How Much Does It Cost to Move Your Household Goods to Mexico?

Author: Chuck Bolotin, Founder and CEO of Best Mexico Movers. Published: September 15, 2026

Download the PDF version of this article.

What You Will Learn in this Guide

Click any topic below to jump to that section.

• The Base Cost of Moving to Mexico
• The Components that Determine the Cost
• How the Shipment Volume is Determined
• The Types of Moving Companies we Compare
• The Cost for Packing and Loading
• The Cost for Insurance
• The Cost for Transportation
• The Cost for Unloading in Mexico
• TOTAL COST: 6 Example Routes
• How to Compare Moving Companies

Who This Guide is For

This guide was created for people considering legally moving / importing their used household goods from the United States or Canada to Mexico. Pricing examples use U.S. origins because approximately 95% of Best Mexico Movers' Mexico-bound moves originate in the United States. Best Mexico Movers also moves our clients’ household goods from Canada to Mexico and from Mexico to the United States, although those routes are not priced in this guide. For those prices, please contact us.

How We Calculated the Moving Cost Estimates in this Guide

Before we started Best Mexico Movers in 2018, we spent eight months researching every aspect of the move to Mexico business. By the time of this publication, we have moved more than 1,000 of our clients to or from Mexico. The extensive research we did before we started our company combined with our subsequent experience working within the industry has given us a good insight into what, in general, clients pay to move their household goods to Mexico.

The pricing figures in this guide come from the following sources.

• Best Mexico Movers prices are based on our current price sheet and current pricing from the industry partners involved in our moves at the time this guide was written.
• Independent packing and loading prices are based on our experience reviewing thousands of quotes from independent packing and loading companies.
• What we will call in this guide “legacy” international movers’ prices are approximate ranges based on the research we did prior to starting our company, pricing reported to us by clients comparing movers, and quotations we have reviewed. Examples of legacy movers include networks affiliated with familiar names such as Allied and United.

Some other figures, such as the estimate of approximately 6.5 pounds per cubic foot for used household goods, are widely used moving-industry conventions.

All prices in this guide are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted.

Please note that we do not control other companies' pricing, and another mover may quote substantially more or less than the examples in this guide. Prices can change, sometimes greatly. This guide is intended to help you to establish a realistic preliminary budget to start your investigation. It is not meant as a substitute for obtaining current quotes for your specific move.

What Components Determine the Cost of Moving Household Goods to Mexico

The major components of an international household goods move to Mexico are:

• The level of coordination and client service provided by your mover
• Insurance
• Packing and loading at Origin
• Transportation through the United States or Canada
• Customs clearance and legal importation into Mexico
• Transportation within Mexico
• Unloading at Destination

The amount you pay for each component depends partly on the moving company and moving method you choose.

It also depends on how much you bring.

How the Volume of a Household Goods Move is Determined

Legitimate moving companies commonly price household-goods shipments by cubic feet, weight, or some combination of the two.

Most people do not have a good estimate of how much their household goods weigh. Estimating cubic feet is easier, so we’ll start there, using a visualization example most people are familiar with.

Imagine a large house with a small bedroom that measures approximately 10 feet wide by 10 feet long, with an 8-foot ceiling. (This is pretty standard for the smallest bedroom in a large house in the U.S. or Canada.)

You would determine the total volume of that room by multiplying the width times the length times the height of that room. In this case, this room could hold 800 cubic feet, because 10 feet × 10 feet × 8 feet = 800 cubic feet. Therefore, if you were to load everything you wanted to move into that room, front to back, side to side, top to bottom, with no room to spare, and it took the entire room but nothing more, you would have 800 cubic feet to move.

If everything you are moving would fill approximately three-quarters of that room, you would have roughly 600 cubic feet.

If your household goods would fill approximately one and a half such rooms, you would have roughly 1,200 cubic feet.

If your household goods would fill approximately three rooms, you would have roughly 2,400 cubic feet.

