactly. A 26 foot truck is 1,682 cubic feet, 1,698, or 1,700 depending on whose you rent. A one percent spread across three independently built vehicles is a quiet engineering marvel.

On weight they are three different trucks. Those same three are rated to carry 12,859, 9,180 and 10,000 pounds. That is a 40 percent spread on the number that decides whether your load is legal, behind a name and a cubic feet figure that match to within one percent. All three are correctly published; they are simply built on different chassis. It does mean a "26 footer" tells you the box and not the ceiling, so the ceiling is worth asking for.

The room descriptions vary too. That same 26 foot truck is described as suiting a 3 to 4 bedroom home, a 2 to 3 bedroom home, and a 3 to 5 bedroom home. The middle rungs vary more: a "16 foot" truck is 658, 800, or 865 cubic feet depending on the company, a 31 percent range for the same two words. And one company's 12 foot truck has a 10 foot box, because the twelve measures the whole vehicle.

None of that is anyone behaving badly. Room descriptions are written to be quickly helpful rather than precise, and a furnished two bedroom and a spartan two bedroom are not the same shipment. It does mean that if you have found three answers and felt stupid, the problem was never you. And it makes the useful question at the counter not "what size do I need" but "what is the maximum load on the truck you are giving me?" Any counter can answer that in ten seconds, and it is the one number on this page that carries a fine.

Towing a car, and what it quietly costs you

Towing changes the answer twice over, and only one of the two is obvious.

The obvious one is the towing rating. A 15, 17 or 26 foot truck is rated to pull 10,000 pounds, a 20 footer only 7,500, and a 10 footer 6,000, which a loaded car carrier passes with almost any car on it. A cargo van publishes no towing rating at all. Companies also draw policy lines in different places: one states that its 16 foot truck is the smallest you may tow a vehicle behind, and another prohibits towing anything at all with its 12 footer.

The one nobody mentions at the counter is the tongue weight. A car carrier weighs 2,210 pounds empty and presses about 750 pounds straight down on the truck's hitch. That 750 pounds is not part of the trailer's problem, it is part of the truck's payload, and it comes out of what you are allowed to load before you carry a single box. At 7 pounds per cubic foot, the hitch just cost you 107 cubic feet of belongings, which is roughly a small bedroom. A tow dolly is gentler, about 200 pounds, because only the front of the car rides on it.

Two practical notes. Load the trailer first and the truck second, because you cannot fix a tongue weight problem once the truck is full. And a truck with a car on the back does not reverse: plan the route, the driveway and the fuel stops so that you never have to.

One trip or two, and the arithmetic of shuttling

This is the question that changes the answer more than any other, which is why it is a field rather than a footnote.

If you are moving across a state line, taking a one way rental, or working to a closing date and a lease that ends at noon, the truck leaves once. Size it for the whole load and stop reading. If you are moving across town in a truck you are returning to the same lot anyway, you have an option the charts never mention.

Splitting the load does two things at once, and the second one is the interesting half. It halves the volume per trip, obviously. It also halves the weight per trip, and that is what puts a smaller truck back inside its own payload rating. A two bedroom apartment that needs a 26 foot truck in one go fits a 20 foot truck twice, not because the boxes shrank, but because 2,958 pounds is comfortably inside a limit that 5,915 pounds is not.

We will trade exactly one truck size for one extra trip and no more, and we will never drop you to a cargo van, whose roof is 4 feet 8 inches and which usually has no ramp. Past two trips the driving and the second and third load cost more than the bigger truck ever would. A local move at 12 miles each way turns into 48 miles of driving and nearly two hours behind the wheel for that second trip, before anybody carries anything.

Things nobody puts on the spec sheet

The published cubic feet assume a professional load. That figure is the volume of an empty box measured to the roof. It assumes floor to ceiling, wall to wall, straps and a load bar, and it counts the shelf over the cab, which is real space that will only take light soft things. We keep 85 percent of it. The one published rule of thumb we found says to book 10 to 15 percent more space than your load, which implies filling 87 to 91 percent, so we are one notch more conservative than the guidance and use the same figure our storage unit page uses. If you have never loaded a truck before, take that seriously: the difference between an amateur load and a professional one is roughly one truck size.

