What a Vancouver Move Actually Costs

Nobody publishes an official average price for a move in British Columbia, and any page that gives you one has made it up or copied it from someone who did.

That is not a rhetorical flourish. Household moving is not rate-regulated in BC: there is no tariff filing, no rate board, no schedule a mover has to charge from. Statistics Canada publishes no household expenditure series for moving services, and the Consumer Price Index has no moving or storage component. The nearest official price signal in the country is the For-hire Motor Carrier Freight Services Price Index, which measures commercial freight carriage nationally, not household moves in Vancouver.

So instead of an average, this page does something more useful: it shows you what is actually inside the number. Every input below is sourced, dated and in Canadian dollars, and at the end there is a checklist for comparing quotes so the figures you are given mean something.

What the quote is built out of

Labour, and the floor underneath it

Crews are paid well above minimum wage, but the minimum sets the floor and moves the whole scale with it. BC’s general minimum wage is $18.25 an hour, effective 1 June 2026, up from $17.85, an increase of just over 2.1 per cent. It is indexed: section 16.2 of the Employment Standards Act raises it each 1 June by BC’s all-items CPI, rounded to the nearest five cents, so the next rise lands 1 June 2027 at a rate not yet set.

Overtime is where a long move day gets expensive, and BC’s thresholds are daily as well as weekly:

A ten-hour move day puts the last two hours at time and a half, on an ordinary Tuesday.

Statutory holidays cost more than double. Under section 46 of the Act, an employee who works a statutory holiday gets time and a half for the first 12 hours, double time beyond that, and an average day’s pay on top. There were 11 statutory holidays in BC in 2026. If your move date lands on one, that is the arithmetic behind the surcharge.

WorkSafeBC premiums, at $1.55 per $100 of payroll

Premiums are charged as a percentage of assessable payroll, which makes them a fixed mark-up on every wage hour. WorkSafeBC’s 2026 average base premium rate is $1.55 per $100 of assessable payroll, unchanged for a ninth consecutive year, with assessable earnings capped at $127,500 per worker.

Treat that $1.55 as context, not as what a mover pays. The figure is a system-wide average across every industry; individual classification units sit in 20 bands, and experience rating moves a firm further. WorkSafeBC’s own 2026 summary puts general trucking in the “little to no change” group for the year. A company’s actual rate is looked up through WorkSafeBC’s classification unit search.

Fuel, and the regional tax that makes Vancouver different

Natural Resources Canada publishes weekly pump prices by city. On 17 September 2026 its BC table showed, taxes included:

Those are a single dated snapshot for specific urban centres, not provincial averages, and that Vancouver diesel figure is unusually far above gasoline, so read it as what was published that week rather than as the price of diesel.

The structural point is the tax, and it explains a lot about why moving anything in and out of Metro Vancouver costs more than the same work in the interior. BC’s motor fuel tax is 27.00 ¢/L on gasoline and 27.50 ¢/L on diesel in the Vancouver area, against 14.50 and 15.00 ¢/L in most of the province. The gap is almost entirely the 18.50 ¢/L TransLink component, which funds regional transit and applies to both fuels.

Worth correcting a common assumption: BC’s consumer carbon tax has been at zero since 1 April 2025. It was eliminated rather than paused, taking 17.61 ¢/L off gasoline and 20.74 ¢/L off diesel, with the climate action tax credit cancelled at the same time. Those historical figures still sit on the government’s own rates page, which makes them easy to quote as current. They are not.

On the insurance side, ICBC has announced no increase to basic rates through to spring 2027, a seventh consecutive year without one.

Tax: what belongs on the bill and what does not

A residential move in BC carries GST at 5 per cent, because BC is a non-participating province. There is no PST on a moving service: the province’s own bulletin on related services lists “moving, courier, mail and freight transportation services” among the non-taxable ones, and transportation does not appear on BC’s short list of taxable services.

Where PST does show up is materials. The bulletin on containers and packaging is explicit that a business using packaging materials to provide a moving service must pay PST on those materials, so that 7 per cent is embedded in your price whether or not you see it. If the mover sells you boxes as goods, that is a retail sale and carries both taxes. And a lease of crates or bins is a lease of taxable goods, which attracts PST even though storage itself does not.

Two things worth knowing beyond the table. A quote with no GST on it is not a bargain. The small-supplier threshold is $30,000 of taxable supplies across four consecutive quarters; a legitimate company with a yard, an office and a phone number is over it. A mover charging no GST is very small, unregistered, or not declaring the revenue.

