Released value or full value: what your mover actually owes you

Two boxes on a bill of lading decide what happens if your dining table arrives with a leg snapped off. Most people tick the free one without reading it. Here is what each one means in numbers rather than in tariff language.

Released Value Protection

This is the basic liability every interstate mover is required to offer at no additional charge. The carrier is liable for 60 cents per pound, per article. Value does not enter the calculation at any point.

Work an example. A 40 lb flat-screen television that cost $1,200 is destroyed in transit. Forty pounds times sixty cents is twenty-four dollars. That is the settlement, not a deductible and not a starting offer.

A 300 lb antique sideboard appraised at $9,000 settles at $180. A 12 lb laptop settles at $7.20. Released value is not insurance and it is not intended to be. It exists so that a customer moving a small, low-value load is not forced to buy cover they do not need.

If you are ticking the free box, tick it because you did the arithmetic, not because it was free.

Full Value Protection

This is the default if you do not select released value in writing, and it behaves the way people assume moving liability works. If an article is lost or damaged, the carrier will repair it, replace it with an article of like kind and quality, or make a cash settlement at current market replacement value.

The mechanism runs on declared value. Your shipment must be declared at a minimum of $6.00 per pound of total shipment weight. A 4,200 lb household must therefore be declared at $25,200 or more. At a sample rate of $18 per $1,000 of declared value with a $500 deductible, that is roughly $454 for the move.

Deductible options of $0, $250 and $500 move the premium. A higher deductible lowers the cost and means small claims are yours to absorb. Most households with real furniture land on full value with a $250 or $500 deductible.

The exclusion that catches people out

Articles of extraordinary value, meaning anything worth more than $100 per pound, are not covered under full value unless they are listed individually on a high-value inventory form before loading. That covers jewellery, coin and stamp collections, fine art, antiques, furs and rare books.

A wedding ring weighs almost nothing and is worth thousands, so it fails the per-pound test spectacularly. The honest advice is simple: do not put it on the truck. Carry it yourself alongside passports, deeds, medication and hard drives.

What your own insurance may already do

Many renters and homeowners policies cover belongings in transit at a reduced sub-limit. It is worth one phone call to your agent to ask for that specific figure and whether it pays replacement cost or actual cash value. Third-party cover generally sits on top of carrier liability rather than replacing it, so knowing the number lets you choose a deductible sensibly.

If something does go wrong

1. Note the damage on the bill of lading at delivery, while the crew is still standing there.
2. Photograph the article and the packing material before anything is thrown out.
3. File the written claim inside nine months of delivery. That window is set by federal rule.
4. Expect acknowledgement within 30 days and a resolution, payment, denial or offer, within 120.

None of this is complicated once someone writes it down. The problem has never been that the rules are obscure. It is that they are usually explained for the first time on a clipboard at seven in the morning, when nobody is reading anything.

Sample content for this demo site. Figures marked as samples are placeholders and not a quotation.