The ramp is not standard. Cargo vans have none, and neither do many of the smallest trucks, which turns every heavy piece into a lift rather than a roll. Confirm it when you book. A 1,000 pound rated ramp is what makes a fridge a one person job instead of a three person argument.

Driving a 26 footer is not driving a car. It is over 12 feet tall, so every clearance sign is now addressed to you, and low bridges, drive-through canopies and most parking garages are closed. It is over 26 feet long, so it needs far more room to turn and much more distance to stop, especially loaded and especially downhill. Reverse is a two person job with one of them outside. And the mirrors are the only thing you have, because there is no rear window.

Where it parks is a real problem in a city. Many cities require a permit or a reserved curb space for a moving truck, and they are issued by an office that does not work at your pace. A truck with nowhere to park is a truck you carry your belongings a long way to, twice.

Mileage and fuel policies exist and vary too much to model. In town rentals are typically a day rate plus a charge per mile; one way rentals are usually quoted as a flat rate that already includes the miles and depends on the route and the date. Fuel is almost always return it as you found it, and a 26 foot truck at 10 miles per gallon empties a 60 gallon tank faster than you expect. Ask what the mileage charge is, ask what happens if you keep it an extra day, and take a photo of the fuel gauge before you leave the lot.

And weigh your assumptions, not just your furniture. The single most useful thing you can do before moving day is walk the rooms and count the boxes honestly, because the box count is the number people guess low on, and boxes are the dense part of the load. Ours is a good planning number and a very good way to sanity check what a rental counter tells you. It is not a substitute for looking inside an empty truck, which takes ten minutes and which any lot will let you do.

Sources

Where the numbers on this page come from. We go to the body that publishes the figure, not to another calculator. Figures on this page were checked against these sources in August 2026. See how we verify.