And BC’s PST scope is moving. Budget 2026 extended PST at 7 per cent to accounting, architectural, engineering, geoscience, security and non-residential real estate services from 1 October 2026. Moving, freight, transportation, delivery and storage are not on that list, and the related-services bulletin revised in July 2026 still treats moving as non-taxable. The direction of travel is toward taxing more services, so date this claim if you rely on it.

One honest gap: no Canada Revenue Agency document we could find addresses the tax treatment of a mover’s valuation or declared-value charge by name. The logic of CRA’s rule on charges incidental to a freight service points to it being taxable as part of the move, but that is an inference rather than a citation. Where a valuation line on your invoice is taxed differently than you expected, ask.

Distance, traffic, and why an hour is not always an hour

Time on the clock includes time in traffic, and Metro Vancouver’s traffic is not evenly distributed.

The cleanest official figure is the Census: the Vancouver census metropolitan area’s average one-way commuting duration was 27.3 minutes in 2021, against 23.7 minutes nationally. Five years old and collected during a period of heavily disrupted commuting, it remains the most recent official measure, so treat it as directional.

TransLink’s own work gives a sharper picture of where delay concentrates, with the caveat that these are bus figures rather than truck figures. Bus delay costs roughly $115 million a year, about 13 per cent of bus operating costs in the region, with riders losing over 44,000 hours daily. The Vancouver and UBC area accounts for nearly 40 per cent of all person-hours of delay. The southeast sub-region, Surrey and Langley, rose from 18 per cent of regional delay to 28 per cent between 2018 and 2024.

That last number is the useful one if you are pricing a move to or from Surrey or Langley. Those figures are honest evidence that road congestion in the region has a measurable cost and that it has shifted south and east, and it is not a measurement of how long a moving truck takes.

Crossings: no bridge tolls, one real ferry bill

There are no tolls on any Metro Vancouver bridge or crossing. The Port Mann and Golden Ears tolls were both removed on 1 September 2017, and the replacement crossings at Pattullo and the George Massey Tunnel are being built toll-free. The only regional road-use charge that exists is the 18.50 ¢/L transit fuel tax, embedded in the pump price.

A ferry, on the other hand, is a real line item. BC Ferries restructured its fares in 2026, and the old figures are obsolete. From Fare Index version #26-05, effective 16 June 2026, on the major routes between the mainland and Vancouver Island:

Add a 5 per cent fuel surcharge applied at payment, a $20 non-refundable booking fee if you reserve without prepaying, and a $5 change fee to move a Saver or Prepaid vehicle booking. Children under 5 travel free.

The per-foot charge is what catches people. A 26-foot moving truck is six feet over the standard length, so $48 each way on top of the vehicle fare, before the surcharge. A commercial vehicle, meaning one over 5,500 kg registered gross vehicle weight, is a different tariff again, with width brackets and a rule that anything over 9 feet wide or 99 feet long cannot be booked online at all. Note too that Horseshoe Bay to Departure Bay shows no at-terminal vehicle fare, so confirm before assuming you can drive up.

City permits and building rules

If a truck has to occupy a street, a lane or a metered space, the city gets involved. These are not comparable figures, because the four cities charge for genuinely different things, so read this as what each one calls it and where to check rather than as a price comparison.

Vancouver. The Temporary Street Occupancy Permit explicitly covers moving trucks. The signage fee is $138.46 for each seven-day period, or the same amount once plus meter rates. If anything is stored on city property the occupancy fee is $3.99 per 10 square metres per day, with a $135.14 minimum. Allow 7 to 10 business days from payment, with expedited handling at 5 to 7 days available on request and not guaranteed. A separate Oversize Truck Permit runs $39.68 for a single trip or $378.44 for a year, plus tax, and needs at least five business days.

Burnaby. Under the 2026 fees bylaw, a Traffic Control Permit carries a one-time application fee per project of $285, $571 or $1,142 depending on category, plus weekly fees from $140 to $730 by road and closure type. A Street Work Permit is $750 for the first 50 metres plus $19 per additional metre. Temporarily closing a metered space is charged at actual cost, based on parking revenue forgone. A storage container placement is $118 plus $18 per day. An oversized commercial vehicle permit is $38 single trip or $262 yearly. Burnaby’s page does not say whether a residential move qualifies, so phone Parking Services first.

Richmond. A lane closure or traffic management plan review is $112. The one that bites on a move is the temporary container placement permit at $33.25 per day. Oversize vehicle permits are $28 for a single trip and $112 for multiple trips expiring 31 December, with a minimum 72 hours’ notice, and a building move permit is $55.25. Loads over 4.5 metres high need Telus and BC Hydro clearance.