For another comparison, the largest commonly available U-Haul moving truck is 26 feet long and has approximately 1,650 cubic feet of maximum cargo capacity. A standard 20-foot ocean shipping container has approximately 1,150 cubic feet of usable capacity.

Throughout this guide, we use shipments of 600, 1,200, and 2,400 cubic feet as amounts to move. Those are simply convenient examples using the calculations we just discussed. Your shipment could be 536 cubic feet, 891 cubic feet, 1,146 cubic feet, or any other amount up to what would fit into a 53-foot trailer (about 3,800 cubic feet). See another approach to Determining Cubic Feet

Comparing Using Cubic Feet Against Using Weight for Estimating the Cost of Your Shipment

If your mover's price depends on weight, how much your used household goods actually weigh may present a bit of a challenge for you to predict and later to verify before your household goods are loaded onto the truck and leaves your home or self-storage unit because you are very unlikely to weigh your own goods prior to this. This could result in a bad surprise for you after your household goods are loaded onto a truck and then actually weighed, because you may need to pay more than you expected because you agreed to pay by weight and the weight is more than expected.

It would present less of a challenge if your mover charged by cubic feet because you can see with your own eyes how much space your household goods occupy before they are loaded onto the truck and also after they are loaded onto the truck.

Best Mexico Movers uses pricing based primarily on cubic feet because our clients can more readily understand and observe the amount of physical space their household goods occupy than they can by how much they weigh.

Why Moving Half as Much Doesn’t Cost Half as Much

This is one of the most important concepts to understand when budgeting for a move to Mexico.

If the price for moving 1,200 cubic feet is a certain amount, it does not follow that your price for moving 600 cubic feet will be half as much.

Why not?

Because legitimate international moving companies’ costs are not proportional to the size of the shipment they’re moving.

Even if a legal, properly documented international mover transported just one box, it would still have to pay costs associated with coordinating the move, complying with applicable laws, customs clearance, documentation, customs brokers, transportation, and other requirements.

Once those basic costs have been paid, adding an additional volume of household goods can be comparatively inexpensive.

This is why aggressively selling or giving away your possessions before your move does not always save as much money as people expect.

You should certainly avoid paying to move things you no longer want. However, before getting rid of possessions that you would otherwise want solely because you assume that doing so will significantly reduce your moving costs, it is useful to understand in reality how much the reduction in volume would actually reduce your price.

The Types of Companies We Will Use in Our Price Comparisons, and Why

In this guide, we will compare the pricing of Best Mexico Movers (because we know our pricing) and the pricing of the legacy movers, because we have a pretty good idea of their pricing as well, given our experience.

We will not include the pricing of the “smaller legally compliant independent movers” (Best Mexico Movers is one of these) because how each operates can be quite different, and what they charge is not at all uniform enough to put into a guide.

We will also not include the pricing of a class of individuals here at our company we call “A Guy with a Truck,” which is a term we use for people who hold themselves out as “movers” but that are not legitimate because they do not comply with the law in two or more countries, don’t offer insurance for your household goods, and, in many cases, don’t even use a customs broker.

Generally, the price “A Guy” will quote you will be less than the price from a legacy mover or a smaller legally-compliant independent mover because, unlike The Guy, legacy movers and smaller legally-compliant independent movers have costs for legal compliance and customs brokers that The Guy doesn’t have.

The lower price offered by The Guy, however, should be compared against the risk of what could happen by contracting with an individual that does not comply with applicable laws and who may not even be able to offer to insure your household goods for the move.

Therefore, this guide will only discuss the pricing of movers that are legitimate, that comply with the laws in each country, that use customs brokers, that offer insurance of your household goods, and that move your items with at least a minimum degree of predictability and safety.

(On our site, you can read about all the different ways to move or not move your household goods to Mexico and how to lower your costs.)

Next, let’s discuss how prices are built and the cost for each component.

