67% of Flagged Movers Are Less Than 3 Years Old. Here Is the Age Data.

FMCSA registers a new moving company in minutes. The application costs $300. There is no background check, no skills test, no equipment verification. A person with no moving experience, no trucks, and a history of consumer fraud complaints under a previous company name receives the same 'Authorized' status as a carrier that has operated safely for 50 years.

This creates a measurable pattern in the data. Young companies generate more complaints. Significantly more.

Trunk's database tracks 2,231 household goods carriers with FMCSA registration data. Here is the age breakdown:

Under 1 year old: 589 carriers (26.4% of all HHG carriers) 1 to 2 years old: 391 carriers (17.5%) 2 to 3 years old: 172 carriers (7.7%) 3 to 5 years old: 166 carriers (7.4%) 5 to 10 years old: 206 carriers (9.2%) 10+ years old: 707 carriers (31.7%)

Nearly half of all registered household goods carriers are less than 3 years old. This alone tells a story: the moving industry has an extraordinarily high turnover rate. Companies register, operate briefly, and disappear.

Among carriers under 3 years old, 1.6% have generated complaints. Among carriers 3 years and older, only 0.1% have complaints on record. Young companies are 16 times more likely to have documented complaints.

The average complaint count for carriers under 1 year old with any complaints: 34.2. For carriers 1 to 2 years old with complaints: 11.4.

The highest-complaint companies in our database are overwhelmingly young:

Coastal Moving Services LLC: registered October 2025, 316 BBB complaints in under 12 months. Zero trucks reported.

International Van Lines: MCS-150 date March 2025, 69 BBB complaints.

Howards Van Lines: 13 BBB complaints from 1 truck, registered recently.

Mighty Movers LLC: MCS-150 date December 2025, 8 BBB complaints from 3 trucks.

Of the 19 carriers in our database with documented BBB complaints, 18 have MCS-150 dates within the last 2 years. That is 94.7% of complaint-generating companies concentrated in the youngest age cohort.

Three mechanisms drive this pattern:

1. The chameleon carrier cycle. When a company accumulates enough complaints that its reputation is damaged, the principals dissolve it and register a new entity. The FMCSA complaint counter resets. The company is 'new' on paper but operated by the same people using the same practices. Handle With Care Moving was revoked in March 2026. Two replacement entities appeared within days: (HWC) Handle With Care Loading Company LLC and Handle With Care Moving and Delivery. Both start with zero complaints.

2. Zero barrier to entry. A person with no trucks, no employees, and no experience can register as a moving company and begin accepting bookings the same day. Coastal Moving Services reports zero trucks and zero drivers but has accumulated 316 complaints. It exists as a legal entity that accepts money from consumers and dispatches work to whatever carrier it can find.

3. No reputation cost. A company that has been in business for 20 years has built something it does not want to lose: repeat customers, employee relationships, community reputation, vendor trust. A company registered 3 months ago has built nothing. Defrauding customers and dissolving carries zero reputational cost because there is no reputation to damage.

Among the 707 carriers in our database that are 10+ years old, the complaint picture is almost nonexistent. Only 1 carrier in this age group has documented complaints (0.1%).

The established carriers in our database tell a consistent story:

Town and Country Movers (Gaithersburg, MD): 64 trucks, 2 BBB complaints. Decades of operation. Bulldog Movers (Doraville, GA): 57 trucks, 1 BBB complaint, 4.6 Google rating from 926 reviews. B. Von Paris and Sons (Savage, MD): 31 trucks, 1 BBB complaint, 4.8 Google rating from 482 reviews.

These companies have complaints, because no company moving thousands of households avoids all complaints. But the ratio matters. Bulldog Movers has 1 complaint per 57 trucks. Howards Van Lines has 166 complaints per 1 truck. That is a 9,462x difference in complaint density.

Google ratings do not reflect the age-complaint pattern. The average Google rating for carriers under 3 years old is 4.70. For carriers 3 years and older, it is 4.74. The difference is negligible.

This means Google ratings fail to capture the single strongest risk signal in the data. A company with a 4.5 Google rating could be a 20-year operator with zero complaints or a 6-month-old chameleon carrier with 316 BBB complaints and zero trucks. Google treats both the same.

FMCSA registration date is publicly available at safer.fmcsa.dot.gov. Google rating is not a substitute for checking it.

When evaluating a moving company, check its FMCSA registration date before anything else. A company under 3 years old is not automatically fraudulent, but it is statistically higher risk. Combine the age signal with:

Fleet size: does the company report trucks and drivers, or zeros? Complaint density: complaints divided by truck count. Entity connections: is the company linked to previously revoked carriers? Principal history: do the owners appear on other DOT registrations?

Trunk displays all of these signals on every mover profile. Age alone does not determine quality, but age combined with fleet data, complaint history, and entity links provides a risk picture that Google ratings and BBB grades cannot match.