Surrey. A Traffic Obstruction Permit is required before obstructing or closing any road, cycling or pedestrian facility, and it needs a traffic management plan, a certificate of insurance, a prime contractor designation and a business licence. The fees sit in Schedule B of the Highways and Traffic Bylaw and are not published on the page, so you have to ask.

Strata move-in fees, and a $50 cap that does not exist

You will read that BC caps strata move-in and move-out fees at $50. It does not. No dollar cap on strata move fees appears anywhere in the Strata Property Act or its regulation, and the regulation contains no provision mentioning moving at all.

What the law actually requires is two things: the fee has to be set out in a bylaw, or in a rule that owners have ratified, and the amount has to be reasonable. Those two tests are what you can check. Pull the strata’s bylaws and rules, see whether the fee is in there, and ask whether the amount is defensible. Arguing that it exceeds a cap that does not exist will get you nowhere.

The real $50-adjacent figure is a different rule for a different situation. Section 7 of the Residential Tenancy Regulation lets a landlord charge a tenant the greater of $15 or 3 per cent of the monthly rent for moving between units within the same residential property, where the tenant asked for the move. The same section lets a landlord pass through a strata move-in or move-out fee charged to the landlord, and that pass-through is not capped.

Elevator booking has no municipal requirement or fee anywhere in Metro Vancouver that we could find. Booking windows, deposits and time limits are private strata or property-management terms, imposed as bylaws or ratified rules under the same reasonableness test. Ask early anyway, because a two-hour elevator window is a scheduling constraint that costs money even when the booking itself is free.

Timing, and why month-end costs more

This one is a rule, not an industry claim, and you can read it in the statute.

A tenant ending a month-to-month tenancy in BC must give written notice that is received at least one month before the effective date and before the day rent is due. The province’s own guidance spells out the consequence: “this is not simply 30 days’ notice but truly a complete rental month.” Since rent is almost universally due on the first, notice given in late April takes effect 31 May.

So tenancies end on the last day of a month and new ones begin on the first. Demand for movers piles into the last two days and the first two days of every month, and the last weekend of the month in particular. Where your dates are flexible, the middle of a month is the cheapest place to be, and it is cheaper for a reason that has nothing to do with the weather.

On seasonality, an honest admission: there is no official Canadian data series showing which month people move. Statistics Canada, CMHC and BC’s tenancy data publish nothing on move timing. The figures you see quoted about a percentage of moves happening in summer come from industry surveys, not data, so this page does not repeat them.

What is published is the rental market context. At October 2025, CMHC recorded a 3.7 per cent vacancy rate in Vancouver’s purpose-built rental stock, the highest in over 30 years, with average two-bedroom rents up 2.2 per cent to $2,363, and a 1.5 per cent vacancy rate in the condominium rental market at an average two-bedroom rent of $2,900. CMHC reports that rental turnover rose across all unit types in 2025, continuing a 2024 trend, though it publishes no Vancouver turnover percentage.

Our guides to when to move and how far ahead to book go further into the scheduling side.

Typical Vancouver moving costs

One table rather than three, because the honest answer is that access and inventory move the number more than floor area does. These ranges are our own pricing in Canadian dollars excluding GST, not an industry average, and no official source exists to benchmark them against.

Those spreads are wide for a reason. The same two-bedroom is a five-hour job from a ground-floor townhouse with a driveway and a nine-hour job from a fourth-floor walk-up with a two-hour elevator window and metered parking. Everything above this section is what closes that gap.

For a figure built on your own move rather than a band, use our moving cost calculator. It takes the inventory, the access at both ends and the date, which are the three things that actually decide the bill.

Comparing quotes so the numbers mean something

Because there is no published rate, the only way to compare two quotes is to make them describe the same job. Ask each company:

• What does the hourly rate include, and what is the minimum? Crew size, truck, basic equipment, and whether travel time to and from the yard is billed.
• How is travel time charged? This is the line that moves most between companies.
• What does the estimate assume about access? Stairs, floor number, elevator availability and booking window, distance from the truck to the door, and permit requirements. An estimate built on assumptions that turn out to be wrong is how a quote becomes a surprise.
• Are materials included or billed separately, and at what price per box, roll and blanket?
• Is GST shown separately, and is any PST being charged on the service itself? It should not be.
• What delivery date or window goes on the bill of lading? The conditions of carriage require the carrier to give you one at the time the contract is accepted, and a carrier that misses a window written on the face of the document is liable for reasonable food and lodging.
• If billed by weight, how is weight determined? Article 18 makes it the carrier’s responsibility to show tare, gross and net weights using a certified public scale and to attach the weigh scale ticket. Ask to see the tickets, and ask to be present at the weighing.
• What is the liability position, and am I being asked to release the shipment in writing? Our guide to moving insurance in Canada explains what that signature does.

