The actual difference
Full-service moving means the company brings the vehicle, the crew and the equipment, and takes responsibility for the whole move from your old door to your new one. Labor-only means you provide and drive the vehicle — a rental truck, a trailer, a portable container, sometimes a friend’s pickup — and hire a crew to do the loading, the unloading, or both.
Everything else follows from that one difference. With labor-only you are the transport company: you book the rental, you buy the fuel, you drive, you pay the tolls, and you carry the risk of the drive. With full service, someone else does all of that and charges you for it.
What each one costs, honestly
Our own rates are a fair illustration. Labor-only help is $119 per hour for a two-person crew with a two-hour minimum, so $238 to start. A van and crew is $159 per hour with a three-hour minimum, so $477 to start. The $40 per hour gap is the vehicle and the driving.
But the hourly rate is not the whole comparison. With labor-only you also pay the rental company: the daily rate, the per-mile charge on most consumer rentals, fuel, and any equipment you rent. For a short local move that can be well under a hundred dollars, and labor-only wins comfortably. For a move where you need the truck all day, or where the rental depot is nowhere near you, the gap narrows fast.
Book two labor-only shifts — one to load, one to unload — and you are paying two two-hour minimums. Compare that against a single continuous van-and-crew booking before you assume labor-only is cheaper.
When labor-only is clearly the right answer
You have already rented the truck. You have a portable storage container sitting in your driveway that has to be loaded properly. You are driving in from another state and just need two people waiting at the new address. Your move is bigger than a cargo van — a real two- or three-bedroom household — because at that size renting a 20-foot truck and hiring loaders is almost always cheaper than paying an hourly crew to make three trips. You are comfortable driving something larger than your car, and you are not moving on the same day you have to hand back the keys to your old place.
When full service is worth the money
You cannot or would rather not drive a rental truck — which is a completely reasonable position, particularly in a city with narrow streets, low garage clearances and permit parking. Your move is small enough to fit in a van, so you are not paying for capacity you do not need. You have a hard deadline: a lease that ends, an elevator reserved for a fixed window, a settlement date. Or the move is simply one thing you would like handled without having to manage it. For a studio or one-bedroom in the DMV, the difference between the two options is often smaller than people expect once the rental costs are counted.
The hybrid most people miss
You do not have to choose one for the whole move. A very common arrangement is labor-only for the heavy furniture — the crew loads the sofa, bed, dresser and appliances into your rental — while you move the boxes yourself in your car over the preceding week. You get professional handling for the items that are actually risky, and you pay for two hours instead of six.
The reverse works too: pack and load yourself over a weekend, then book two hours of unloading help for the far end, which is the half of the move most people are too tired to do well.
Questions to ask either kind of company
What is the minimum, and is drive time between my addresses on the clock? What happens if the move runs longer than the estimate? What is not included in this price? Will you drive my rental truck? (The right answer is no — driving a customer’s vehicle is a licensing and insurance line a careful company will not cross.) What documentation can you give my building if it asks for proof of insurance? And: what is on your restricted list?
A company that answers all of those plainly, in writing, before taking a deposit is telling you something useful about how the actual move will go.