Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

US migration patterns according to one-way U-Haul truck transactions

One of the ways to try and keep tabs on where people are moving is to look at the number of permanent address changes. Another way is to look at the number of one-way U-Haul trucks that enter versus leave a particular state. And it turns out that if you’re U-Haul, you do care to track where all of your trucks are going. Each year in the United States there are about 2 million one-way truck transactions.

Looking at the data from 2020, the top inbound destinations — that is, the states that had the largest net gain of one-way U-Haul trucks — were (1) Tennessee, (2) Texas, and (3) Florida. This is a big jump for Tennessee as it was 12th in 2019. Texas and Florida, on the other hand, were similarly in the top three last year. In last place on this list is California, meaning that it had the largest net loss of one-way U-Haul trucks leaving the state.

Overall, this data continues to reinforce a shift that is taking place toward more affordable housing markets, such as those in the southern United States.

For the full U-Haul article, click here.

Photo by Tanner Boriack on Unsplash

One response to “US migration patterns according to one-way U-Haul truck transactions”

  1. […] This is an established trend in the US and so it was certainly not a bold prediction. There are many other factors at play here beyond simply the pandemic. However, as I mentioned in my original post, what is perhaps more interesting right now is the heightened tension between centralization (urbanity) and decentralization. I’ll see what data I can uncover in the coming weeks, but we likely need to get to the other side of this pandemic before drawing any firm conclusions. […]

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