Professional Moving Services in Montreal, Quebec

Moving Co. moves households and businesses between Ontario and Montreal, and across the island once you have landed, from the plex-lined streets of the Plateau to the condo towers of Griffintown and the detached homes of the West Island. The Toronto to Montreal run is one of the busiest moving corridors in the country, and it is a core part of what we do. Our crews carry the Certificate of Insurance a landlord, condo board or borough requires, and (905) 752-7787 is answered 24 hours a day.

Montreal is the largest city in Quebec, an island city of about 1.76 million people at the heart of a metro area of roughly 4.3 million, and it moves like nowhere else in Canada. Most of the province’s leases still run July 1 to June 30 by long custom, so an enormous share of the city changes homes on the same day, the famous Moving Day. Add the narrow exterior staircases of the classic Montreal plex, the borough-by-borough parking rules and a French-speaking city with its own way of doing things, and a Montreal move rewards a mover who knows the ground. Whether you are moving to Montreal from Toronto or Ottawa, or leaving Montreal for Ontario, we handle the whole cross-province move end to end.

What follows is what actually shapes a Montreal move: the Ontario corridor, July 1 Moving Day, the borough permits, the plex staircases, the neighbourhoods and the winters around them.

Montreal and the Ontario corridor

The single most useful thing to understand about our Montreal work is that most of it runs along the Highway 401 and Autoroute 20 corridor between Ontario and Quebec. Toronto to Montreal is roughly 540 kilometres and about five and a half hours by road, and Ottawa to Montreal is barely two hours, so the moves we do here are overwhelmingly cross-province relocations: a family moving to Montreal for a job or school, a household leaving Montreal for the GTA, a company relocating staff. That is long-haul work, and it is exactly what we are built for. We plan the route and the timing, pack everything to travel the distance, and run the whole move on one account with the same crew, so a move between Ontario and Montreal is one organised job rather than a chain of handoffs across a provincial line.

July 1 Moving Day: la Fête du déménagement

Nothing shapes moving in Montreal like July 1. By a tradition that goes back generations, most residential leases in Quebec end on June 30 and begin on July 1, so a huge number of households across the city move on the same two or three days. It is a custom rather than a law, the old fixed lease dates were dropped back in the 1970s, but the habit held, and the result is a yearly moving crush unlike anywhere else in the country. Trucks and movers book up weeks and even months ahead, crews work around the clock, and prices around the date can run to several times the normal rate. If your Montreal move has to happen on or near July 1, the single most important thing you can do is book as early as you possibly can, because the demand is real and the supply of trucks genuinely runs out. If your dates are flexible, moving even a week or two away from July 1 makes the whole thing easier and cheaper. Either way, we plan a July 1 move well in advance and sequence a long-haul arrival around the bottleneck.

Montreal’s parking and moving rules are borough by borough

Montreal is divided into nineteen boroughs, or arrondissements, and moving-truck parking is administered by each one, so the rules, the fees and the lead times differ depending on where in the city you are. The city’s guidance is clear on one point that matters: if you use a professional moving company and you need to reserve curb space with temporary no-parking signs, block a sidewalk or bike path, or work on a metered or pedestrian street, you need a temporary occupancy permit, and when a professional mover is involved that permit has to be in the moving company’s name. We handle that permit as part of the job. The temporary no-parking signs themselves have to be the official rented kind, put up roughly twelve to fourteen hours ahead, and some pedestrian streets only allow moving in the morning. Fees range from nothing at all in some boroughs to a modest charge in others, set by each borough and changed from time to time, so we confirm the specific borough’s requirement rather than quoting a single number. The practical takeaway: tell us the exact address at both ends and we will sort the borough permit before the day.

The plex and the famous Montreal staircase

Montreal’s signature housing is the plex, the two, three and four-unit low-rise walk-ups built mostly between the 1870s and the 1930s, and they come with the feature every Montreal mover respects: the exterior staircase, often narrow, curved and made of metal, climbing to the upper units. Those winding outdoor stairs are part of what makes Montreal beautiful and part of what makes a Montreal move genuinely hard, because furniture and appliances have to go up and down them, in every kind of weather. And because Montreal apartments, unlike most of the country, often do not come with a fridge and stove, tenants haul their own major appliances up those stairs too. Plex buildings rarely have elevators. So a move in the Plateau, Mile End, Rosemont or Villeray is a real carry, and it wants a crew that has done it before, with the right straps, protection and technique for a tight spiral staircase. We scope the staircase at the quote stage, because a third-floor plex and a ground-floor flat are completely different jobs.

