How to Read a Cube Sheet Without Losing Money on It

A cube sheet is the itemized list a mover uses to convert a household into total cubic feet, then into estimated weight — most tariffs convert at roughly 7 pounds per cubic foot. A 1,000 cubic foot load is planned as about 7,000 pounds. That one number sets the truck, the crew and the price.

The four lines that cost the most

Estimators rarely miss a sofa. They miss the things that are technically visible but easy to skip past on a fast walkthrough or a rushed phone call.

• Boxes not yet packed. A customer who says "I still have to pack the kitchen" is describing 30 to 60 cubic feet that does not exist yet. Count the cabinets, not the boxes on the floor.
• Garage, basement, attic and shed. These four rooms hold the widest range of any home — anywhere from 40 to 400 cubic feet — and they are the rooms customers forget to show you.
• Sectionals recorded as sofas. A three-seat sofa runs about 50 cubic feet. A five-piece sectional can run 90 or more, and it usually cannot be carried as one unit.
• Disassembly items recorded at assembled volume. A bed frame, a dining table and a treadmill each change volume and labor when they come apart. The cube might drop; the hours go up.

From cubic feet to a truck that actually fits

A 26 foot box truck is nominally around 1,600 to 1,700 cubic feet. With pads, load bars, imperfect stacking and the walkway a crew needs, most movers plan on about 1,400 cubic feet of household goods. Planning to the nominal number is how a crew ends up making a second trip on a job that was quoted as one.

Verify capacity against your own fleet. Two 26 foot trucks from different manufacturers can differ by more than a room’s worth of goods.

Why the cube sheet is worth defending

On a binding estimate, the price can change only when the customer adds items or requests additional services. Cubic feet the surveyor never recorded are not a change in scope — they are the mover’s cost. On a non-binding interstate estimate, the customer only has to pay 110 percent of the estimate at delivery, and anything above that must wait at least 30 days to be billed. Either way, the volume you failed to write down is money you finance yourself.

This is the specific problem a virtual survey solves. When the customer records every room from their phone, the cube sheet is built from footage of the actual home instead of from a phone call, and the rooms nobody remembered to mention are on camera.