One protection worth carrying into moving day. Article 14 of the conditions of carriage says that where the total actual charges exceed the estimate by more than 10 per cent, you must be allowed 15 clear days after delivery to pay the part above 110 per cent of the estimate. The disputed excess is not something a mover can make a condition of unloading, unless it told you the actual total immediately after loading or you signed a waiver. And under the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act, an estimate materially below the price later demanded is a deceptive practice unless you expressly agreed to the higher price first, with the burden of disproving that on the company.

If something has already gone wrong, our guide to dealing with a bad moving company in BC covers the routes that actually work.

Ways to lower the bill that are not risky shortcuts

• Move mid-month and mid-week if your dates allow, for the tenancy-notice reason above.
• Avoid statutory holidays, where a crew hour costs more than double.
• Reduce volume before quoting, not after. The quote is built on what you told the company was there.
• Pack yourself only where you will pack well. Packing fragile items properly matters for more than breakage: damage to fragile articles the carrier did not pack sits inside an exclusion, though the carrier still bears the burden of proving it was not negligent.
• Book the elevator the moment you have a date. A missed window turns a four-hour job into a six-hour one.
• Sort out the permit early. Vancouver wants 7 to 10 business days.
• Be specific about access. Every honest quote gets closer to the final bill as the access description gets more accurate.

For a long-distance comparison, our breakdown of the cost of moving from Vancouver to Toronto works through a cross-country move on the same basis.

Get a Vancouver moving quote

We price against real access details rather than a square-footage guess, show GST separately, and put the delivery window on the bill of lading. Secure Moving holds $5 million in liability coverage and active WorkSafeBC registration.

Get a free quote from Secure Moving and we will tell you which of the inputs above actually apply to your move.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a local move cost in Vancouver?

No official source publishes mover rates in BC, because household moving is not rate-regulated: there is no tariff filing, no rate board, and no Statistics Canada series for it. Our own ranges run from roughly $615 to $1,230 for a studio or one-bedroom up to $2,050 to $4,375 for a three-bedroom house, in Canadian dollars before GST. Access, volume and timing move that figure more than floor area does, so our moving cost calculator will get you closer than any band.

Is there PST on moving services in BC?

No. BC’s bulletin on related services lists moving, courier, mail and freight transportation services as non-taxable, and transportation is not on the province’s list of taxable services. GST at 5 per cent applies. PST at 7 per cent does apply to boxes and materials sold to you, and to a lease of crates or bins, and the mover pays PST on materials it uses in providing the service.

Why does moving at the end of the month cost more?

Because of the notice rule. A month-to-month tenant in BC must give notice received at least one month before the effective date and before rent is due, which the province describes as a complete rental month rather than 30 days. With rent due on the first, tenancies end on the last day of a month and new ones start on the first, so demand concentrates in the last and first days of every month.

Do I need a permit for a moving truck in Vancouver?

Yes, where the truck will occupy a street or metered spaces. Vancouver’s Temporary Street Occupancy Permit covers moving trucks, with a signage fee of $138.46 for each seven-day period and an occupancy fee of $3.99 per 10 square metres per day if items are stored on city property, subject to a $135.14 minimum. Allow 7 to 10 business days from payment. Burnaby, Richmond and Surrey each have their own permit and their own fee structure.

Are there tolls on Metro Vancouver bridges?

No. The Port Mann and Golden Ears tolls were both removed on 1 September 2017, and the Pattullo and George Massey replacements are being built toll-free. The regional road-use charge that does exist is the 18.50 cents per litre TransLink motor fuel tax, which is why Vancouver-area pump prices carry 27.00 cents per litre of provincial fuel tax on gasoline against 14.50 cents in most of BC.

Can a strata charge me a move-in fee, and is it capped at $50?

A strata can charge one, and there is no $50 cap in BC law. The Strata Property Act and its regulation contain no dollar limit on move fees and no provision mentioning moving at all. The requirements are that the fee is in a bylaw or in a rule owners have ratified, and that the amount is reasonable. The $15-or-3-per-cent figure people half-remember is a Residential Tenancy Regulation rule about a tenant moving between units in the same property.

What does a mover charge for stairs, elevators or a long carry?

No published schedule for these exists anywhere in BC, so ask each company to price your specific access rather than comparing generic add-on lists. What matters is that the estimate is built on the real details, because Article 14 of the conditions of carriage only gives you time to pay an overage, not protection from one: where the actual charges exceed the estimate by more than 10 per cent, you get 15 clear days after delivery to pay the part above 110 per cent.