Most of what this site computes is a published rate applied by a written rule: Dislocation Allowance is a table lookup, MALT is a distance times a rate, travel per diem is a flat rate times authorized days times a percentage from a JTR table, and TLE and TLA are percentages of locality rates. Those are exactly checkable, and the source tables are committed to this project rather than hand-typed. Exactly one figure is a model — the Government Constructed Cost that sets the PPM incentive, which pays 100% of it.
Rates last verified August 2026 against the published source tables.
Published rates applied by a rule. Dislocation Allowance is a lookup in a table PDTATAC publishes. MALT is a distance times a rate the GSA sets. Travel per diem is a flat rate times authorized days times a percentage from a JTR table. TLE and TLA are percentages of locality rates. These are exactly checkable — the input tables are committed to this project, each carries the date it was last verified against its source, and the changelog records every time one moved.
One model. The Government Constructed Cost — what the government would have paid to move your household goods itself — is the base of the PPM incentive, which pays 100% of it. The actual rates a mover invoices are contract-proprietary and not published, so no public calculator computes it exactly. Ours is an estimate, and the rest of this page is what kind.
LHS = [BLHS + OLF + DLF + SH] × InvdLHS. Since TRANSCOM terminated the Global Household Goods Contract for cause in June 2025, domestic moves price on the legacy program's published rate basis — the 400NG, which USTRANSCOM publishes in full. This site holds the 2026 Baseline Rates workbook, which binds pickups from 15 May 2026, and follows the costing methodology in Appendix A of the tariff item by item. JTR paragraph 051502-E-1-a says what goes into the constructed cost, and it is narrower than a commercial invoice: linehaul, packing and unpacking, the origin and destination linehaul factor charges, and a short-haul charge for shipments moving 800 or fewer miles. Origin and destination service charges — items 135A and 135B — are on the tariff but not on that list, so they are not in the figure here.
Your route is priced on its own published rows, not a national average. The workbook's Geographical Schedule assigns every CONUS region a Service Area with its own linehaul factor and packing schedule, and its Base Point City tab maps every ZIP prefix to one. This calculator carries both tables, so when your origin and destination resolve — every installation in the pickers does, and a ZIP typed into the custom field works too — each end uses its own area's figures. You can check one against the workbook yourself: Birmingham, AL is Service Area 4 on Services Schedule 2, so a move out of Birmingham prices packing at Schedule 2's own published rate rather than a national average. Two approximations remain and are stated rather than hidden: the lookup uses your installation's ZIP prefix, a region-level stand-in for the residence your shipment actually leaves; and an end that cannot be resolved — a typed location without a usable ZIP — keeps the national averages, the same way every move was priced before this pass.
One number in it is still estimated, and it is the discount. The tariff sets a baseline; movers bid a discount against it per channel per round, and those filed discounts are in no public file — the tariff itself tells a member to read their own off the invoice or DPS Analytics. Everything else here is a table lookup. That single multiplier is measured, not chosen: it is solved for against the real tables from one observed 2026 PPM — 13,000 lb over 1,197 miles paying about $9,000 after the 22% withholding — and comes out near 69%. One observation does not measure a distribution, which is what the range is for.
What we fixed, and what we did not. This model used to be a straight line through that one observation, with no term for the short-haul charge — so it read low on short moves, badly. On a 4,000 lb move of 300 miles the tariff figure is more than twice what the line produced. Long, heavy moves went the other way: a straight line keeps climbing where real freight pricing flattens. What did not change is how much is unknown. The band is the same width it was, because switching to the tariff fixed the shape of the curve and told us nothing new about the discount.
The fuel surcharge rides inside it. Item 16A pays a percentage of linehaul for every increment the national diesel price sits above the tariff's baseline price, measured at pickup. Rather than pin a diesel figure that is stale within the week, the surcharge is carried inside the calibrated discount — where it already is, since the move we calibrated on paid whatever surcharge applied that day.
Results are shown as a range, give or take 25%. Every charge above is published tariff arithmetic; exactly one input is estimated, the discount a mover filed against those rates. So the range is not a margin sprinkled on a finished number — the low and high figures are this same arithmetic run again at a lower and a higher discount.
We checked that the rest of the model is not quietly hiding inside that width. When your origin and destination match the tariff's own geography, each end is priced on its own published Service Area row — its linehaul factor and its packing schedule — and nothing about your route is averaged. What remains estimated is one thing: the calibration move's own route was not recorded, so the discount was solved assuming it sat at the national averages. Re-solving under extreme assumptions instead — both ends of that move at the cheapest published areas, or both at the most expensive — shifts every estimate on this site by between +5.2% and −8.2%, well inside the printed range. The assumed pickup date costs nothing at all, because one tariff edition is loaded and it publishes a single rate grid.
