Ranked on federal and state carrier records — North Carolina certification, operating authority, insurance continuity, complaints per truck per year and whether a revoked carrier once operated from the same address. Every company here was checked against the NCUC register of certificated movers.
Covers the whole Raleigh–Cary, NC area, not just the city — about half the movers serving Raleigh are registered in the suburbs.
Every company below holds active operating authority or a NCUC certificate, has insurance on file, and has enough public reviews to say something about. At most one company per parent van line. Placement is not for sale.
A local move is priced by the hour, so the things that move the invoice are access and stairs rather than distance. Ask how travel time is charged, whether the clock starts at the depot, and what happens if the job runs past the estimate.
Crossing a state line puts a move under federal rules: the carrier needs active FMCSA authority for household goods, and you are entitled to a written estimate and the Your Rights and Responsibilities booklet. Ask whether your shipment travels on their own truck or is consolidated onto someone else's.
Storage-in-transit and warehouse storage are different products with different liability. A mover with its own warehouse handles your goods once; a mover that rents space hands them to a third party, which is where damage claims get complicated.
Pianos, safes, fine art and lab equipment need a rigging plan and, often, custom crating. This work is quoted after a survey rather than over the phone, and a mover that quotes it sight-unseen is guessing.
The published list is short by design, so two or three filters can empty it. Clear one and try again.
| Metric | DOGWOOD MOVING LLC | NEXT STOP MOVERS LLC | WELLKNOWN MOVING LLC | SQUARE COW MOOVERS | ATHENS MOVING EXPERTS | CAPITAL MOVING & STORAGE LLC | MIRACLE MOVERS OF SELMA LLC | CRABTREE FAMILY MOVING LLC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 |
| Composite | 74.8 / 100 | 72.6 / 100 | 68.8 / 100 | 68.3 / 100 | 68.0 / 100 | 62.5 / 100 | 62.0 / 100 | 61.0 / 100 |
| Regulatory | 22.7 / 28 | 23.9 / 28 | 23.6 / 28 | 23.6 / 28 | 23.2 / 28 | 23.6 / 28 | 23.6 / 28 | 22.7 / 28 |
| Reviews | 24.4 / 27 | 22.0 / 27 | 18.1 / 27 | 17.6 / 27 | 22.5 / 27 | 24.1 / 27 | 15.2 / 27 | 16.6 / 27 |
| Operations | 13.1 / 19 | 10.3 / 19 | 5.9 / 19 | 7.0 / 19 | 10.3 / 19 | 8.7 / 19 | 7.4 / 19 | 12.9 / 19 |
| Transparency | 6.2 / 26 | 16.4 / 26 | 19.2 / 26 | 20.0 / 26 | 4.4 / 26 | 6.1 / 26 | 13.0 / 26 | 6.1 / 26 |
| Findability | 8.4 / 10 | 0.0 / 10 | 1.8 / 10 | 0.0 / 10 | 7.5 / 10 | 0.0 / 10 | 2.7 / 10 | 2.7 / 10 |
| Headline rating | ★ 5.0 (2576 on Google reviews) | ★ 4.9 (715 on Google reviews) | ★ 5.0 (170 on Google reviews) | ★ 5.0 (71 on Google reviews) | ★ 4.9 (1377 on Google reviews) | ★ 5.0 (994 on Google reviews) | ★ 4.6 (930 on Google reviews) | ★ 4.8 (360 on Google reviews) |
| Power units | 16 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 10 |
| Drivers on file | 16 | 9 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 10 |
| Years since registration | 6 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 12 |
| USDOT | 3376522 · Inactive | 3619230 · Active | 4359790 · Active | 4469623 · Active | 3205320 · Inactive | 3623752 · Active | 4149189 · Active | 2507399 · Inactive |
| NCUC | T-4789 · Active | T-4837 · Active | Not checked | T-5036 · Active | T-4654 · Active | Not checked | Not checked | T-4476 · Active |
| Public liability | None on file | $750k | $750k | $1M | $750k | $750k | $1M | None on file |
| Cargo | None on file | None on file | None on file | None on file | None on file | None on file | None on file | None on file |
| Federal complaints | No federal complaints on file | No federal complaints on file | No federal complaints on file | No federal complaints on file | No federal complaints on file | No federal complaints on file | No federal complaints on file | No federal complaints on file |
| Revoked predecessor | None found | None found | None found | None found | None found | None found | None found | None found |
| Binding estimate | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not stated | Not stated | Yes | Not stated |
| Survey method | Not stated | Video survey | In-home survey | In-home survey | Not stated | Phone only | In-home survey | Not stated |
| Price band | No price data | No price data | No price data | No price data | No price data | No price data | No price data | No price data |
We read the 5 guides that publish moving prices for Raleigh and took only the figures they actually state. The spread is theirs, not ours — these guides disagree, and several quote each other. Where one was written by a company we rank, it says so.
The number is how many of the guides say so. An item on both sides is one the guides disagree about — worth asking before you book.
These are wider than the local ones for a reason: a long-distance price follows the mileage more than the size of the home, so Raleigh to Virginia and Raleigh to California sit inside the same row. Nobody can quote you usefully without asking where you are going — get the answer in writing as a binding estimate.
Taken from real moves recorded on our partner companies' own websites — the software they quote and invoice in — rather than an estimate written for an article.
We read the threads about movers in this city's own subreddits — five years of them — and had each one classified for who people actually recommend, as opposed to who simply gets named. Recommendations are worth a small part of the score. Being talked about is worth nothing, and being talked about badly is worth less than that.
2 of the 8 companies here came up in no thread at all. That is not evidence against them — plenty of good movers are simply never posted about, and a company can be excellent and invisible. No usernames are collected and no reviewer is identified. We count threads, not people, and a thread that names a company twice is one thread.
Moving household goods within North Carolina requires a certificate from the NC Utilities Commission, and the Commission publishes the whole list of carriers holding one. We read that register and check every company on this page against it, so the certificate number on a card is one you can look up — and a company we could not find on it is shown as such rather than left blank.
Crossing a state line requires an active USDOT number and FMCSA operating authority registered for household goods. Registration alone is not authority — plenty of active USDOT numbers are not allowed to move your furniture. We check the USDOT number and the insurance filings. We stopped scoring or showing the household-goods flag itself in September 2026, because FMCSA's own systems disagree about it and a flag we cannot check is not evidence in either direction.
Public liability and cargo insurance must be filed with the FMCSA and kept current. A filing that lapses and is reinstated leaves a record, and we count lapses in the last 24 months against the score.
The FMCSA runs a national consumer complaint database. We count complaints per truck per year rather than the raw total, because a 200-truck carrier will always have more complaints than a four-truck one.
Every number on this page comes from a federal or state record, a public review profile, or a company's own website — never from anything a company pays for.