If you’ve Googled both of us, we don’t blame you. Two moving companies, both with “college” energy in the brand, both doing some version of “let young, energetic people lift heavy things for a living.” On the surface, they sound interchangeable. They are not.
College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving and Undergrads Moving solve different problems for different customers, and the gap between the two — in pricing, scope, and how each company is actually built — is wider than the names suggest. This is the honest breakdown of which is which, what each one does well, and how to figure out which actually fits the move you’re planning.
We’ll be the first to admit a bias: we’re Undergrads. But we’re going to play this as straight as we can. Both companies are real, both have legitimate customers, and the right answer depends a lot more on your specific situation than it does on which name is more familiar.
TL;DR
Quick version:
- College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving is a national franchise that does full-service moving (their truck, their crew, packing if you want it), junk removal, and donation pickups. Founded around 2004, headquartered in Tampa, ~200 locations across the U.S. and Canada. Notable for the truck-as-junk-hauler combo and the brand recognition that comes with appearing on Shark Tank.
- Undergrads Moving is a regional, labor-only moving company staffed by college students from local universities. Founded in 2017 in Clemson, now operating across FL, KY, NC, SC, and TX. You rent the truck (or container, or POD), our crew handles the load/unload. Typically ~30% cheaper than full-service movers on local moves.
- Pick College Hunks if you want one company doing everything including the truck, you have junk to haul and furniture to move, or you need a national-brand mover with same-day availability for a clear-out.
- Pick Undergrads if you want to save real money on a local move, you’re moving an apartment or smaller home, and you’re comfortable handling a truck rental yourself.
Now the longer version.
The Core Difference: Two Different Products
The single most important distinction between the two companies is the operating model.
College Hunks is a full-service moving and junk removal franchise. They show up with a branded truck, a uniformed crew (the brand calls them HUNKS — Honest, Uniformed, Nice, Knowledgeable, Service-driven, which is an acronym that only makes sense if you don’t think about it too hard), and they handle the entire job from packing to driving to unloading. They also do junk removal — you point at the broken treadmill in the garage, they take it away. They run roughly 200 locations across North America, mostly franchised, with a handful of company-owned branches.
Undergrads is a labor-only moving company. We don’t own trucks. We don’t drive your stuff anywhere. What we do is show up with a crew of trained, vetted college students who load, unload, and rearrange your furniture for an hourly rate. You handle the truck rental, the driving, and the route. We handle everything that requires bending your knees. The model exists because for most local moves, the truck is the most expensive line item on a full-service bill, and removing it from our overhead makes us roughly 30% cheaper than full-service movers.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Once you understand that one company sells you a truck-and-crew package and the other sells you the crew without the truck, every other difference between us starts to make sense.
What Each Company Actually Does
| College Hunks | Undergrads | |
|---|---|---|
| Local full-service moves (truck included) | Yes | No |
| Long-distance moves | Yes | No |
| Loading/unloading a rental truck or POD | Yes (labor-only option) | Yes (this is our whole thing) |
| In-home moves (rearranging furniture) | Yes | Yes |
| Packing services | Yes | Yes (by the hour) |
| Junk removal | Yes | No |
| Donation pickups | Yes | No |
| Storage | Yes (some locations) | No |
| National coverage | Yes | No (regional: FL, KY, NC, SC, TX) |
College Hunks is a wider service set. If your life looks like “I’m moving across the state, I have a couch I want gone, and I need the whole thing handled by one company,” they can do that in a single booking. The same call that schedules your move can schedule the haul-away.
Undergrads is a narrower service set, and that’s by design. We’re optimized for one thing — efficient local labor moves — and we don’t do anything that would compromise the price advantage that comes with not running a fleet. If you need a truck driven across a state line, we’re not the right call.
Pricing: How the Math Actually Works
This is where the two models diverge most clearly.
College Hunks charges hourly for moving services, with a base rate that bakes in the truck, fuel, commercial auto insurance, packing materials (if used), and franchise overhead. Their public pricing pages keep specific numbers vague — they’ll tell you it’s hourly and that they offer free estimates, but the actual rate varies by market and franchise. Junk removal is priced by truck volume — typically $150 to $750 per truckload depending on how full it is, with each truck holding roughly 11 ft × 8 ft × 5 ft of stuff.
