Two things nobody tells you about moving interstate.
Every figure below is computed from the same quote engine that prices a real Pea booking — not a survey, not an estimate, and not hand-typed. A 2-bed home (26 m³) is the reference load throughout, so corridors compare like for like.
is what the same trip costs extra in one direction. Adelaide → Sydney runs 15% more than the reverse, over identical kilometres.
more per kilometre on the shortest corridor than the longest. Short interstate hops are the most expensive kilometres you can buy.
The same route, two prices.
Backloading fills space on trucks that are already running. Freight doesn't flow evenly in both directions, so on some corridors one leg has plenty of spare capacity and the other doesn't. Move with the empty leg and you pay less — for exactly the same distance, truck and crew.
| Corridor | Cheaper direction | Dearer direction | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney ↔ Adelaide1,376 km | $4,133Sydney → Adelaide | $4,734Adelaide → Sydney | +$60115% more |
| Brisbane ↔ Canberra1,289 km | $3,897Brisbane → Canberra | $4,463Canberra → Brisbane | +$56615% more |
| Brisbane ↔ Adelaide1,940 km | $4,711Brisbane → Adelaide | $5,038Adelaide → Brisbane | +$3276.9% more |
| Melbourne ↔ Brisbane1,675 km | $4,308Melbourne → Brisbane | $4,341Brisbane → Melbourne | +$330.8% more |
Corridors not listed price identically in both directions — Sydney↔Melbourne, Sydney↔Brisbane, Melbourne↔Canberra and Melbourne↔Adelaide are balanced enough that direction doesn't change what you pay.
The further you go, the cheaper each kilometre.
A truck and two movers cost roughly the same to put on the road whether the trip is 78 km or 1,675 km. Spread that over more distance and the per-kilometre cost collapses. It's why a short interstate hop can feel disproportionately expensive — because per kilometre, it is.
| Corridor | Distance | 26 m³ move | $/m³ per 1,000 km |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brisbane → Adelaide | 1,940 km | $4,711 | $93 |
| Melbourne → Brisbane | 1,675 km | $4,308 | $99 |
| Sydney → Adelaide | 1,376 km | $4,133 | $116 |
| Brisbane → Canberra | 1,289 km | $3,897 | $116 |
| Sydney → Brisbane | 925 km | $3,055 | $127 |
| Sydney → Melbourne | 878 km | $3,055 | $134 |
| Melbourne → Adelaide | 728 km | $3,055 | $161 |
| Melbourne → Canberra | 660 km | $3,055 | $178 |
| Sydney → Canberra | 286 km | $2,982 | $401 |
| Sydney → Newcastle | 162 km | $2,444 | $580 |
| Brisbane → Gold Coast | 78 km | $2,444 | $1,205 |
Read the right-hand column as “what a cubic metre costs to carry 1,000 km on this corridor”. Lower is more efficient.
What each choice is worth.
Against a reference 2-bed home (26 m³) move on our busiest corridor ($3,055). These are the levers a customer actually controls.
Saturday or Sunday pickup, unless your dates are flexible enough for us to shift it.
Short notice means buying space on a run that's already filling.
Enough slack to put you on a better-loaded truck.
The single biggest lever a customer controls.
Method, and how to cite this
Every figure is generated by the Pea Logistics quote engine at build time — the same code path that prices a real customer booking. Nothing on this page is typed by hand, so it cannot drift from what we actually charge, and it updates whenever our rates do.
What this is: real prices from one Australian backloading operator, covering 11 operated corridors across VIC, NSW, ACT, QLD and SA. The reference load is a 2-bed home (26 m³) on a 35 m³ pantech, priced with exact dates and no add-ons, inclusive of GST and goods-in-transit insurance to $20,000.
What this isn't: an industry-wide survey. It's our own book. We publish it because the directional and distance effects are properties of backloading itself, and no operator we know of shows both directions of the same route.
Pea Logistics, “Interstate moving price index”, 2026-08-14. https://pealogistics.com.au/moving-price-index
Journalists and researchers: happy to share the underlying per-corridor numbers or comment on the economics — ops@pealogistics.com.au.
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