Moving house in Dubai: van or truck?
Most people book one size too small and end up doing two trips on a Friday. Match the vehicle to the number of bedrooms, and check your building rules before the day.
Sizing
What each home size usually needs
These are the sizes our customers actually book, not a theoretical calculation. Add a size if you have a lot of long furniture or a full storeroom.
Drawn to the same scale, with the home size each one usually covers. Add a size if you have a lot of long furniture or a full storeroom.
| Home | Usually enough | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Studio or one bed | Toyota Hiace or Nissan Urvan | 3 m of load length takes a bed, a sofa and boxes in one or two runs |
| Large one bed or small two bed | Ford Transit | 3.4 m handles longer furniture without tipping it on its side |
| Two to three bed apartment | 5-Tonne Truck | 5.2 m and 5,000 kg does it in one load instead of three van runs |
| Three to four bed villa | 5-Tonne, sometimes 10-Tonne | Villas carry garden furniture and storerooms that flats do not |
| Just a few items | 1-Ton Pickup | Open bed, fine for robust items on a dry day |
Not sure? Send us a photo of each room. We size moves from photos every week and it takes about a minute.
Before the day
The Dubai-specific part people forget
This is what turns a smooth move into a wasted morning, and it has nothing to do with the van.
Building move permits
Most managed buildings in Dubai require a move-in or move-out permit or NOC from the management office, often with a refundable deposit. Ask both buildings a week ahead — not the day before.
Allowed hours
Many towers only allow moves during set hours and not on Fridays or public holidays. Book the van for the window the building actually permits.
Service lift booking
Where there is a service lift, it usually has to be reserved. Without it you are carrying a wardrobe down a fire escape.
Where the truck can park
A 5 or 7.5 m body will not enter many basement car parks. Send us both addresses and we will tell you honestly what fits.
The step up
Where a van stops being enough
There is no vehicle between the largest van and the smallest truck. Knowing exactly where that gap sits is most of this decision.
The Ford Transit is the top of the van range: 3.4 m of floor, 1.8 m of height, 1,400 kg of payload. The next vehicle up is the 5-tonne truck at 5.2 m, 2.1 m and 5,000 kg. That is not a small step. It is roughly half as much floor again and more than three times the weight, and it arrives together with a heavier licence category and a body that many basements will not admit.
A two-bedroom flat is where most households meet the gap. With ordinary furniture and a sensible amount of packing it is usually a full Transit and a little more, which leaves two honest options: a Transit making two runs in one day, or a truck making one.
Price them properly before choosing. The Transit is AED 250 for the day, and two runs inside that day still cost one day of hire, plus the extra fuel and the extra hours. The 5-tonne is AED 500 a day, and most people take it with a driver at AED 250, so AED 750 before fuel. The truck costs more in money; the second van run costs more in time, lifting and lift bookings.
Distance decides which of those matters. Two addresses fifteen minutes apart make the second van run cheap, and the Transit usually wins. Two addresses on opposite sides of the city, or in different emirates, turn the second run into most of the afternoon, and the truck starts to look inexpensive.
Access decides the rest. If the new building will not take a 5.2 m body into its loading area, the truck is not an option however the numbers fall. Send us both addresses before you pick, and we will say which vehicle can actually reach each door.
One more way to close the gap without a truck: reduce the load. A two-bedroom flat that sheds a bed, a bookcase and the furniture nobody wants at the new place often drops back inside a single Transit load, and if that is realistic for you it beats every other option on this page on cost.
Villas
A villa is a different kind of move
Bedroom counts undersell villas. The rooms are larger, there are more of them than the count admits, and a good share of the contents lives outside.
Start with the spaces the bedroom count leaves out: the maid’s room, the storeroom under the stairs, the garage, the roof, the garden. Garden furniture, barbecues, bicycles, gym equipment, planters and outdoor storage boxes are bulky, awkward and frequently forgotten until the truck is already full.
That is why villas usually step up a size. A three-bedroom apartment often fits a 5-tonne truck in one load; a three-bedroom villa frequently needs either the 5-tonne twice or the 10-tonne once, and a four-bedroom villa with a full garden is often a two-day job whichever vehicle you take.
