Blue Quill Movers, Edmonton

Two movers and one truck cover a one-bedroom apartment or condo move across Southwest Edmonton, with a median of 4.38 hours on site. The band behind it is wide for the size, half of the 46 jobs running between 2.81 and 7.44 hours and costing between $485 and $1,460, which is what stairs, a lift and the distance from the door to the truck do to a job whose contents barely vary. It is a bedroom, a living room and a kitchen's worth of boxes, with the bed frame and a wardrobe the two-handed pieces.

A second bedroom adds a mover and most of an hour and a half. Across Southwest Edmonton the median two-bedroom apartment or condo move runs 5.75 hours with a crew of 3 and one truck, and half of the 41 jobs behind it fell between $601 and $1,760 and ran between 3.5 and 7.5 hours. The extra hands are what keep the day from stretching further, against more furniture to break down and carry and a second room of boxes to stage before the truck is loaded.

Three bedrooms is where a Southwest Edmonton move becomes a full working day: 8 hours on site at the median, 3 movers and one truck, with half of the 28 jobs behind it running 6 to 9.5 hours and costing between $1,031 and $2,191. It is also the size where a home's storage starts to matter more than its bedroom count, so an accurate picture of what is coming, and what is not, moves the estimate further than any other detail you can give us.

Four bedrooms and up is a 4-mover day across Southwest Edmonton, with one truck and a median of 7.5 hours on site. Only 13 jobs of this size sit behind the figures, so $2,096 is the middle of a small sample rather than a rate; half of the 13 fell between $1,386 and $2,517 and ran between 5.25 and 10.75 hours. The rate is the same hourly rate every other local move is billed at, and what stretches the day is how much of the house is packed before the crew arrives.