How Doing Your Own Packing Affects Your Eligibility for Insurance

Insurance coverage can differ depending on who packed an item.

Under the insurance arrangement available through Best Mexico Movers, client-packed items can generally be insured against loss for up to $500 per piece, but damage coverage extends only to the items that were packed by local professional packers approved by Best Mexico Movers.

This is one reason some clients choose to pack inexpensive, non-fragile possessions themselves while paying professionals to pack items for which damage coverage is more important.

Always confirm the specific insurance requirements and coverage with your mover before packing and always read the actual policy.

The Cost for Transportation

The cost for transportation in the United States and Canada can change based on fuel costs, seasonality, driver and equipment availability, origin and destination, rural versus urban locations, and general freight-market conditions.

The physical method used to transport your household goods also varies considerably.

Legacy international moving networks very commonly use transloading and consolidation.

Transloading is when they move your household goods from one truck, trailer, or storage location into another.

Consolidation is when they combine your household goods with shipments belonging to other clients in the same truck or trailer.

For example, using the commonly applied legacy moving company method of transloading and consolidating, the truck that leaves your house may take your household goods to a warehouse rather than driving directly toward the border. Your goods would then be unloaded into the warehouse, where they are stored. Later, your household goods would be combined with other shipments, loaded onto another truck or trailer and transported to the next warehouse, where the process repeats.

This is one reason why legacy international movers like to put your household goods into large wooden containers called lift vans, which make it easier for them to move their clients' household goods between warehouses and vehicles using forklifts.

It’s also why they can’t tell you with any degree of precision how long it will take for your household goods to move from Origin to Destination: they don’t know ahead of time because they generally don’t know the location of the warehouses and they don’t know the waiting time required to do the necessary amount of consolidation.

This process generally happens multiple times during a legacy international move, perhaps as many as six or eight times, over many weeks.

When comparing movers, ask: How many times will my household goods be unloaded and reloaded between my home and my destination in Mexico and where will this happen?

Also ask: Will my household goods be consolidated with other clients' shipments? The answers tell you something important about how your move will actually be performed and what you’re paying for.

Using transloading and consolidation introduces additional coordination, complexity, and overhead, which tends to drive up the cost. It also provides a plausible explanation of how it could happen that one client gets a different client’s goods.

How Best Mexico Movers Transports our Clients’ Household Goods

Best Mexico Movers uses a different transportation model.

Our clients' household goods are only transloaded once, at the U.S.-Mexico border, and we do not consolidate clients' household goods in Mexico.

After customs clearance, the truck or trailer carrying a client's household goods is used exclusively for that client's shipment and is the same truck or trailer that delivers the household goods to that client's destination in Mexico.

Depending on the move, Best Mexico Movers can import household goods through border crossings including Laredo, Texas; El Paso, Texas; and the San Diego/Tijuana area.

For simplicity and ease of comparison and because a large percentage of legacy movers only use Laredo, the examples in this guide assume importation through Laredo.

The Cost for Customs Clearance

A legally imported shipment requires legal customs clearance, submissions, and licensed customs brokers. One hundred percent of the time, according to Agencia Nacional de Aduanas de México (ANAM), Mexico’s National Customs Agency (Aduanas), legal importation of your household goods through a mover requires a process and documentation referred to as the menaje de casa. On our site, you can read our guide to the menaje de casa.

Best Mexico Movers includes the costs associated with normal customs clearance and legal importation within our base moving price rather than presenting normal customs clearance as a separate charge. Any legitimate mover, legacy movers included, generally follow the same policy.

How Transportation is Handled in Mexico

Transportation within Mexico is another significant part of the total cost.

Legacy movers will generally continue the same pattern of transloading and consolidating in Mexico that they use in the U.S. and Canada described above.

