Sacramento → Austin. One Move Plan.

Sacramento to Austin covers 1,763 miles, and it's the one Texas lane where the fastest path isn't a straight shot down a single interstate. Our trucks run I-5/CA-99 to Bakersfield, then I-10 East across the Mojave through Phoenix and Tucson, on through El Paso and the West Texas desert, before picking up I-35 North out of San Antonio for the final 80-mile run up to Austin. That last stretch matters — I-35 through the Austin-San Antonio corridor is some of the most congested pavement in Texas, so we time delivery-day arrivals around it instead of promising a fixed hour.

Murdock’s runs this route start to finish under our own USDOT 3421940 / MC 1416634 interstate authority — one crew, one truck, no consolidation with other shipments at a transfer terminal along the way. That matters more on the Austin lane than most, because Austin's dense central neighborhoods often mean a second, smaller shuttle vehicle for the final few blocks where a 53-foot trailer can't legally turn.

Austin's growth has made this one of the busier lanes we run out of the Sacramento Valley — tech relocations here track closely with what's happening in the Bay Area and Sacramento tech corridor, so we see a steady flow of households moving for the same companies that have opened Austin campuses. Given how tight Austin's housing market runs, we recommend booking your pickup window as soon as you have a signed lease or closing date — Austin moves fill up faster than our other Texas lanes, especially during the May-August peak.

Austin earned the "Silicon Hills" nickname honestly — Tesla's gigafactory, Apple's second-largest campus, Google, Oracle's former headquarters, and Meta have all planted flags here, and Sacramento-area tech workers moving for these companies are one of the biggest groups we relocate on this lane. Where you land inside Austin says a lot about the move: South Congress (SoCo) and Zilker put you walking distance from Lady Bird Lake but mean tight street parking and permit coordination for our truck; East Austin has gone from working-class to some of the fastest-appreciating real estate in the state, with narrow older lots that need careful staging; Mueller is a newer, master-planned infill neighborhood built on the old airport site with wide streets that make delivery straightforward; and Hyde Park and Travis Heights keep an older, tree-canopied character with more traditional single-family access.

Most families we move end up in the suburban ring instead — Round Rock, Cedar Park, Pflugerville, Georgetown, and Leander have absorbed the bulk of Austin's population growth over the last decade, with newer subdivisions, HOAs, and straightforward truck access. Housing costs in Austin have climbed fast relative to a few years ago, but a Sacramento-area household still typically finds more square footage per dollar here than at home, especially once you're 20+ minutes outside the urban core.

Austin's summers run hot and increasingly humid compared to Sacramento's dry heat, and the city's Hill Country terrain means some neighborhoods sit on steep, narrow streets — both are things our crew plans around rather than discovers on delivery day.