Texas again tops U-Haul growth index

Texas is still the most popular destination for people making interstate moves, according to data released Tuesday by UHaul, which saw more customers take its moving trucks on one-way trips to Texas than any other state in 2023.

The number of one-way moves to Texas last year dropped by 11% compared with 2022, the company said, but departures from Texas dropped by more than 11%, so the state had a net gain, according to U-Haul.

It was the third year in a row that Texas has topped U-Haul’s Growth Index, and the sixth time since 2016, the company said. Florida had the secondhighest net gain of one-way moves, also for the third year in a row, followed by North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

California had the largest net loss of one-way movers for the fourth year in a row. Michigan, New Jersey, Illinois and Massachusetts also loitered at the bottom of the Growth Index, along with Louisiana, which slid to 45th for growth in 2023 after ranking 35th in 2022.

Across the nation, U-Haul said, moving slowed in 2023 compared with several years in which the pandemic spurred a flurry of relocations.

U-Haul comes up with its Growth Index by calculating each state’s net gain or loss of one-way equipment — a customer who rents a U-Haul in Los Angeles and returns it here is a gain for Houston — during the course of a calendar year. The company, which has more than 23,000 locations in the United States and Canada, records about 2.5 million such transactions each year, it said.

As California, Texas and Florida are the nation’s most populous states, in that order, they would naturally be expected to rank among the biggest population winners or losers in any given calendar year. But the U-Haul Growth Index is consistent with broader trends in domestic migration that have been observed in recent years, said John “J.T.” Taylor, president of U-Haul International.

“We continued to see many of the same geographical trends from U-Haul customers moving between states,” Taylor said. “Migration to states in the Southeast and Southwest is still very pronounced. Demand for one-way equipment out of certain markets in the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast mirrors what we have seen during recent moving cycles.”

The biggest mover in the 2023 U-Haul Growth Index was Arkansas; the state moved from 43rd in the 2022 ranking to 17th last year.