Truck rental equipment specifications, every size, U-Haul. MEASURED as published, and the primary source for the truck table on this page. U-Haul is used as the spec anchor for one reason: it is the only major rental company that publishes volume, maximum load, gross vehicle weight AND empty weight for every size in its fleet, which lets the figures be checked against each other rather than taken on trust. Cargo van 246 cu ft / 4,030 lb max load / 9,070 lb GVW / 4,985 lb empty / 18 mpg / interior 9'6 x 5'7 x 4'8. 10 ft 402 / 2,850 / 8,600 / 5,790 / 12 mpg / 9'11 x 6'3 x 6'1, recommended for a studio or 1 bedroom apartment. 15 ft 764 / 6,385 / 14,500 / 8,115 / 10 mpg / 15' x 7'8 x 7'2, recommended for a 1 bedroom home to 2 bedroom apartment. 17 ft 865 / 6,160 / 14,500 / 8,340 / 10 mpg / 16'9 x 7'8 x 7'2, recommended for a 2 bedroom home. 20 ft 1,016 / 5,700 / 14,500 / 8,800 / 10 mpg / 19'5 x 7'8 x 7'1, recommended for a 2 to 3 bedroom home. 26 ft 1,682 / 12,859 / 25,999 / 13,140 / 10 mpg / 26'2 x 8'1 x 8'3, recommended for a 3 to 4 bedroom home. THE INTERNAL CHECK THAT MAKES THESE TRUSTWORTHY: maximum load equals gross vehicle weight minus empty weight to the pound on all four box trucks (6,385, 6,160, 5,700 and 12,859 all fall out exactly), and within 60 pounds on the van and the 10 footer. These are engineering numbers, not marketing ones, and the test suite asserts the identity. THE FINDING THIS SOURCE HANDED US: the 20 foot truck's maximum load, 5,700 pounds, is LOWER than the 15 foot truck's 6,385 and the 17 foot truck's 6,160, while holding 33 percent more space than the 15. Going up a size can reduce the weight you are allowed to carry.
Moving truck and box truck specifications, Penske Truck Rental. MEASURED as published, the second company's figures for the same nominal sizes. 26 foot: up to 1,700 cu ft, up to 10,000 lb load capacity, interior up to 25 ft 11 in x 8 ft 1 in x 8 ft 1 in, 192 sq ft of floor, up to 70 gallon diesel tank at up to 13 mpg, recommended for five to seven rooms or a three to five bedroom home. 16 foot: up to 800 cu ft, up to 4,300 lb load capacity, interior up to 16 ft x 7 ft 7 in x 6 ft 6 in, recommended for two to three rooms or a one bedroom apartment, and described as the smallest truck in the fleet you may tow a vehicle behind. 12 foot: 450 cu ft, 3,100 lb. Penske also states the CDL rule plainly: no commercial licence is needed for any of its medium duty trucks rated at 26,000 lb gross or less, and one is needed at 26,001 lb and above.
Truck details, 12 foot, 16 foot and 26 foot, Budget Truck Rental. MEASURED as published, the third company. 26 foot: 1,698 cu ft, payload weight 9,180 lb, GVWR up to 26,000 lb, interior 26 ft x 8 ft 1 in x 8 ft 1 in, 8 to 10 mpg diesel, recommended for 5 to 8 rooms or a 2 to 3 bedroom home, and it publishes the convention underneath that recommendation: a room is taken as roughly 150 to 200 cubic feet. 16 foot: 658 cu ft, 4,460 lb payload, 12,500 lb GVWR, interior 16 ft x 6 ft 3 in x 6 ft 7 in, rear door 7 ft 4 in by 6 ft 1 in, 1,000 lb loading ramp, recommended for 3 to 4 rooms or a 1 bedroom home, and named as the smallest vehicle in the fleet that may pull a tow dolly or car carrier. 12 foot: 380 cu ft, 3,610 lb payload, 10,050 lb GVWR, and note that the interior is 10 ft 0 in long, so the twelve in the name is the outside of the vehicle rather than the box. THE CROSS COMPANY FINDING: the three companies agree almost exactly on the cubic feet of a 26 foot truck (1,682, 1,698, 1,700, a spread of 1 percent) and disagree by 3,679 pounds on what it may legally carry, which is a spread of 40 percent. They also recommend that identical truck for a 3 to 4 bedroom home, a 2 to 3 bedroom home and a 3 to 5 bedroom home respectively.
The density factor: converting cubic feet of household goods to pounds, Van line and mover estimating practice, multiple sources. REPORTED, and the number that makes the payload half of this page possible. Every mover who estimates a shipment converts volume to weight with a density factor, and the industry standard factor is 7 pounds per cubic foot, sometimes quoted as 6.75. Published guidance puts normal household goods at 5 to 8 pounds per cubic foot, and international moving weight calculators offer 6, 6.5 and 7 as their options. Books, tools and solid wood furniture are named as the high density exceptions. THE INDEPENDENT CHECK: this site's own moving cost estimator carries published shipment weight bands by home size (studio 1,800 to 2,500 lb, 1 bedroom 2,500 to 3,500, 2 bedroom 5,000 to 6,500, 3 bedroom 8,500 to 11,000, 4 bedroom 12,000 to 16,000). Multiply this page's volume for each of those homes by 7 and every single one lands inside its published band (2,135 / 3,185 / 5,915 / 8,645 / 12,670). Two independently sourced tables, one about volume and one about weight, agreeing at five points, is the reason we trust the factor. A test asserts it against that page's own code.
