Recent months may have brought new questions about Texas roaring economy, but last year it still ranked as the country’s most popular state for U-Haul movers, according to new analyses by the moving company — and D-FW led the way.
“We see a lot of people coming to the DFW metro from California and Washington state,” Sean Fullerton, a U-Haul Company of South Central Dallas president, said in a release.
He went on to cite the area’s low cost of living, growing infrastructure and diversity. “The food here is also great, which makes it hard to leave.”
Related
To come up with its moving rankings, U-Haul measured customers’ one-way truck, trailer or container trips as a proxy for migration, calculating geographic areas’ net inflow or outflow throughout the year.
Business Briefing
Last year the company processed more than 2.5 million such one-way transactions, U-Haul told The Dallas Morning News, although the company declined to make its numbers available for specific locations.
Texas — a state that’s been growing fast largely due to its strong economy and relatively low cost of living — had the biggest overall net gain in U-Haul movers, with 50.7% of the state’s one-way U-Haul trips coming from movers who were entering the state. It was the seventh time in 10 years that Texas had taken the top spot on the index.
“In my opinion the number one reason is the job market,” said Cory Hall, a U-Haul vice president in South Texas, in a video released by the company. “Texas quality of life is above others, in my opinion. Plenty of things to do here for families. Schools are good. Wages are good.”
‘Really enviable position’
After D-FW, which ranked first in U-Haul’s index of the country’s top-growth metro areas for the second year in a row, greater Houston ranked second overall and Austin ranked third, followed by Charlotte and Phoenix.
Brownsville and McAllen, San Antonio and College Station also made the top 25.
Among states, Texas was followed by Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and South Carolina for most overall net inflow of movers. California saw the biggest net outflow, followed by Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts.
According to a mid-2025 report by the moving company, Oklahoma ranked as the most common origin state for people arriving into D-FW, followed by Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas and California. Oklahoma City, Atlanta, Phoenix, Denver and Los Angeles ranked as the most common metro areas the movers had departed.
While the U-Haul analyses don’t amount to an exhaustive account of American migration trends, they do offer compelling evidence that Texas’ and D-FW’s prolonged growth stories — both the state and metro area have ranked among the country’s fastest growing for years — seem poised to continue.
“We have this really enviable position in the center of the country. We’re close to all major markets, so we’re a magnet for corporate headquarters. We have great universities and we have a really talented workforce,” Bill Adams, the D-FW-based chief economist of Comerica Bank, previously told The News.
“And so North Texas is benefitting from a virtuous cycle of business investment attracting highly skilled workers and highly skilled workers attracting more businesses.”