Quoting long-distance moves in north jersey is a crapshoot lately

Man, been doing moves out of north jersey for 15 years now and quoting these long-distance jobs has turned into a total headache. Last week I bid a full pack and haul from here to Phoenix using U-Haul trailers, came in at $4500 for the whole shebang including furniture pads and shrink wrap, but the customer balked and went with some cheap PODS quote they found online. We're in zone 3 kinda weather up here so everything's gotta be prepped for heat delays on the road. I use Jobber for my estimates but even with their routing it feels like I'm lowballing to compete with these aggregator sites. Guy in the Moving Professionals Facebook group was saying the same thing, everyone's eating into margins on interstate stuff. NGL, some days I just wanna stick to local piano hauls and forget the big ones. Edit: ended up booking two locals today instead.

F the aggregators, they're ruining the game.

Try adding a fuel surcharge line item in Jobber, bumps your quote by 10-15% without scaring them off.

Screw these customers who shop around like it's Black Friday.

All these cheap outfits cutting corners, one bad storm and everyone's screwed.

IMO PODS is overrated for anything over 1000 miles, stick to your guns on the quote.

Private equity buying up moving companies left and right, prices gonna skyrocket soon anyway.

Insurance rates are killing us too, can't even quote without padding for that BS.

Online leads are a trap, always lowballers who ghost you.

These aggregator sites take 20% cut and leave us with the complaints.

Same here in the midwest, quoting feels like gambling every time.

Use square footage calcs in your estimates, way more accurate than weight guesses.

Watched a Moving Matt video on TikTok about this, he says niche down to office moves only.

Everyone's pissed at U-Haul rates spiking, but we gotta pass it on somehow.

Collections on bounced interstate jobs are the worst, small claims every month.

Fuel costs up 30% this year, quoting without buffer is suicide.

Jersey traffic alone adds hours, your $4500 sounds fair to me.

Man, I feel for ya, been there with every long haul quote.

All these PE roll-ups jacking up competition, hate it.

Haha, told a customer their PODS would arrive in pieces, they still went for it.

Sick of the race to the bottom, time to unionize or something.

North jersey to Phoenix? I'd charge $6k min with that distance.

Yeah, the waiting game on bids sucks, but hang in there.

Lost a $3k job last month to some undercut hack, still stings.

We pack 20 houses a month now, finally got the quoting dialed in with custom templates.