For a typical local move with College Hunks, expect a number that competes with other full-service movers like Two Men and a Truck or All My Sons — meaning $800 to $1,200+ for a 1-bedroom apartment, $2,000+ for a 3-bedroom house, and more if you add packing or junk removal.
Undergrads charges a flat hourly rate for the crew, with a 2-hour and 2-mover minimum. We post the rate up front in our online quote tool. There are no fees baked in for trucks we don’t own, fuel we’re not burning, or commercial garages we’re not maintaining.
The result, on a typical local apartment move:
| College Hunks (full-service) | Undergrads (labor-only) + truck rental | |
|---|---|---|
| 1-bedroom apartment | $800–$1,200 | $250–$500 (labor) + $50–$100 (truck) |
| 2-bedroom | $1,200–$1,800 | $400–$800 (labor) + $50–$150 (truck) |
| 3-bedroom house | $2,000–$3,500+ | $600–$1,200 (labor) + $100–$200 (truck) |
The savings are real, and they’re the whole reason the labor-only model exists. You’re not getting a worse move — you’re skipping the part of the bill that pays for infrastructure you don’t strictly need on a local move. The trade-off is that you’re handling truck logistics yourself.
For longer moves, the math shifts. If you’re moving across multiple states, the value of a single company driving the truck for you starts to outweigh the labor savings. That’s why College Hunks does long-distance and we don’t.
Reputation: What the Reviews Actually Say
Both companies have strong online reputations. The shape of those reputations is different.
College Hunks benefits from sheer scale. The national brand has tens of thousands of reviews across review platforms, and aggregate scores on Trustpilot and similar services run very high — close to 5 stars in many cases. They’ve been on Shark Tank, Undercover Boss, and Oprah, and the corporate marketing leans heavily into a values-driven brand story.
The complication is franchise variability. Because each location is independently owned and operated, service quality is not consistent across the system. The same brand that gets a 4.9-star average on its Austin corporate review page can have a 2.5-star Yelp average for the same location. Common Yelp complaints across markets include damage to furniture, missing pads or supplies on the day of the move, surprise pricing, and customer service issues when something goes wrong.
The franchise model also created a real reputational issue in 2025, when the Minnesota Attorney General opened an inquiry into a Shoreview franchise over allegations that items customers were told would be donated had instead gone to a landfill. That investigation focused on a single franchise and doesn’t necessarily reflect the broader system, but it does highlight the gap between corporate marketing claims (the brand promotes “up to 70% of items donated, recycled, or reused”) and what individual locations actually deliver.
Undergrads has a smaller but more concentrated reputation. We don’t have national brand recognition; we have very strong reviews in the markets where we operate. Our Raleigh location holds a 4.9-star Google rating across more than 460 reviews, and Austin sits at 4.8 stars across nearly 200. MoveBuddha lists our Raleigh operation at 98% positive reviews. The themes that show up consistently in those reviews are the things you’d expect: punctuality, hard work, professionalism, and customers who saved real money.
The honest trade-off: we don’t have the volume of brand awareness or PR coverage that College Hunks has. We’re not on television. We’ve built a regional reputation through customer experience, and we’re still expanding geographically. If you’re outside our service area, we’re not even an option — that’s a real limitation.
Where Each One Shines
The right choice between the two is almost always situational. Here’s the honest version.
Choose College Hunks if:
- You’re decluttering and moving in the same trip — they can haul off the junk and move the keepers in one booking
- You’re doing a long-distance move and want a single company handling truck, crew, and transport
- You need same-day or next-day availability for a clear-out (estate cleanout, post-renovation cleanup, etc.)
- You want a national-brand name on the paperwork — useful for some corporate relocations or HOA-required movers
- You’re comfortable with full-service pricing and want the simplest possible booking experience
- Junk removal is the primary need and the move is secondary
Choose Undergrads if:
- You’re moving locally, especially an apartment or smaller home
- You want to save 30% on the move and you’re comfortable renting a truck or already have a POD
- You’re a student, recent grad, or someone whose budget genuinely matters
- You’ve already booked a U-Haul, Penske, or PODS and just need help on the muscle side
- You want a crew that’s actively in school in your local market, not employees of a franchise
- You value consistent service quality over national brand recognition
- You’re in our service area: Florida (Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa), Kentucky (Lexington), North Carolina (Charlotte, Durham, Raleigh), South Carolina (Charleston, Clemson, Columbia, Greenville, Myrtle Beach), or Texas (Austin, Dallas)
When neither is the right answer:
- You need a long-distance move and you also want the cheapest possible price (in that case, look at long-distance brokers and DIY truck rentals)
- You have a piano, a gun safe, or other very high-value specialty items that warrant a specialty mover
- You have specific requirements (hazardous materials, vehicles, animals) that neither standard moving company handles
The College Student Story (For Real This Time)
Both companies have a college-student story in their DNA. The current reality is different.