Under the Best Mexico Movers model, after customs clearance, the client's household goods travel to their Destination on a truck or trailer used exclusively for that client's shipment. The truck or trailer that picks up the household goods at our customs broker's facility is the same one that arrives at the client's new home in Mexico.

Guys with Trucks have various different methods, usually involving sharing trucks or trailers one or multiple times.

As is the case with transportation in the United States, the cost for transportation in Mexico does not increase proportionately with shipment volume. Moving twice as many cubic feet does not normally mean paying twice as much for transportation in Mexico.

You can see this clearly in the pricing examples later in this guide.

The Cost for Unloading in Mexico

Legacy international movers generally include basic unloading in their quote but then almost always leave open the possibility of imposing additional charges for circumstances that are not that unusual, such as what they define as “long carries,” stairs, elevators, or the need for a smaller shuttle vehicle. (You can usually see this in their agreement.)

In contrast, Best Mexico Movers generally does not include the cost of unloading in its overall price. Instead, we introduce clients to independent local unloading crews in Mexico who do the unloading, which our clients pay for in pesos.

Typical current pricing for the unloaders used by Best Mexico Movers is approximately:

• Supervisor: 400 pesos (roughly USD $23) per hour
• Crew Members: 300 pesos (roughly USD $18) per hour

For example, if the delivery truck can park immediately adjacent to the home, a three-person crew can generally unload a 600-cubic-foot shipment in approximately an hour and a half or less, which would result in charges of less than the equivalent of USD $100. More complicated deliveries take more time, which our clients pay for per hour.

If the larger delivery truck cannot get sufficiently close to the home, a smaller shuttle truck may be required, which usually creates an additional cost regardless of the moving company being used.

What You Should Ask When Comparing the Pricing of Movers to Mexico

Two quotes with different prices may not describe the same service. Before comparing totals, find out what you are actually buying.

To find out what you’re buying and to make sure you’re talking to a legitimate mover, ask:

• How much experience does the company have specifically moving household goods into Mexico?
• Who is my point of contact during the move?
• Is the price based on cubic feet, weight, or both?
• How is the final shipment size or weight determined?
• Can the price change after my household goods are loaded?
• Am I allowed to pack any of my own household goods?
• Is packing and loading included in the quoted price?
• How many times will my household goods be unloaded, stored in warehouses, and reloaded onto different trucks or trailers, and where and when will this happen?
• Will my household goods be consolidated with other clients' shipments?
• What is the expected delivery window?
• Is normal customs clearance included?
• Who handles the Mexican customs process?
• What insurance is available?
• Is insurance based on weight or declared value?
• Is unloading included?
• What can cause additional charges at Destination?
• Will I pay extra for stairs, elevators, long carries, or a shuttle truck?

The lowest quoted number is not necessarily the lowest final price, and the highest quote does not necessarily provide the best service.

The objective is to understand what is included, what is excluded, what can change, and how your household goods will actually get from your old home to your new one.

How Much Should You Budget for Your Move?

A useful preliminary budget has four major categories. You can figure yours by using the table below:

Moving Budget Calculation

Cost Components	Estimated Costs
Packing and Loading	$__________
Transportation, customs clearance & support services	$__________
Insurance	$__________
Unloading and possible Destination-access costs	$__________
Estimated Total	$__________

Prices and other figures in this guide are approximate and can change. Always obtain current, move-specific pricing and insurance information from the companies and providers you are considering before making decisions.

Download the PDF version of this article.

More Information:

To see other useful and free guides that cover lots of topics about moving to Mexico, click here.

If you’re researching moving your household goods to Mexico, here’s some additional free info for you:

• Concerned about the cost of moving to Mexico? Learn how each option you choose will affect your cost.
• Thinking about putting your household goods into storage before moving? Be sure to read this article first.
• Confused about what order to do things in? See the checklist of paperwork for moving to Mexico.
• And our original booklet: What You Need to Know to Move Your Household Goods to Mexico.

If you’re interested in talking with Best Mexico Movers, please contact us.