What is left is the discount itself, and ±25% is a declared judgment about it, not a measurement. Movers bid discounts per channel per round; the 400NG defines the term and then tells you to read your own off the carrier's invoice. We have calibrated against one real move, so the width is one observation deep and we cannot show it is too wide any more than we can show it is too narrow. If you see it presented anywhere on this site as a measured confidence interval, that is a mistake and we want to hear about it.
The honest answer for your individual move is MilMove. It produces the real constructed cost for your shipment rather than a model of it. Use ours to decide whether a PPM is worth pursuing and to sanity-check what you are offered; use MilMove for the figure you plan money around.
Rate tables are committed to this project as the publisher's own files — the DTMO BAH and OCONUS per diem tables, the GSA per diem master file, PDTATAC's DLA rates, USTRANSCOM's 400NG workbook — and the code is generated from them rather than hand-typed. A rate that cannot be resolved from a source file stops the build instead of falling back to an average.
Each family carries the date it was last checked against its published source, and every page shows the oldest such date among the figures it uses, because a page is only as current as its stalest number. Where a figure is a judgment rather than a published rate, the citation says so in those words.
Where sources disagree, we keep both and say so rather than picking one quietly. The household-goods quick-claim ceiling is currently in that state, with two DoD documents giving different figures and neither citing the other.
Rates that depend on a date are stored as schedules, not overwritten. MALT changed mid-2026, and a member whose travel began before the change is still owed the old rate — so both are kept and the rate is chosen by travel date. The changelog lists every such change, including the ones that have not taken effect yet.
Each calculator states its own exclusions on the page, and they are exclusions rather than oversights: TLA Special and a handful of others depend on a local determination or a figure that is not published. We would rather show you a gap than fill it with a plausible number. Three that used to be on this list are not any more — extended TLE past the first 21 days, the dual-military split, and government quarters are all priced now, because each turned out to need a question rather than an unpublished figure.
Nothing here is a substitute for your orders or your finance office, which compute the payable claim. These estimates exist so you can plan before the money arrives and check a voucher after it does.
2026 400NG Baseline Rates workbook (USTRANSCOM) The published rate basis: the linehaul grid by mileage and weight band, the Geographical Schedule of Service Areas, and the Additional Rates for short-haul, packing and unpacking. Committed to this project as the publisher's own file and parsed directly. (https://www.business.ustranscom.mil/dp3/pdfs.cfm)
2026 400NG tariff, Appendix A — Costing a Domestic Shipment The costing method the engine follows item for item, including its worked example, which the engine reproduces. (https://www.business.ustranscom.mil/dp3/pdfs.cfm)
Joint Travel Regulations, par. 051502-E What the constructed cost is made of — linehaul, packing and unpacking, the linehaul factor charges, and short haul — and what it is not. (https://www.travel.dod.mil/Policy-Regulations/Joint-Travel-Regulations/)
Joint Travel Regulations, Chapter 5 The published rates and rules every other figure applies: Dislocation Allowance (par. 0505), Temporary Lodging Expense (par. 0506), travel per diem and MALT (par. 0502 and 0503), and the household goods weight allowances of Table 5-37. (https://www.travel.dod.mil/Policy-Regulations/Joint-Travel-Regulations/)
DoD Financial Management Regulation, Volume 7A, Chapter 68 Temporary Lodging Allowance — the one allowance here whose rule is not in the JTR — with the Table 68-11 percentages as DTMO restates them. (https://www.travel.dod.mil/Allowances/Temporary-Lodging-Allowance/)
DTMO, GSA and PDTATAC rate tables The BAH, OCONUS per diem and DLA tables from DTMO and PDTATAC and the CONUS per diem file from GSA, each committed under data/official/ and dated on the page that uses it. (https://www.travel.dod.mil/Allowances/)
MilMove (my.move.mil) Not a source: the Defense Personal Property System produces the real constructed cost for an individual shipment. Use this site's estimate to decide whether a PPM is worth pursuing; use MilMove for the figure you plan money around. (https://my.move.mil/)
| Component (Appendix A) | Amount |
|---|---|
| Baseline linehaul (BLHS) | $19,283 |
| Origin linehaul factor (OLF) | $144 |
| Destination linehaul factor (DLF) | $144 |
| Short-haul, Item 999 | $0 |
| Linehaul charge (LHS), after the discount | $6,149 |
| Fuel surcharge, Item 16A | $0 |
| Full pack, Item 105A | $2,431 |
| Full unpack, Item 105A | $255 |
| Constructed cost | $8,836 |
| Range shown | $6,627 – $11,045 |