College Hunks was started in 2003 by two college friends — Omar Soliman and Nick Friedman — who started hauling junk during summer break in Soliman’s mom’s cargo van. That’s a real and charming origin story. But that was 22 years ago. Today, College Hunks is a 200-location franchise system. The “HUNKS” who show up at your house are local employees of the franchise that owns your service area. They might be college students, they might be career movers, they might be guys who applied to a job listing on Indeed last week. The college angle is brand heritage, not operational reality.
Undergrads is still actually staffed by college students. UT Austin students in Austin. NC State students in Raleigh. USF students in Tampa. Clemson students in Clemson, where we started. The model is built around the idea that motivated college students — who are physically capable, who treat the work as meaningful (often paying for tuition with it), and who have deep knowledge of the city they live in — make excellent local movers. It’s also why we operate in metros with major universities and not anywhere else. The student model is the operation, not just the marketing.
Whether that matters to you depends on the kind of customer you are. Some people specifically want to support student workers. Some people don’t care who’s lifting the couch as long as the couch arrives intact. Both views are valid.
Honest Trade-offs With Each
Because nothing about a moving decision is uncomplicated, here are the things both of us would prefer not to mention but should.
College Hunks trade-offs:
- Franchise variability is real. Your experience depends heavily on which franchise serves your area. Read recent local Yelp and Google reviews, not just the corporate site’s curated reviews.
- Pricing tends to run higher than expected when add-ons enter the picture. Get an itemized written estimate that breaks out moving labor, junk hauling, packing materials, and any specialty fees.
- The donation/recycling claim (“up to 70% donated”) has been challenged in at least one franchise market. If charitable disposal is a real priority, ask your specific franchise where items go and get it in writing.
- Same-day availability is a feature, but it sometimes correlates with crews that haven’t had time to prepare adequately for a complex move.
Undergrads trade-offs:
- No truck. You handle the rental. If you’re not comfortable driving a 16- or 20-foot truck, this is a real limitation.
- No long-distance. We’re a local-move specialist. If you’re going across multiple states, we’re not the right answer.
- Regional only. We’re in five states. If you’re outside our footprint, we can’t help you.
- No junk removal. If you need furniture moved and junk hauled, you’ll need to coordinate two providers (us for the move, plus a separate junk service like 1-800-GOT-JUNK or — yes, fairly — College Hunks).
- Smaller fleet of crews than a 200-location franchise means popular dates can fill up faster, especially May through September.
The Bottom Line
College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving and Undergrads Moving are different products solving different problems. They’re not actually competitors in the strict sense — a real chunk of customers should use one company for one job and the other for a different job, and the only sin is pretending both products are interchangeable.
If you want a single national-brand company to handle a move, a junk haul, or both in one booking, with the convenience of one truck and one bill, College Hunks is the cleaner answer. Pay attention to the specific franchise serving your market, get the estimate in writing, and ask about damage protection and donation claims before the day of the move.
If you want the most cost-effective way to get a local apartment or house moved by trained, motivated college students who actually live in your city, and you’re comfortable handling truck logistics yourself, Undergrads is the cleaner answer. You’ll save real money — typically 30% versus full-service — without sacrificing crew quality or reliability.
The actual question isn’t “which is better.” It’s: what does my move need? Answer that honestly, and the right call gets a lot easier.
Trying to figure out if Undergrads is right for your move? Get an instant quote here. No hidden fees, no corporate runaround, just student crews who lift heavy things for reasonable prices and won’t break your stuff.
Want a side-by-side on a specific city’s moving market? Check out our local breakdowns for Austin, Raleigh, and Charlotte — each one compares the top movers in that metro, including College Hunks where they operate.