Neighbourhood by neighbourhood in Montreal

Montreal changes character block to block, and the move changes with it. The Plateau-Mont-Royal is the iconic plex-and-staircase district, dense, walk-up-heavy and narrow-streeted, the hardest carries in the city, with Mile End next to it much the same. Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie and Villeray are family plex neighbourhoods a little further out. Outremont is affluent and leafy, a mix of grand homes and upscale plexes; Westmount, a separate and very affluent enclave, runs from mansions to low-rise apartments and is largely English-speaking. Notre-Dame-de-Grace, NDG, is a leafy family area of brick duplexes and walk-ups. Griffintown, the former industrial strip by the Lachine Canal, is all new condo towers with elevators, a very different move. Old Montreal is historic lofts and condos on tight cobbled streets with real access limits. Verdun and Nuns’ Island mix duplexes with modern towers. And beyond the island, the West Island suburbs like Pointe-Claire, Dollard-des-Ormeaux and Kirkland, along with Laval to the north and the South Shore towns like Longueuil and Brossard, are detached-home suburbia reached across the bridges. We scope the truck, the crew and the carry around exactly which of these you are moving to or from.

A majority-renter city

Montreal is unusual in Canada for being a majority-renter city: as of the 2021 census, roughly 64 per cent of households in the city rent rather than own, well above the national picture. That matters for a mover because so much of the work is apartment and plex moves with landlords, leases and the July 1 turnover, rather than the owner-occupied detached moves that dominate a typical suburb. A rental move has its own checklist: a landlord or building may want a Certificate of Insurance before the day, a walk-through at both ends protects your deposit, and timing matters when a lease end and a lease start do not quite line up. We issue the certificate a Montreal landlord or condo corporation asks for, protect the common areas and the staircases, and plan the day so a rental move runs cleanly.

Winter moves and snow-removal parking

Most Montreal moves happen in the warm months around July 1, but a winter move is cheaper and far easier to book, and Montreal is a serious winter city. The thing to plan around in winter is snow removal: when the city clears a street, temporary orange no-parking signs go up, often the evening before or by mid-afternoon the same day, and any vehicle left in the way is ticketed and towed. That can collide with a moving truck that needs to sit at the curb, so a winter move wants the reserved space and the timing planned in advance. We watch the snow-clearing schedule, plan the truck position, protect floors against slush and salt as standard, and build in a little extra time, because a Montreal winter day is short and the footing matters.

French, your rights and moving in Quebec

Montreal is a French-speaking city, and French is the official language of Quebec, so it is worth knowing the lay of the land when you move here from Ontario. In practice Montreal is very bilingual and you will manage in English across most of the city, but the paperwork, the signage and the institutions run in French, and a little goes a long way. Quebec also gives movers’ customers strong consumer protections: the province’s consumer-protection office recommends getting your move agreement in writing, and a mover who takes a booking by phone or online owes you a written contract, which is exactly how we work, with a clear written quote before the day. When you are relocating across a provincial line, that written, upfront approach is worth having, and it is the standard we hold ourselves to on every cross-province move.

The insurance that protects your Montreal move

Two different things protect you on move day, and the difference matters even more on a long cross-province move. Liability coverage responds to damage the crew might cause to the building itself, a scratched floor, a dinged wall, a cracked window, and it is what a landlord or a condo board checks before the job. Cargo and contents coverage is separate: it protects the goods being moved, your furniture and belongings, while they are in our care and in transit over the hundreds of kilometres between Ontario and Montreal. We carry Commercial General Liability of $2,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate, Tenant’s Legal Liability of $2,000,000, and Non-Owned Automobile coverage of $2,000,000, all in Canadian dollars, plus cargo and contents coverage on the goods we move. When a Montreal building, condo corporation or borough asks to be named as an additional insured, we have the certificate issued in their name before the day.

How a long-haul Montreal move runs, from the first call to the last box

A cross-province move should feel organised from the first phone call, and ours runs on a set sequence so nothing is improvised. First, the estimate: we learn what is moving, the timeline and the constraints at both ends, and for anything larger than a small move we take a careful inventory, measuring the awkward pieces and checking the access, including the staircase situation at the Montreal end. Second, the plan and the written quote: you get a transparent number scoped from that inventory, with the few things that could change it named in advance, so there are no surprises after the truck is loaded in one province and unloaded in another. Third, the logistics: we lock the date, plan the driveway or curb staging, arrange the borough occupancy permit and the reserved space, and, for a condo, book the service elevator and issue the Certificate of Insurance. Fourth, move day and the road: the crew arrives uniformed and on time, protects the floors and doorways, wraps and pads every piece for the distance, and the same team carries the load through to Montreal. Fifth, the finish: we place the pieces where you want them, reassemble what we took apart, take the packing materials away, and do a final walk. One crew, one account, across the whole corridor.

