What Percentage of Moves Go Wrong? Data From 23,789 Profiled Companies

Trunk maintains profiles on 23,789 FMCSA-registered household goods carriers and brokers. Every company in this dataset holds or has held active operating authority from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. For each company, we track complaint history from the FMCSA National Consumer Complaint Database (NCCDB), safety inspection records from the SAFER system, insurance status, fleet size, and operating history.

This is not a sample. It is the full population of FMCSA-registered household goods movers, encompassing every interstate mover legally authorized to operate in the United States.

Of the 23,789 profiled movers, 4,996 have at least one federal consumer complaint on file in the NCCDB. That is 21% of all registered movers.

The distribution is heavily skewed. Most movers with complaints have only one or two. A small number of companies account for a disproportionate share of total complaints. The top 50 most-complained companies alone account for 8,412 complaints, roughly 31% of all complaints in the database, despite representing just 0.2% of registered movers.

The remaining 79% of registered movers have zero NCCDB complaints. This does not necessarily mean they have never had a dissatisfied customer. It means no consumer has filed a federal complaint against them through the NCCDB system.

The NCCDB categorizes complaints into standardized types. Across all 27,148 complaints in the Trunk research database, estimate and final charge disputes are the most common category, accounting for 22.4% of all complaints. This category covers situations where the final bill exceeded the original estimate.

Loss and damage ranks second at 17.8%, followed by pickup and delivery issues at 14.1%. Deceptive business practices complaints account for 12.3% of the total. Hostage goods, where a carrier refuses to deliver belongings until the consumer pays more than originally agreed, represent 4.7% of complaints but involve the most severe consumer harm.

Claim settlement disputes (9.6%) reflect a downstream problem: consumers whose belongings were damaged often face a second battle getting the mover to honor its claims process.

The 27,148 complaints in the NCCDB almost certainly understate the actual rate of consumer problems. Research on consumer complaint behavior consistently shows that most dissatisfied consumers never file a formal complaint. The FMCSA's own Office of Inspector General has acknowledged this gap.

Estimates of underreporting vary. Consumer protection research suggests that for every formal complaint filed, 10 to 25 consumers experienced a similar problem but did not report it. Reasons include not knowing the NCCDB exists, believing a complaint will not produce results, or simply moving on after a bad experience.

If the underreporting factor is conservatively 15x, the 27,148 filed complaints represent approximately 407,000 consumer problems over the covered period. Applied against the approximately 1.6 million interstate household goods moves conducted annually, this suggests a meaningful share of interstate moves involve a consumer problem significant enough that someone in a similar situation filed a federal complaint.

Every consumer can look up a mover's complaint history before hiring. The FMCSA SAFER system (safer.fmcsa.dot.gov) shows operating authority, insurance status, fleet size, and safety inspection results. The NCCDB (nccdb.fmcsa.dot.gov) shows complaints filed against specific carriers and brokers.

Trunk profiles consolidate this data into a single view for each of the 23,789 profiled companies, adding context such as complaint trends, fleet-size-adjusted complaint rates, and comparisons to industry averages.

The single most important step: verify that the company you are hiring is the company that will actually perform your move. If the company is a broker, ask which carrier will be dispatched. Then check the carrier separately.

What counts as a complaint? The NCCDB accepts complaints from consumers who have used an interstate household goods mover or broker. Complaints are categorized by type (estimates, damage, hostage loads, etc.) and associated with the company's USDOT number.

Does a complaint mean the company did something wrong? Not necessarily. A complaint is a consumer's report of a problem. The FMCSA does not adjudicate individual complaints or determine fault. However, patterns of complaints across many consumers are a meaningful signal.

What percentage of moves involve a problem? Based on filed complaints alone, approximately 2 per 1,000 interstate moves generate an NCCDB complaint. Accounting for underreporting, the actual problem rate is likely 20 to 50 per 1,000 moves, or roughly 2% to 5% of all interstate moves.

Are brokers or carriers worse? Brokers generate a higher complaint rate per company than carriers. In the Trunk database, brokers account for 38% of all complaints despite representing 29% of registered companies.