Standard moving box dimensions, U-Haul. MEASURED, and the primitive the two heavy load types on this page are derived from. A small box is 16-3/8 by 12-5/8 by 12-5/8 inches, which is 1.51 cubic feet; medium is 18-1/8 by 18 by 16, which is 3.02; large 18 by 18 by 24, exactly 4.5; extra large 24 by 18 by 24, exactly 6.0. Movers universally advise keeping a book box under about 40 pounds, so a small box loaded to the usual 35 to 40 pound guidance runs 23 to 26 pounds per cubic foot. We use 25, and the two heavy load types are then honest blends of that figure with the standard 7: one part in ten gives 8.8 pounds per cubic foot for a book and kitchen heavy household, three parts in ten gives 12.4 for a garage or workshop move. A test asserts each blend reproduces exactly, so neither figure can drift into being a number somebody liked.
Tow dolly and auto transport specifications, U-Haul. MEASURED. Auto transport: 2,210 lb empty, 5,290 lb maximum load, 7,500 lb gross vehicle weight, and note that those three figures are internally consistent to the pound, which a test asserts. Tow dolly: 740 lb empty, 4,080 lb maximum load. Both require the tow vehicle's curb weight to exceed the weight of the loaded trailer. REPORTED, the figure that changes this page's answer: rental guidance is to subtract 750 pounds from the tow vehicle's available payload for an auto transport's tongue weight and 200 pounds for a tow dolly's. The 750 is exactly 10 percent of the transport's published 7,500 lb gross, which is the standard conventional trailer tongue weight convention, and a test asserts that identity too. The dolly figure is lower because only the front of the car rides on it. We count the whole car against the truck's towing rating anyway, because that error is only safe in one direction.
Commercial driver's licence threshold, 49 CFR 383, FMCSA, via Penske and licensing guidance. MEASURED. A commercial driver's licence is required at a gross vehicle weight rating of 26,001 pounds or more, and is not required for weight reasons alone at 26,000 or below. This is why the 26 foot rental truck exists in the shape it does: U-Haul rates its 26 footer at 25,999 pounds gross, two pounds under the line, and Budget rates its own at up to 26,000. Rental companies will not hand a truck above 26,001 lb GVWR to a driver without a CDL. It is also why the 26 footer's 12,859 lb payload is the ceiling of the consumer fleet: to carry more, the truck would have to weigh more, and then you would need a different licence to drive it.
What happens when a rental truck is over its rating, Fleet and legal guidance, multiple sources. REPORTED, and the reason this page treats payload as a real limit rather than a footnote. Loading past the rating puts the strain on the brakes and the tires, lengthens stopping distance and raises the chance of a blowout. Exceeding the gross vehicle weight rating can bring fines and an order to offload at the roadside. Rules on whether a rental truck must enter an open weigh station vary by state and by how the truck is plated, and an overweight vehicle that is checked can be shut down on the spot. The liability point is the one worth carrying: a driver who knowingly operates an overloaded vehicle can be held responsible for what follows, and an insurer has a documented reason to argue about a claim. None of this is a reason for alarm on a normal move. It is a reason to know the number before you load rather than after.
Published truck size guidance and rules of thumb, Move.org and moving truck sizing guides. REPORTED, used to place our own packing figure honestly. Move.org publishes a cross company table that does list weight limits alongside cubic feet (U-Haul 10 ft 2,850 lb / 402 cu ft, Penske 12 ft 3,100 / 450, Budget 12 ft 3,610 / 380, U-Haul 15 ft 6,385 / 764, Penske 16 ft 4,300 / 800, U-Haul 17 ft 6,160 / 865), which is where our cross company rows are confirmed, and it gives the one published packing rule of thumb we found: book a truck with 10 to 15 percent more cubic space than your estimated load. That implies filling 87 to 91 percent of the box. We keep 85 percent, one notch more conservative, and we use that figure because it is the same one this site's storage unit size page uses, so the same furniture cannot be given two different volumes on two different pages. What none of the sizing calculators we tested do, including the rental companies' own, is mention payload at all. They convert your inventory to cubic feet and recommend a truck length, and stop there.

