Bakersfield → Chico. One Move Plan.

The move from Bakersfield to Chico is a straight shot up the spine of the Central Valley. Our crew loads at your Bakersfield home and heads north on State Route 99, rolling past Delano, Tulare, Fresno and Merced before threading through Modesto, Stockton and the Sacramento suburbs. North of the capital the route stays on 99 through Yuba City and Live Oak until the orchards give way to the Chico city limits. At roughly 285 miles it is a comfortable half-day drive, and because Chico is one of Murdock’s home yards, our team knows every mile of the approach.

Murdock’s Moving & Storage runs this route on our own USDOT and CPUC authority as a carrier, not a broker. The same crew that wraps your furniture in Bakersfield is the crew that carries it into your new place in Chico, and your belongings ride on one Murdock’s truck the entire way, with no terminal transfers or swapped drivers. That single-truck, single-crew model is why a valley-to-valley move like this typically completes in two to three days from load to delivery.

Chico is Northern California's classic university town, built around Chico State and the tree-lined downtown that surrounds it. After Bakersfield's wide, car-first grid, a lot of newcomers are struck by how walkable and bikeable Chico feels, with a compact core of cafes, breweries and the Thursday night farmers market all within a few blocks. The crown jewel is Bidwell Park, one of the largest municipal parks in the country, running from downtown up into the foothills with swimming holes, trails and shaded picnic areas.

Move-day logistics here look different from a big-city relocation. Many of the homes near The Avenues and downtown are older bungalows and Victorians with narrow driveways and mature trees, while the newer subdivisions toward the northwest and east foothills offer wider streets and modern two-story layouts. Our crews handle both, and because Chico is a Murdock’s base we can stage larger trucks and shuttle when a tight street calls for it.

Chico has also spent recent years absorbing families rebuilding after the wildfires in the surrounding foothills, which has kept the housing market active and the community tight-knit. Whether you are landing near campus, in the family neighborhoods off East Avenue, or out toward the foothill edges, you get four real seasons, quick access to Lassen and the northern Sierra, and a smaller-town rhythm that trades Bakersfield's sprawl for walkability.