Tennessee remains a leading destination for do-it-yourself movers – Johnson City Press (subscription)
U-Haul says Tennessee continued to be one of its most popular moving destinations in 2022.
The national do-it-yourself moving rental company said in a news release Tuesday that the Volunteer State was ranked No. 6 by its U-Haul Growth Index analyzing customer moves in the past year.
People arriving in Tennessee in one-way U-Haul trucks dropped 7% over 2021, while departures fell 6% as overall traffic slowed.
Despite a slightly greater year-over-year drop in arrivals, movers arriving in Tennessee still accounted for 50.3% of all one-way U-Haul truck traffic in and out of Tennessee (49.7% departures) to keep it a top-10 growth state for the third consecutive year.
The Volunteer State ranked No. 3 in 2021 and was the nation’s No. 1 growth state in 2020.
Tennessee’s top growth city is Nashville. Other net-gain markets include Maryville, Brentwood, Cleveland, Old Hickory, the Tri-Cities (Johnson City, Kingsport and Bristol), Jackson, Hendersonville, La Vergne, Sparta, Ooltewah, Manchester, Hermitage, Mt. Juliet, Greeneville, Cookeville and Germantown.
“Ultimately, I think Tennessee continues to be popular because the cost of living is cheaper, and we have no state income tax,” said Chris Hardin, president of the U-Haul Company of South Nashville.
“I think Tennessee dropped slightly in the U-Haul Growth Index because of the huge increase in tech jobs that became remote during the pandemic, and some of those people being called back to their California and New York offices in 2022. But we continue to have a beautiful state that a lot of people want to make their home.”
Texas remains U-Haul’s leading growth state for the fifth time since 2016, while Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia round out the top five. Meanwhile, California ranks 50th and Illinois 49th for the third year in a row, indicating those states saw the largest net losses of one-way U-Haul trucks.
While U-Haul migration trends do not correlate directly to population or economic growth, the company says its U-Haul Growth Index is an effective gauge of how well states and cities are both attracting and maintaining residents. Visit myuhaulstory.com to view the additional growth state releases and national releases from the U-Haul Growth Index.