Frequently asked questions

What size moving truck do I need for a 2 bedroom apartment?

A 26 foot truck for one trip, or a 20 foot truck loaded twice if you are moving locally. A two bedroom apartment runs about 845 cubic feet, which weighs roughly 5,915 pounds at the industry standard 7 pounds per cubic foot. A 20 foot truck holds about 864 cubic feet you can genuinely fill, so everything fits with 19 cubic feet to spare, but its published maximum load is 5,700 pounds, so it would be 215 pounds over its weight limit. Split the load across two trips and the 20 footer works, because half a load is half the weight.

How much can a 26 foot moving truck hold?

About 1,682 to 1,700 cubic feet of published space, of which you can realistically fill around 1,430, and between 9,180 and 12,859 pounds depending on whose truck you rent. That weight spread is the surprise: the three national companies agree on the cubic feet of a 26 footer to within 1 percent and disagree on the payload by 3,679 pounds. In practice a 26 foot truck carries a 3 bedroom house. A 4 bedroom house is about 1,810 cubic feet, which is more than the entire published capacity of the box before you allow for any air at all.

What is a moving truck's payload and why does it matter?

Payload is the maximum weight of cargo the truck may legally carry, and it is printed on the rental company's spec page rather than in the truck's name. Divide the payload by the space you can actually fill and you get the heaviest load that truck can be filled to the roof with: 6.6 pounds per cubic foot for a 20 foot truck, 9.8 for a 15 footer, 9.0 for a 26 footer. Normal household goods run 7. That means a fully loaded 20 foot truck of ordinary belongings is over its rating, which is why volume alone is the wrong way to choose.

Is a 20 foot truck always better than a 15 foot truck?

Not for weight. A U-Haul 20 foot truck holds 1,016 cubic feet and is rated for 5,700 pounds. The 15 footer holds 764 cubic feet and is rated for 6,385, and the 17 footer is rated for 6,160. Moving up two sizes from the 15 to the 20 gains you 33 percent more space and costs you 685 pounds of legal capacity. If your load is dense (books, tools, a full kitchen, a garage), the 15 foot truck carries more of it than either of the larger two, and that is not a typo.

Do I need a special licence to drive a 26 foot moving truck?

No, and the truck is built that way on purpose. A commercial driver's licence is required at a gross vehicle weight rating of 26,001 pounds or more. U-Haul rates its 26 foot truck at 25,999 pounds gross, two pounds under the line, and Budget rates its own at up to 26,000. That ceiling is also why the 26 footer's payload stops at 12,859 pounds: carrying more would mean a heavier truck, and a heavier truck would need a different licence to drive.

Is it better to make two trips in a smaller truck?

It depends entirely on whether you can, which is why this calculator asks. Locally you can shuttle. On a one way rental, a closing date, or a move to another state, the truck leaves once and the question is closed. When shuttling is possible, splitting the load does two things at once: it halves the volume per trip and it halves the weight per trip, and the second effect is what puts a smaller truck back inside its own payload rating. We will trade one truck size for one extra trip and no more, because past two trips the driving and the extra loading cost more than the bigger truck would have.

How does towing a car change what size truck I need?

The trailer's tongue weight comes straight out of your cargo allowance. A car carrier weighs 2,210 pounds empty and presses about 750 pounds down on the hitch, and a tow dolly about 200. At 7 pounds per cubic foot, that 750 pounds is 107 cubic feet of belongings you can no longer load, which is roughly a small bedroom's worth. Nobody mentions this at the counter. Check the towing rating too: a 20 foot truck is rated to tow 7,500 pounds where the 15, 17 and 26 footers are rated to 10,000, a 10 foot truck only to 6,000, which a loaded car carrier passes with almost any car on it, and a cargo van publishes no towing rating at all.

What happens if you overload a rental moving truck?

Usually nothing visible, which is the problem. An overloaded truck pulls out of the driveway perfectly happily and tells you about it later: longer stopping distances, more strain on brakes and tires, and a real chance of a blowout on a hot highway. Exceeding the gross vehicle weight rating can bring a fine and an order to offload at the roadside, whether a rental truck must stop at an open weigh station varies by state, and an insurer has a documented reason to argue about a claim if the truck was over. Knowing the number before you load costs you ten seconds.