The quick verdict (cheapest → dearest)
If you only read one thing: DIY is the lowest sticker price, container is cheap if your labour is free and your timeline is loose, backloading is the cheapest fully-serviced move, and dedicated is the premium you pay for a whole truck to yourself.
These are figures for a typical 2-bedroom home (26 m³) on the busy Sydney↔Melbourne lane. Longer or less-balanced lanes cost more per cubic metre; we've flagged those below. All figures include GST where a business is involved.
- DIY truck hire — ~$1,400 (plus 2 days of your life, no insurance, all the risk)
- Container / rail freight — ~$1,800–$2,800 (slow, and you pack and load it yourself)
- Backloading — $3,050 (insured, driver-loaded, one overnight)
- Dedicated removalist — dearest (your own truck, guaranteed windows — you pay for the vehicle's whole day)
1. DIY truck hire — cheapest on paper
You hire a one-way moving truck, load it yourself, and drive it interstate. It's the lowest number on the quote — but the number hides a lot. A one-way pantech from a hire yard in a suburb like Penrith or Campbellfield runs roughly $900–$1,200 for the Sydney–Melbourne leg once you add the one-way drop fee, then $250–$350 in fuel and tolls down the Hume Highway, plus damage-waiver excess if you want to sleep at night.
Call it ~$1,400 all-in for a 2-bed — but that's before you count two days off work, a 9-hour solo drive, no lifting help, and full liability if a wardrobe tips over on the M31 near Gundagai. There's no goods-in-transit insurance unless you buy it separately, and reversing a 6-tonne truck up a Fitzroy laneway at midnight is its own adventure.
DIY genuinely wins when you're moving a studio or a car-load of boxes, you're fit, you have a mate to help, and your time is cheap that week. For a full household, the savings evaporate fast once you value your own days.
2. Container & rail freight — cheap if you do the loading
Here you pack your belongings into a shipping container or a mobile moving module, and it travels interstate by road or rail while you fly or drive up separately. Cheap per kilometre on long hauls, but the labour is yours: you load and unload the container by hand, usually across a booking window that spans a week or more each end.
For a 2-bed on Sydney↔Melbourne it lands around $1,800–$2,800 depending on container size and whether you pay for door-to-door handling. It comes into its own on the really long, thin lanes — Perth and Darwin especially — where rail is often the sensible way east–west and backloading is scarce.
The catches: transit is slow (a week-plus door to door is normal), you're doing the heavy lifting, and if you under-book the container size you're stuck. Insurance is usually an add-on, not a given. Good for a patient, budget-driven move where you don't mind loading it yourself; poor if you want it handled and gone in 48 hours.
3. Backloading — the cheapest move someone else does for you
Backloading means your furniture rides in the empty space of a truck that's already running your lane. Sydney→Melbourne is the busiest freight corridor in the country — around 200 trucks a day, and 30–40% come back empty. You pay for the cubic metres you use, not the whole truck, so a 2-bed home moves for about $3,050 inc GST, fully insured and driver-loaded.
The experience barely changes versus a dedicated move: the same kind of pantech shows up, a driver helps load and blanket-wraps your gear, and there's $20,000 goods-in-transit insurance baked in. The trade-off is flexibility — you slot into a wider pickup window because the truck may have another stop or two, and interstate transit is a single overnight rather than same-day.
It's the obvious call for a normal 1–4 bedroom move (roughly 8–50 m³) of furniture, boxes and white goods, when you can give a few days of date flexibility. At Pea, choosing a ±1 week window instead of a hard date takes 10% straight off — about $310 on that 2-bed — because we can put you on the trip with the most empty space. One honest limit: live plants in soil can't cross state lines (biosecurity), whichever option you pick.
- Sydney↔Brisbane 2-bed: $3,050 (925 km, daily trucks both ways)
- Sydney↔Canberra 2-bed: $3,000 (short hop, same-day transit)
- Melbourne↔Brisbane 2-bed: $4,300 (1,675 km — the long haul, where flexible dates matter most)
If that's the option you want, here's what to expect from interstate removalists who backload — what's included, which corridors run how often, and what each one costs per cubic metre. Not sure of your volume? Work out your cubic metres first — it's the only input that really moves the price.
4. Dedicated removalist — dearest, but yours alone
A dedicated removalist gives you the whole truck: the crew loads only your stuff, drives straight to your new place, and unloads — no other stops. You're paying for one truck's entire day on the road — driver, fuel, tolls and the empty return leg all billed to a single customer — which typically lands 25–35% above a backload of the same volume.
You're not overpaying for nothing — you get a tighter, often guaranteed pickup window, faster (sometimes next-day) delivery via relay drivers, and the reassurance of a no-other-loads trip. That's worth it for genuinely fragile or high-value contents, or a very large move.
The rule of thumb: once you'd fill more than about 80% of a truck (45 m³-plus), the saving from sharing disappears and dedicated makes sense anyway. Below that, you're paying premium money for space you're not using.
So which should you pick?
Match the method to the move, not the other way around. A studio or a stack of boxes on a tight budget: DIY hire or even a parcel service like Sendle. A normal 1–4 bedroom household where you want it insured, loaded for you, and done overnight: backloading — the best cost-to-hassle ratio on the board. A slow, patient, do-it-yourself long haul (or anything Perth/Darwin): container or rail. A huge, fragile, or time-critical move: a dedicated removalist.
Whichever method you pick, when you move matters almost as much as how: the cheapest time to move interstate is May to August, mid-month and mid-week — and date flexibility is worth 10% at Pea regardless of season.
One caveat on the cheapest headline: 'from $X' teaser prices aren't quotes. Before you book anything, check three things — goods-in-transit insurance included (not a paid add-on), a fixed price rather than 'from', and real reviews on a platform you can verify. Get those right and the cheapest sensible option is usually clear.
For most interstate moves within Victoria, New South Wales, the ACT and Queensland, backloading is where the maths lands. You can get a fixed, all-in Pea quote — lane rates baked in, insurance included, 15% deposit to lock it — in about 60 seconds, no haggling and no spam.
What it costs on your actual route
Ballpark figures only get you so far — what a move costs depends on the corridor, the direction you're travelling and how often trucks run it. Each route below has its own page with real transit times, pickup windows and a price for every home size:
- Sydney to Melbourne — 878 km, daily departures, the busiest and cheapest interstate lane in the country
- Melbourne to Sydney — the same road northbound, priced a touch dearer because it's the fuller leg
- Sydney to Brisbane and Brisbane to Sydney — 925 km up the Pacific Highway, daily both ways
- Melbourne to Brisbane and Brisbane to Melbourne — 1,675 km, the long haul, where flexible dates save the most
- Sydney to Canberra, Canberra to Sydney, Melbourne to Canberra and Brisbane to Canberra — shorter ACT runs, weekly to daily depending on direction
Not on that list? Every route we run is here — and regional pickups within those states are quoted automatically too, with the last leg priced separately so you can see exactly what it adds.