Louisiana moving company marketing that puts your LPSC number where customers look

Louisiana customers can look a mover up with the Public Service Commission before they book. Your ads should hand them what that search needs: your name, your address and your certificate number.

The state's mover certificate law says every in-state mover of household goods needs a common carrier certificate from the LPSC before doing any moving work. The same law requires a $5,000 surety bond filed with the LPSC, plus cargo insurance and workers' compensation.

The LPSC's packet for household goods carriers points to an order dated April 3, 2008. Under it, all advertising carries your legal or registered name, your physical address and your LPSC certificate number. The same three items go on every invoice and every written bid or estimate.

We read "all advertising" broadly, so the plan checks more than the yard sign:

• Your website. Put the three items in the footer, so every landing page an ad sends people to shows them.
• Search and social ads. Where an ad has room for a line of text, the certificate number fits in it.
• Listings and profiles. The business name should match the name on the certificate, not a nickname for the brand.
• Estimates and invoices. Build both templates with the name, address and number, since the packet names them outright.

The LPSC runs a public search of registered movers and tells customers to check that a mover is in good standing. Its staff will also say whether a carrier has open fines or citations. A customer who finds your number there in a minute has one less reason to keep shopping.

Louisiana does not let an in-state mover run from a phone number and a parked truck. The address you show customers has to be a real place where someone works during business hours.

Under the state's mover certificate law, any carrier doing in-state household goods moves keeps a permanent establishment in Louisiana. It is a building or physical location used for more than a short time. One or more permanent employees staff it during regular business hours to manage the moving business. It can be an office, a branch or a terminal. If it closes, the LPSC can suspend or cancel the right to operate.

A carrier based in another state registers the name, address and phone number of that Louisiana location with the Secretary of State and the LPSC. So a Mississippi or Texas mover that wants in-state Louisiana work needs a Louisiana base first, not just a Louisiana phone number.

For your marketing, show the staffed location everywhere: ads, estimates and profiles. If one yard serves both Baton Rouge and New Orleans, say so, and show the one address the certificate rests on.

Buying jobs through a middleman has its own risk here. The LPSC's household goods page warns that relocation companies and third-party moving services that use uncertificated carriers can be cited for knowingly helping break its orders. That turns your certificate into a selling point. Put it on the page you show relocation managers, apartment communities and employers.

A Louisiana mover does not set prices on the fly. Your rates sit in a tariff on file with the Commission, and the prices in your ads should come from it.

The LPSC's household goods packet says common carriers work under tariffs filed with and approved by the LPSC. The tariff shows your services and how each rate is worked out: flat, hourly or by mileage. An hourly tariff states when the clock starts and stops. Fuel surcharges must be in it as well. Staff can usually handle a rate cut informally, but an increase generally goes through the Commission's bulletin and a vote at its business meeting.

That shapes three parts of your marketing:

• The rate in an ad. An hourly price on a Google ad or your site should match the tariff, including when billing starts.
• Fuel and extra fees. A fuel charge the customer first meets on the invoice invites a complaint. List what the tariff lists on your pricing page.
• A summer price change. A rate rise for peak season needs the tariff changed first, and that takes time. Plan it in winter, not in June.

The estimate order ties these together. The written estimate must include every charge assessed under the tariff, so a pricing page that matches the tariff also matches the estimate the customer signs.

Louisiana movers add far more summer crew than movers nationally do. So spring is when bookings are won, and summer is when a missed call costs the most.

Bureau of Labor Statistics payroll counts for moving companies put Louisiana's moving payrolls at 776 people in July 2025, up about 28 percent from 608 in February. The same QCEW files put the national count at 86,463 in February and 99,024 in July, about 15 percent higher. Payroll is a stand-in for demand, since no agency publishes a monthly count of household moves.

Then come the storms. Hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30, and the National Hurricane Center puts its peak on September 10. A storm can land while your summer backlog is still on the calendar.

Two Louisiana laws change what you can say that week. After the governor or a parish president declares an emergency, the price gouging law holds prices for goods and services in the area to pre-emergency levels, apart from real cost increases. Each sale and each offer for sale is a separate offense, so a storm-week ad price counts too.

During a governor's emergency, Louisiana can also stop sales calls. The emergency solicitation law bars telephone solicitation except for listed reasons, so a callback list of last month's quotes waits. Outside emergencies, a mover that makes sales calls registers with the LPSC's own Do Not Call program, which the national registry does not replace.