Moving Truck GeniusMoving Truck Genius

Moving Truck Load Planner

Cubic feet are a terrible way to decide whether your furniture fits, because furniture isn't liquid. Lay it out instead. Pick a real truck, drag your things into it, and switch sizes or companies whenever you want. Your layout stays put.

Which truck?

Published U-Haul interior dimensions. Adds a Mom's Attic over the cab (2'6" × 7'8" × 2'7") that the floor plan doesn't show. Treat it as bonus room for light, soft items.

Rear door, you load from here

Floor is 15' × 7'8", 7'2" to the ceiling1.0×

You're looking down into the cargo area from above, cab at the top. Drag to move. Click an item and press R to turn it, arrow keys to nudge (hold Shift for a foot at a time), Delete to remove. Drop something onto a dresser, washer, or box and it stacks on top.

What the numbers here are, and aren't

The trucks are real. Every interior dimension comes from the rental company's own spec page, converted to inches and nothing more. Where Penske publishes only a maximum, the tool says so. Where Budget's own site contradicts itself, as it does on the 26-footer's payload, we use the most conservative figure it publishes and tell you which one.

The furniture is an estimate. No rental company publishes what a three-seat sofa measures, so our presets are typical sizes for common items. They'll be close for most homes and wrong for some. Every dimension is editable, and fifteen minutes with a tape measure on your four biggest pieces will tell you more than any calculator.

Wheel wells are drawn, but approximated. They intrude into the floor of most trucks and cost you real space along the walls, so leaving them out would make every plan look roomier than the truck is. None of the three companies publishes their dimensions, though, so the hatched shapes are typical box-truck geometry rather than a measurement, and you can switch them off. Penske is the exception worth knowing about: it advertises a flat floor with no wheel-well intrusion on its 16-footer and up.

Weight runs out before space does. On a load of books, tools, or appliances, you'll hit the truck's payload rating with the cargo area half empty. Watch the payload meter as closely as the volume one, and remember that U-Haul's 15-footer legally carries more weight than its own 20-footer.

Common questions

How do I know what size moving truck my furniture will fit in?
Lay it out and look. Add your furniture to the planner, then step through the sizes: the plan keeps your layout as you switch, so you can see exactly where a 15-foot truck runs out of room and a 20-foot one doesn't. The cubic-foot totals most rental sites quote hide the problem, which is that furniture is rigid and awkward, not liquid.
Can I switch trucks without losing my layout?
Yes. That's the point of the tool. Your items are stored by their position inside the cargo area, independent of any particular truck, so changing vendor or size just redraws the walls around them. Anything that no longer fits gets flagged in red rather than moved or deleted, and switching back brings your original layout into view again.
Are these the real dimensions of a U-Haul or Penske truck?
The truck dimensions are each rental company's own published interior measurements, transcribed from their spec pages. Penske publishes its figures only as maximums, so those are marked. The furniture sizes are a different matter: no rental company publishes those, so our presets are typical dimensions for common household items and you can override any of them with your own measurements.
Why does the planner say I'm only half full when everything fits?
Because it measures the space your things occupy, not the space they consume. Air gets trapped between a sofa arm and a mattress no matter how carefully you pack, and none of that shows up in the totals. A truck that's genuinely packed to the doors tends to read around 60% here. Treat the percentages as a rough gauge and the leftover pile as the real answer: if anything is sitting in it, you need more truck.
Does the planner account for stacking?
It does. Drop a box onto a dresser, washer, or another box and it stacks on top, with the combined height checked against the truck's ceiling. Items that aren't a flat, sturdy base get flagged when you try to stack on them. You can also stand mattresses, sofas, and table tops on edge, which is where most of the usable floor space in a real load comes from.
Can I print my plan and take it to the truck?
Yes. Print gives you a one-page sheet with the floor plan drawn to scale, every item numbered in the order you should load it, and a tick box beside each one so you can check things off on the day. Heaviest goes against the bulkhead first, and anything stacked is listed after the item it sits on. There's a QR code in the corner: scan it and the site reopens with your exact layout, so you can change the truck or move things around without building it again from scratch.
Does it account for wheel wells?
Yes, with a caveat you should know about. The humps over the rear axle are drawn as hatched no-go zones, and anything you put on the floor across one gets flagged. But no rental company publishes wheel-well dimensions, so those shapes are typical box-truck geometry rather than measurements of a specific truck. You can switch them off. Penske is the exception: it advertises a flat floor with no wheel-well intrusion on its 16-foot and larger trucks, so none are drawn there.
What isn't modeled?
U-Haul's Mom's Attic, the shelf over the cab on its 15-foot and larger trucks, isn't drawn. It's real space but it sits over the cab rather than in the box, so folding it into the floor plan would misrepresent the shape of the load. Treat it as bonus room for light, soft things you haven't counted. Tie-down rails, ramp intrusion, and the exact contour of a wheel arch aren't modeled either.