UK → GERMANY Removals to Germany from the UK

Most people who book this lane are not worried about the lorry but about the sequence. The flat in Berlin is not theirs until a date, and the registration appointment comes after that. So here is the order for removals to Germany.

First, quote, then book. One price covers the size you choose. It locks when you book, with a 25% deposit and the balance on loading day.

Second, your pack, named. After the quote we go through your situation and name the documents your move needs. The list on this page is the usual pack, and yours may add to it.

Fourth, loading, the Channel, Germany. The export declaration goes in on the UK side, and our agent handles the import clearance at French customs on the way. Your goods travel under goods-in-transit cover of up to £20,275 per event.

Fifth, delivery inside the range on your quote, with the arrival time confirmed to you the day before the lorry loads.

The rule sits inside step 2. France, not Germany, clears your goods as they pass through, and the relief it applies is the EU’s own: no duty and no import VAT for a household coming in from the UK. It comes with conditions. You lived outside the EU for at least twelve months. The goods were yours, and in use, for at least six months before the move. Clearance happens within twelve months of arriving. For the following twelve months the goods may not be sold, lent, hired out or pledged without the relief falling away.

Zoll, the German customs service, tells people moving to Germany to apply on form 0350 and to keep invoices or contracts of sale as proof. You will need neither with us. The clearance happens in France, so the form is not yours to fill in and the receipt for last year’s sofa can stay in the drawer. The declaration is made in your name, through our agent. None of that is yours to file alone: your pack carries it, and our transfer of residence page explains the two stages in full.

The relief has edges, and Marcus-minded movers like to know them before packing. Alcoholic products and tobacco are outside it, so a wine collection crosses as ordinary dutiable goods however long you have owned it. So are commercial vehicles and the equipment of a trade or profession, with one exception: the hand tools of a craft or a liberal profession travel as personal property. A joiner’s hand tools qualify; a bench saw is a question for the officer. Our own list of what we can’t move is a separate matter, set by the contract rather than by customs.

This is the question we hear most on this lane, in several forms. I register on the second, can the lorry come on the sixth? What if the van reaches Berlin before I do? The honest answer is that customs does not decide it. Your registration plays no part in your customs pack, so the order comes down to your keys and your appointment.

That confirmation has set contents. It names the landlord and their address, the owner where the two differ, the date you moved in, the flat’s address and everyone registering. At the registration office a tenancy agreement does not stand in for it, so ask your landlord for the paper on the day you get the keys. Your customs pack is a separate matter: there the rental agreement is what we ask for, and the certificate from that appointment is not needed. We have moved people whose registration slot fell a few days before the lorry, and we built the booking around it.

If the dates will not line up, say so before you book rather than after. You can choose a collection window so the goods arrive after your appointment. Where the gap is longer we can arrange storage at the UK end through our removals and storage service, subject to availability. What we cannot do is promise a relief decision. That is the customs authority’s call at clearance, and our job is to put the evidence in front of them in order, early.

Removals to Germany can travel in separate consignments, as long as the whole lot clears within twelve months of your move. So a part-load now and the rest later is permitted. Goods arriving before you do need arranging, so raise it with us before you book rather than assume it. If the flat is not ready, the goods wait on the UK side, where storage is by arrangement through our removals and storage service.

Germany stops lorries over 7.5 tonnes on Sundays and public holidays from midnight to 10pm, and a lorry towing a trailer with it. A collection on a Saturday therefore does not mean a Sunday drive across Germany; the vehicle rests, and the range on your quote already allows for it. The holiday list is partly regional. Corpus Christi stops traffic in Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia but not in Berlin, Reformation Day does the opposite, and All Saints’ Day falls in the south and west. In summer the sixteen states stagger their school holidays across several weeks, and the motorways carry the difference.

London to Berlin is 11.4 hours of driving on our recorded route, so no range on this lane starts before day 2. A vehicle of your own closes in 2–4 days. A shared 5 m³ load, which waits for the loads it travels with, runs to 2–9 days. Since July 2024 Germany also tolls goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes by the kilometre; that cost sits inside the price we quote. Our guide, how long does a removal to Europe take, shows every lane side by side, and this one sits among the shorter ones.

The example on this page is £1,345 for a 10 m³ load from London to Berlin, read from our own quote tool on 13 October 2026. A 30 m³ vehicle of your own was £3,076. Your quote prices your addresses and your size, and the figure it shows is the figure you pay. It does not move on the day because a wardrobe turned out to be a double.

The one thing that changes a price is outgrowing your size. Even then the change is the locked difference to the next size, settled before loading if you tell us early. That is the whole of it, and our fixed price removals page sets out the few charges that sit outside it.

Weight decides more than volume here, as on every lane. The 15 m³ carries up to 900 kg and the 30 m³ up to 2,400 kg, and those are limits we enforce, not guidance. Books, tools and a piano are the usual culprits, so a rough list or photos before you book lets us place you in the right size once. How much does a sofa weigh is the guide people wish they had read first.

Germany is also one of the lanes with a 20 m³, the size between a full flat and a full house. It carries up to 1,200 kg, loads on your chosen day rather than inside a window, and delivers in 2–4 days. At the other end of the ladder the 5 m³ gives a 4-day window for collection, because it shares its vehicle. You must be packed and ready from the first day of that window.

Kerb space is the other street-level question in a German city. The district traffic office can reserve the stretch outside your door with a temporary no-stopping zone for the delivery day. The lead time is the city’s own. Hamburg, for one, asks for the application fourteen days ahead and the signs up four days before. If your Berlin street is tight, tell us at the quote and we will say what the lorry needs.