What Size Moving Truck Do I Need? Sizes by Home

The 26-foot truck is the largest most people can rent, and the two companies whose pages we checked describe it differently: Penske rates its 26-foot truck for “5-7 rooms” and Budget rates its own for a “2-3 Bedroom Home.” Both are right, because a two-bedroom house is five to seven rooms once you count the living room, kitchen, dining room and garage.

That is the whole problem with picking a truck. Bedrooms are how people describe homes; rooms are how trucks are sized. Count rooms, then read the table.

Truck sizes as the rental companies state them

The figures below are from Penske’s and Budget’s own truck pages. Cargo space is interior length by width by height.

Truck	Cargo space	Cubic feet	Max load	Stated for
Penske 12-foot	12’ x 6’6“ x 6’1“	450	3,100 lb	1 – 2 rooms
Budget 12-foot	10’0“ x 6’0“ x 6’3“	380	3,610 lb	1 – 2 rooms or a studio apartment
Penske 16-foot	16’ x 7’7“ x 6’6“	800	4,300 lb	2 – 3 rooms
Budget 16-foot	16’0“ x 6’3“ x 6’7“	658	4,460 lb	3 – 4 rooms or a 1-bedroom home
Penske 22-foot	21’11“ x 8’1“ x 8’1“	1,200	10,000 lb	3 – 5 rooms
Penske 26-foot	25’11“ x 8’1“ x 8’1“	1,700	10,000 lb	5 – 7 rooms
Budget 26-foot	26’ x 8’1“ x 8’1“	1,698	9,180 lb	5 – 8 rooms or a 2- to 3-bedroom home

Penske also lists a cargo van at 404 cubic feet for “Up to 1 room,” round-trip only. Budget’s 26-foot page defines a room as “roughly 150 to 200 cubic feet.”

Notice that a “12-foot” truck is 10 feet of cargo at Budget and 12 at Penske, and that a 16-foot truck at one company holds 142 cubic feet more than at the other. The name is a class, not a measurement. Read the cubic feet.

Sizes by home

Translating the companies’ room counts into bedrooms, and applying Budget’s 150 – 200 cubic feet per room, gives this guide. It assumes an ordinary amount of furniture and no garage full of tools.

Home	Rooms to count	Truck size	Notes
Studio	1 – 2	Cargo van or 12-foot	Both companies rate the 12-foot for 1 – 2 rooms
1 bedroom	3 – 4	12- to 16-foot	Budget rates its 16-foot for a 1-bedroom home
2 bedrooms	5 – 6	16- to 22-foot	Penske’s 22-foot is one-way only
3 bedrooms	6 – 8	22- to 26-foot	Budget rates its 26-foot up to a 2- to 3-bedroom home
4 bedrooms	8 or more	26-foot, and possibly not enough	Neither company rates a consumer truck above 8 rooms

When you are between sizes, take the larger one. The extra rental cost of one size up is small next to the cost of a second trip or a second truck, and a truck with room to spare is easier to load in tiers than one you have to cram. Load it tightly all the same; empty space is how things break.

A four-bedroom home is the case to be honest about. Eight rooms at 200 cubic feet is 1,600 cubic feet, which is the whole 26-foot box with almost nothing to spare, and a four-bedroom house with a garage and a basement is usually more than eight rooms. Plan on two vehicles, a second trip, or decluttering before you move.

Cubic feet versus weight

A truck has two limits, and the one you hit first depends on what you own.

Cubic feet is the box. Weight is the payload, and the rental pages state it: 10,000 pounds for Penske’s 22- and 26-foot trucks, 9,180 for Budget’s 26-foot, and 4,300 – 4,460 for the two 16-foot trucks. For scale, U-Pack states that a typical household load in its 27-foot trailer, which it rates for a 3- to 4-bedroom home, weighs approximately 12,600 pounds.

Put those two facts together and the answer is uncomfortable: a large home can exceed a 26-foot truck’s payload before it fills the box. Books, tools, a piano, a safe, a workshop and a full pantry are dense. If that describes your home, the truck is overloaded before the last room goes in, and an overloaded truck brakes, steers and climbs worse than it should.

Interstate movers price on weight and distance, not cubic feet, for exactly this reason. Their scales know what your rental truck’s box does not.

Why people under-size

The pattern is consistent enough to list.

• Counting bedrooms instead of rooms. A “two-bedroom” is five rooms; a “three-bedroom” with a den and a finished basement is nine.
• Forgetting the outside. Garage, shed, patio furniture, grill, bikes, the lawn mower. None of it is in a bedroom and all of it goes on the truck.
• Estimating from boxes. Our box calculator puts a studio at about 27 boxes, a two-bedroom home at 61 and a four-bedroom at 120. Boxes stack into tight tiers and take less room than people expect; it is the sofa, the bed frames and the dining table that fill a truck, and they do not stack.
• Choosing by price. The smaller truck is cheaper per day. It is not cheaper if it means two trips at 1,000 miles.
• Trusting the truck’s name. A 16-foot truck at one company holds 658 cubic feet and at another 800. Compare cubic feet, not feet.

The license and the tow

The no-CDL rule

You do not need a commercial driver’s license to drive a rental moving truck for your own move. Federal rules require a CDL only when the vehicle’s gross vehicle weight rating is 26,001 pounds or more, and every consumer rental truck is rated under that line. Budget, for example, lists the gross vehicle weight of its 16-foot truck at 12,500 pounds.

The rental company’s own rules still apply: a minimum age, a valid standard license and, for some trucks, a larger deposit. Driving a truck this size is a different job from driving a car, which is why we wrote a separate guide to driving a moving truck across the country.

Towing a car

If you are bringing a car on a carrier or a tow dolly, that decides the truck size for you. Penske lists towing on its 16-, 22- and 26-foot trucks and not on its 12-foot truck or cargo van; Budget lists towing on its 16- and 26-foot trucks. A car carrier or dolly is rented separately, adds length to every turn and every parking decision, and adds weight the truck’s brakes have to stop.

If you would rather not tow, the car shipping hub explains how transporters price a vehicle by route, so you can compare it against the carrier rental and the extra fuel.

A sanity check before you book

1. Walk every room, including the garage and storage, and count them.
2. Run the box calculator for the box count, then list the furniture that does not fit in a box.
3. Measure the three biggest pieces. A sofa longer than the truck is wide has to stand on end, which costs height and stability.
4. Read the cubic feet and the max load on the company’s page for the truck you are about to book, not the name.
5. If you are between sizes, go up. Then price the whole trip, fuel included, with how a moving truck rental is priced and the rental truck hub.