Man with Van Prices in London
Man with van prices in London, put on the record by a removals company that runs the vans. How hourly rates really work, what a fair fixed price covers, and what moves the number up or down.
Type “man with van prices in London” into a search bar and you get two kinds of answers. Hourly rates wrapped in asterisks, and websites that make you ring for anything useful. So here is ours, on the record. Our man and van in London service is priced as one fixed price for the whole job, agreed after a quick survey, never by the hour. When a van-sized job grows into a whole home, our published bands run from £480 to £960 for a two-bedroom flat up to £3,000 for a five-bedroom house, inc VAT. And the jobs in between, the room’s worth of furniture, the sofa bought online, the dozen boxes between two flats in the same borough, each get their own fixed quote.
That is the short answer. The rest of this guide is the part most man-and-van websites skip: how London pricing actually works, where hourly rates quietly become expensive, and what a fixed price should include before you call it a price.
How man and van pricing works in London
There are two ways man-and-van jobs get priced in this city, and the difference matters more than the headline number.
The first is the hourly rate. It dominates the classifieds because it is easy to advertise: a van, a driver, a number per hour. The rate looks low because it is only ever quoted against the part of the job that goes well, the driving. Everything else that eats time on a London job bills against the same clock. The third-floor walk up. The hunt for a parking space. The A12 at four in the afternoon. The second run, because the wardrobe did not fit in one load with everything else.
The second is a fixed price for the job. The mover looks at what is actually being moved and quotes one price that covers the whole thing. On our bookings that look takes the form of a quick survey: a few honest questions, phone photos or a short video call, usually done the same week you ask. If the job takes longer than planned, that is our problem to price, not yours to keep paying for.
We only run the second model, and the rest of this guide explains why, what our jobs actually cost, and how to compare quotes without being fooled by a number that was never the whole price.
Why the cheapest hourly rate rarely survives contact with London
A lot of people search for the cheapest man with van in London, and the instinct is fair. It is a van and a couple of people. How different can quotes be?
Different in one way that changes the whole booking: who carries the risk of the job running long. On an hourly booking, you do. The meter runs in the traffic and the queue for the parking space, and the operator who wins work at the lowest rate is usually the one who cannot afford to absorb a delay, so every minute lands on your bill. On a fixed-price booking, we carry it. We survey, we plan the crew and the route, and if we got the plan wrong, the price stays the price.
That is not small print in either direction. It is simply where the risk sits, and it is the single most useful question to ask about any man-and-van quote: is this a price for the job, or a price for the time?
What a man and van job costs with us
Every Aviv man-and-van job is quoted as one fixed price for the whole job, after a quick survey by phone photos, a short video call or a few questions on the phone. No hourly meter, no watching the clock in traffic.
We do not publish a fixed price list, because every move is different and individually planned. A single number for “a man and van” would be a guess with a pound sign on it. What we can do is anchor both ends of the scale with the figures we do publish.
When the job is a whole home, our full removal bands apply, and those are on the record:
| Home size | Typical cost (inc VAT) |
|---|---|
| 2-bedroom | £480 - £960 |
| 3-bedroom | £1,020 - £1,500 |
| 4-bedroom | £1,500 - £2,100 |
| 5-bedroom | £2,100 - £3,000 |
Those bands are guides, not quotes, and they come with one rule: we start at two-bedroom homes, so studios and one-bedroom flats are not taken on as full removals on their own. That is exactly the gap man-and-van work fills. The part-furnished flat, the single items, the collections, each priced on its own fixed quote. And at work, clearing a few desks is man-and-van territory too, while full office removals in London carry their own published desk bands.
Wherever your job sits, the survey is free and the price we agree is fixed before anything is lifted.
What the fixed price covers
A man-and-van booking with us includes more than a van and a driver. The fixed quote covers the whole job: the trained crew who load, secure and unload, including your driver, the blankets, straps and floor protection, insurance for your belongings, and fuel. Goods in transit cover of £50,000 comes as standard, backed by £1,000,000 of public liability, the same cover our full removals carry.
Payment runs in two steps. A 10% deposit at booking secures your slot, and the balance is due after the job is complete, once everything is where you want it and you have seen it done. We take payment by bank transfer, card or cash.
It is worth holding our version of “included” against the classifieds version, where cover often stops at the vehicle door and wrapping materials turn up itemised on the final bill. Ask what the price includes before you compare the prices themselves. Two numbers that look close can be quoting very different jobs.
What moves the price
Where a quote lands comes down to a handful of things, and anyone who names a number without looking at them is guessing.
| Factor | Why it moves the price |
|---|---|
| Volume | The biggest factor. It decides the van size, the crew, and whether the job needs a second run. |
| Access | A third-floor walk up takes more crew hours than a ground floor flat with a door on the street. |
| Distance and parking | Crossing London takes longer than the mileage suggests, and a kept bay outside each address keeps the job moving. |
| Crew size | Heavy or awkward items need more than one pair of hands. The survey decides, before the day, not during it. |
| Timing | End of month and weekends are the busiest slots across the industry. Even a day of flexibility can help, and we work seven days a week where the move needs it. |
None of these are tricks we use to inflate a quote. They are the same things every mover prices against. The difference is that we look at them before naming a number. And if a job does run past the hours we planned together, extra time is charged at a rate agreed with you before the crew starts, never invented on the day. The only thing that changes a fixed price is a change to the job itself.
Man and van or full removal?
The honest test is volume. If your life fits in a dozen boxes and two or three furniture items, a man and van finishes it in a morning and is the right booking. Once you are looking at a full flat or a family home, a surveyed crew with more vehicles works out better value and a calmer day, which is what our house removals in London are for.
There is no hard line between the two, and it is a question we answer on the phone every day. Describe the job and we will tell you honestly which one it is, because the wrong sized booking costs everyone twice.
If the dates do not line up between addresses, our own storage in London takes your boxes and furniture in sealed containers at our yard, collected and placed in the same booking as the move.
The London costs that never surprise you on our quotes
Two London realities touch almost every van job, and both are known at survey rather than discovered on the day.
The first is transport charging. Parts of the city sit inside the Ultra Low Emission Zone and the Congestion Charge zone, and TfL keeps the current Congestion Charge details online so you can see where the zones run. On an Aviv job, any charge the route triggers is baked into the quote rather than itemised on top of it afterwards.
The second is parking. On most zoned streets a van cannot legally wait in a resident bay while it is loaded, so the practical answer is a suspension of the bays outside your address for the day. Each borough sets its own fees and notice periods, and the place to check yours is your own borough council’s parking pages. Where a street needs one, we help arrange the suspension with the council (council fee applies). The main roads are TfL red routes with stopping restrictions of their own, so for those addresses the plan is usually a side-road or goods vehicle bay nearby. The borough-by-borough detail, congestion zones included, sits in our guide to removals costs in London.
Fixed price after a proper survey means exactly this: the zone, the suspension, the red route, all of it is inside the quote before you sign anything.
Getting your price
The quickest route is the survey itself. Send us what you are moving, where it is going, and a few photos, and we will come back with one fixed price for the whole job.
Find out what your move will cost
Two answers get you a ballpark figure, or start a full quote and we will survey the job and fix the price.
Prefer to talk first? Call 0207 846 0282 or email info@avivremovals.com. Tell us what you are moving and when, and we will tell you honestly what it should cost, then prove it with a fixed written quote.
Written by Adam, owner of Aviv Removals - 15 years in the removals trade.
Common questions
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