Full-service packing for your Montreal move

On a cross-province move the packing is not a side task, it is central, because everything has to be packed to survive several hundred kilometres of road, and then carried up a Montreal staircase at the other end. We offer full packing and unpacking: we bring the materials, pack room by room to a system that makes the unpack sane, wrap and protect the fragile and finished pieces for the distance, and set the new home up rather than leaving a wall of boxes. Paired with assembly and disassembly for the beds, tables and modular pieces, which is often essential to get big items down a narrow plex stair, and junk removal for what the move leaves behind, it turns a daunting interprovincial move into a managed one.

Commercial moves in Montreal

Montreal is a major business and technology centre, and companies relocate staff and offices between it and Ontario constantly, so a good share of our Montreal work is commercial: office and headquarters relocations, workstation and IT moves, and warehouse and stock moves, which run on a different clock than a household, with after-hours windows, a Certificate of Insurance on file and account billing. We handle those through our enterprise logistics program, including the cross-province office move that has to land in Montreal ready to open on a Monday.

Moving to and from Montreal

The heart of our Montreal work is the cross-province move. People move to Montreal from Toronto, Ottawa and across Ontario for work, for school and for the city itself, and they leave Montreal for the GTA and beyond, and both directions are long-haul jobs that reward a mover who handles the whole thing on one account. The corridor is well travelled, Highway 401 to Autoroute 20, or the shorter run up from Ottawa on Autoroute 40, and the island is reached over its bridges, so the route and the timing have to be planned rather than improvised. Our long haul and cross-Canada service handles the whole move end to end with the same crew, packs everything to travel, and coordinates the delivery to line up with a lease or closing date, so a move between Ontario and Montreal stays one job from the first box to the last.

Downsizing, estate moves and specialty pieces

Montreal has a deep stock of family homes and long-settled households, which makes for a steady downsizing market, out of a big home into a smaller place, a condo or closer to family, and often that means a move across the province to be near children in Ontario. Moving out of a full house is really three jobs at once, the move, a real decision about what will not fit, and the clear-out of what is left, and we handle all three, pairing the move with junk removal and storage. And whatever the home, the pieces that need more than a moving blanket, pianos, art, antiques, glass and stone tables, get handled as their own category, wrapped and crated to suit the item, carried rather than dollied where that is safer, and packed to travel the distance, which matters even more when they also have to come down a tight staircase.

What does a Montreal move cost?

Because most Montreal work is a cross-province move, the cost is quoted on the distance and the size of the home rather than a simple hourly rate, and you get that number in writing, in advance, after a proper inventory. Where we run a local move within Montreal, it is billed hourly at $50 per mover, so the total comes down to crew size, truck size and how long the job runs, and a third-floor plex with a spiral staircase is a very different job from a ground-floor flat or a Griffintown condo with an elevator. The number you approve is the number you are invoiced.

Timing is the biggest lever on price in Montreal, more than in most cities, because of July 1. The days around July 1 are the most expensive and the hardest to book in the country; moving off that date, midweek and mid-month, can cost dramatically less. Across the year, about 80 per cent of North American moves happen between May and September, and month end is busier than mid month. If your dates are flexible, read our guide to the cheapest time to move, and for a number before you call, use the moving cost calculator.

Storage between closings and lease dates

On a cross-province move the two ends rarely line up perfectly, and around July 1 the lease dates are fixed by the calendar, so storage is often the piece that makes the whole thing work. When a lease start and a lease end, or a sale and a purchase, do not meet on the same day, storage bridges the gap, typically one to thirty days and often extendable to around ninety, and because the same crew loads it, stores it and delivers it, nothing is handed between vendors across a provincial line. Our storage service is built for exactly that, and it matters most when the two ends of a move are in different provinces and the dates are set by Moving Day.

Getting ready and when to book

A little preparation makes a Montreal move far smoother. If your move is on or near July 1, book as early as you can, months ahead if possible, because the trucks genuinely run out. Tell us about the staircase at the Montreal end, how many floors and whether it is a tight spiral, so we can plan the crew and the carry and bring the right protection. Give us the exact address at both ends so we can arrange the borough occupancy permit and the reserved curb space. And for the cross-province leg, confirm the dates early so the route and timing can be planned. On timing generally, the summer, month end and above all July 1 fill first, so the earlier you lock the date the better.

