Work from home orders and job losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic prompted many Americans to pack up and head to other states in 2020.
The ones who rented one-way U-Hauls went to states like Tennessee, Texas, Florida and Ohio, according to a new report by the company.
U-Haul’s annual migration trends report calculates how many one-way U-Haul vehicles enter a state versus how many leave it each calendar year. For the 2020 report, the data were complied from more than 2 million one-way U-Haul rental customer transactions.
In 2020, Tennessee claimed the top spot for the most one-way U-Haul arrivals versus departures for the first time ever. Arrivals accounted for 50.6% of all one-way U-Haul traffic in Tennessee, according to U-Haul, a 12% increase over last year. Meanwhile, departures rose only 9% over 2019.
Florida, which came in first in 2019, came third.
Texas, which has ranked in the top two states with the most one-way arrivals since 2015, was No. 2 in 2020. Florida, which came in first in 2019, fell to third.
California ranks last on 2020′s list, behind Illinois and New Jersey, as the states with the least one-way arrivals. California has been in the bottom three states since 2016 and Illinois has been in the bottom two since 2015, when U-Haul began ranking states.
“I’m seeing a lot of people from California move [to Tennessee] because they’re attracted to our lifestyle,” Jeff Porter, U-Haul Company of Nashville president said in a release. Tennessee also has no income tax, plenty of jobs and is business-friendly, Porter said.
Here are the top 10 growth states, according to U-Haul data analyzing migration patterns from 2020:
- Tennessee
2.Texas
- Florida
- Ohio
- Arizona
- Colorado
- Missouri
- Nevada
- North Carolina
- Georgia
