Why won’t a mover cover boxes you packed yourself?

A mover generally will not accept liability for damage inside boxes you packed yourself because it cannot verify how those boxes were packed. When a carton arrives crushed or rattling, the carrier has no way to know whether fragile contents were wrapped, cushioned, and braced or simply dropped in loose. Federal and Georgia rules let the mover limit liability in that situation, unless its own negligence caused the harm. The exception matters: this is a boundary about who packed the box, not a blanket refusal to be responsible for anything.

The verification gap

The reason traces back to how moving liability works. A mover’s valuation, released value or full value protection, sets what the carrier owes for loss or damage it is responsible for. But the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s interstate rules (49 CFR Part 375) recognize that a shipper’s own acts can reduce the carrier’s liability, including improper packing of containers the shipper packed that did not give the contents enough protection. Owner-packed cartons are often noted on the inventory, sometimes marked “PBO” for packed by owner.

The logic is straightforward. The mover controls the truck, the loading, and the handling, so it answers for those. It does not control what happened before it arrived, so it does not answer for packing it never saw. If a self-packed box of dishes breaks and the box itself shows no sign of mishandling, the damage points to the packing, which the mover cannot vouch for.

Where the mover is still on the hook

The boundary has a clear limit: the carrier’s own negligence. If the crew drops a self-packed box, crushes it under heavier items, or otherwise mishandles it, that is the mover’s conduct, and the self-packing exclusion does not erase it. The distinction the rules draw is between damage caused by how the box was packed and damage caused by how it was handled.

In short:

• Damage from inadequate self-packing, with no sign of mishandling: the mover can limit or decline liability.
• Damage from the mover dropping, crushing, or mishandling the box: the mover’s negligence keeps it responsible.
• Boxes the mover packs itself: full packing responsibility stays with the carrier.

Georgia applies the same principle to in-state moves under Department of Public Safety rules, where a carrier’s liability turns on damage it is responsible for and excludes losses outside its control, so the self-packing boundary is not unique to interstate moves.

What this means for how you pack

The practical response is to decide which items are worth professional packing. When the mover packs a box, it has verified the work and accepts liability for the contents, which closes the verification gap that defeats self-packed claims. For everyday durable goods, packing yourself is fine and saves money. For fragile and high-value items, china, electronics, glass, art, the calculation shifts, because a self-packed claim can fail exactly where the loss would hurt most.

So weigh professional packing for the breakables you would otherwise box yourself, and document the condition of anything important before it goes in. This is general information rather than legal advice, but the boundary is consistent: a mover stands behind handling and behind packing it performed, not behind packing it could not see, under FMCSA rules for interstate moves and DPS rules within Georgia.