Access is usually easier at a villa and occasionally much harder. A driveway lets a truck stand right at the door, which saves hours of carrying. But community roads can be narrow, gates can restrict vehicle size or working hours, and some communities need the vehicle registered with security in advance. Check with the community office before the truck is booked, not while it is waiting at the barrier.
Heavy items behave differently too. Outdoor stone tables, gym machines and large planters are genuinely heavy, and they are the loads where a truck’s payload matters rather than its length. They also need more than two people to move safely, which is worth arranging before the day rather than improvising on it.
If you are unsure how much the outdoor space adds, photograph it along with the rooms. Garden and storeroom photos change our estimate more often than any bedroom does.
The fortnight before
What to settle before the vehicle is booked
The vehicle is the easiest part of a Dubai move to arrange at short notice. Almost everything else is not.
Two weeks out, contact both buildings or communities. Ask about move permits or an NOC, any refundable deposit, the permitted hours and days, and whether the service lift needs booking. The answers decide which day the move can happen, and the vehicle booking should follow that date rather than lead it.
At the same point, start the utility and tenancy paperwork for the new home. The DEWA account and the Ejari registration for the new tenancy both take time to arrange, and a move that lands before they are sorted means moving into a home without power or water connected. None of that involves us, but it is the most common reason a moving date slips.
Then decide what is not coming. Selling, donating or disposing of furniture takes longer than people expect, and every large item that leaves before the move can bring the vehicle down a size. A sofa you plan to replace is the most expensive passenger in the truck.
A week out, confirm the permit, the lift slot and the time window in writing, and book the vehicle for that window. If you are taking a driver, tell us the permitted hours at both ends so the day is planned around them.
Two days out, confirm the vehicle and the delivery time with us and make sure the driver or your own team knows both addresses, the lift location and the loading point. A five-minute call at this stage saves a lost hour on the morning.
If either building cannot give you a date in writing, do not book a non-refundable anything around it. A move date that depends on a management office confirming a lift slot is a provisional date, and the rest of the plan should stay provisional with it.
The other end
Unloading so the first night works
The move is not over when the vehicle is empty. It is over when you can sleep, cook and wash, and the unloading order decides how soon that happens.
Beds first. Carry the bed frames and mattresses into the right rooms before anything else and assemble them while you still have the energy. Everything else can live in boxes for a day; a bed that is still in pieces at midnight is the one thing that makes a long day worse.
Then the kitchen essentials and the bathroom box. Whatever you kept aside for the first evening, open that now. The rest of the kitchen can wait until tomorrow.
Appliances need a little care. A washing machine should have its transit bolts refitted before a move and removed again before it is used, and a fridge that has been tilted or laid down usually needs to stand upright for a while before it is switched on. The manufacturer’s instructions give the details for your model, and they are worth checking rather than guessing.
Keep the lift booking in mind while you unload. Buildings commonly book the service lift for a fixed window, and the second half of a move always runs slower than the first. Put the large items up first and the boxes last, so that if the slot runs out it is cartons left in the lobby and not a sofa.
Finally, walk round the empty vehicle before it goes back. Anything left behind is far easier to recover in the car park than after the vehicle has been returned and cleaned.
Driver or self-drive
Which way to book it
Self-drive
Cheapest, and fine for a van on a car licence. You load, you drive, you unload. Budget more time than you think for the loading.
With a driver
AED 250 a day. Required for the 5 and 10-tonne trucks unless you hold a heavy licence, and worth it for a villa move regardless.
Two smaller runs
Sometimes genuinely cheaper than the next size up — but only if both addresses are close. Otherwise the second run costs you the day.
Moving questions
Do you provide movers to carry the furniture?
We rent the vehicle and can supply a driver. We are not a packing and carrying company — if you need loaders, arrange them separately and book the van for the same window.
How long do I need the van for?
Most flat moves fit comfortably in one day. Villa moves often run to two. If it might slip, take the weekly rate — it overtakes the daily at about six days anyway.
Can I keep the van overnight?
Yes, a daily hire runs to the same time the next day. Tell us the return time when you book.
What if my new building will not let the truck in?
Tell us the address first. We will say whether it fits, and if not we will suggest a size that does rather than send a truck that has to turn around.
Which licence do I need?
A car licence covers all the panel vans. Trucks need a heavy licence. Full detail in the licence guide.
Tell us about the move
Send the two addresses, the number of bedrooms and the date. We will name the size, the price and whether you need a driver.