Students and the September move

Montreal is one of the great university cities of the continent, with McGill, Concordia, the Université de Montréal and UQAM among many others, and that gives it a second moving season on top of July 1. A large student population turns over its housing around the start of the fall term, so late August and early September bring their own busy stretch of smaller moves into apartments and shared units, much of it in the plex neighbourhoods near the campuses. Those are exactly the walk-up, staircase moves that reward a proper crew, and many of them are cross-province: a student heading to a Montreal school from Ontario, or coming home again at the end of a program. We handle the student move at either scale, the one-bedroom load up a Plateau staircase or the long-haul run from the GTA, on the same organised basis, and we keep it affordable by scoping it honestly and planning the date around the September rush.

Our moving services in Montreal

One crew handles the whole job: house moves across the island and the suburbs, condo and apartment moves for the plexes, walk-ups and towers, small moves and single item moves for one-piece jobs, professional wrapping and packing, furniture assembly and disassembly, junk removal, storage between lease and closing dates, and, above all here, long haul and cross-Canada moves along the Ontario to Quebec corridor. Businesses moving an office or stock should look at our enterprise logistics program. Along the corridor, our crews also serve Ottawa and Quebec City.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you handle moves between Toronto or Ottawa and Montreal?

Yes, that is the core of our Montreal work. Toronto to Montreal is about five and a half hours and Ottawa to Montreal barely two, and both are among the busiest moving corridors in the country. We handle the whole cross-province move end to end on one account with the same crew, plan the route and timing, pack everything to travel the distance, and coordinate delivery to line up with your lease or closing date.

Why is July 1 such a big deal for moving in Montreal?

Most residential leases in Quebec run July 1 to June 30 by long custom, so a huge share of the city moves on the same two or three days. It is a tradition rather than a legal requirement, but the crush is real: trucks and movers book up months ahead, crews work around the clock, and prices around the date can run several times higher. If you must move near July 1, book as early as possible; if your dates are flexible, moving away from it saves money.

Do I need a permit to park a moving truck in Montreal?

Often yes, and it is administered by the borough. If a professional mover reserves curb space with temporary no-parking signs, or works on a metered or pedestrian street, a temporary occupancy permit is required, and when a pro mover is involved that permit must be in the moving company’s name. We arrange the borough permit and the reserved space for you. Fees range from free to a modest charge depending on the borough, so we confirm the specific address rather than quoting one number.

Can you get furniture up a Montreal spiral staircase?

Yes, it is one of the things a Montreal crew has to be good at. The classic plex has narrow, often spiral exterior staircases and rarely an elevator, so upper-floor moves are real carries. We scope the staircase at the quote stage, bring the right straps and protection, and disassemble large pieces where that is what it takes to get them down safely. Tell us the floor and the staircase type when you book so we plan the crew for it.

How much does a move to or from Montreal cost?

A cross-province move is quoted on the distance and the size of the home, in writing and in advance after a proper inventory, rather than a flat hourly rate. Where we run a local move within Montreal it is billed hourly at $50 per mover. The biggest single factor in Montreal is the date: moving on or near July 1 is the most expensive and hardest to book, and moving away from it costs far less.

Do you speak French or handle the Quebec paperwork?

Montreal is very bilingual and you will manage in English across most of the city, while the institutions and signage run in French. Quebec gives movers’ customers strong consumer protections, including the right to a written contract, which is exactly how we work: a clear written quote before the day. On a cross-province move that upfront, in-writing approach is the standard we hold to.

Do you move to and from the West Island, Laval and the South Shore?

Yes. The West Island towns like Pointe-Claire, Dollard-des-Ormeaux and Kirkland, along with Laval to the north and South Shore towns like Longueuil and Brossard, are detached-home suburbs reached over the bridges, an easier carry than a downtown plex but a longer drive. We scope the access and plan the bridges and the route as part of the job, whether it is a local move or the Ontario end of a cross-province one.

Do you offer storage between lease or closing dates in Montreal?

Yes, and it is often essential here because July 1 fixes the lease dates by the calendar. When a lease start and end, or a sale and purchase, do not meet on the same day, storage bridges the gap, typically one to thirty days and often extendable to around ninety. The same crew loads it, stores it and delivers it, so nothing is handed between vendors across a provincial line.

When is the cheapest time to move in Montreal?

Away from July 1, midweek and mid month. The days around July 1 are the most expensive and hardest to book in the country, so even shifting a week or two makes a real difference. Across the year, about 80 per cent of North American moves happen between May and September and month end is busier than mid month, so an off-peak, off-Moving-Day date is both cheaper and easier to book.

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