CONTRIBUTED BY U-HAUL
Auburn-Opelika market is the No. 23 growth city in America based on U-Haul® truck moves throughout 2021, according to transactional data compiled for the annual U-Haul Growth Index.
People coming to Auburn-Opelika in one-way U-Haul trucks increased 23% year-over-year, while departures jumped more than 30% from 2020 as overall moving traffic surged.
Despite a more substantial YOY rise in departures, arriving customers still accounted for 52.2% of all one-way U-Haul traffic in Auburn-Opelika during 2021 to keep it a top-25 market for netting do-it-yourself movers. However, it did backslide 19 spots from its No. 4 ranking of 2020 when 54.4% of all U-Haul traffic in Auburn-Opelika was arriving customers.
“The Auburn-Opelika market is in growth mode, and much of that has been driven by Auburn University,” said Anthonio Chism, U-Haul Company of Central Alabama president. “We’re big on sports around here. It’s an exciting environment. The area surrounding campus has changed a lot. There are high-rise buildings where there used to be nothing, and migration has increased the last five or six years as more people have decided to make this their home.”
U-Haul customers made the Kissimmee-St. Cloud (Fla.) market the leading growth city of 2021. Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, Palm Bay-Melbourne Florida, North Port, Florida and Madison, Wisconsin round out the top five growth cities.
Florida boasts 10 markets among the top 25 growth cities on the U-Haul chart. Texas has five cities on the list, while North Carolina, Wisconsin and California have two apiece.
Growth cities are calculated by the net gain of one-way U-Haul trucks entering a city versus leaving that city in a calendar year. Migration trends data is compiled from well over 2 million one-way U-Haul truck customer transactions that occur annually. Neighboring cities in U-Haul markets are often packaged together for migration trends purposes.
While U-Haul migration trends do not correlate directly to population or economic growth, the U-Haul Growth Index is an effective gauge of how well cities are both attracting and maintaining residents.
Visit www.myuhaulstory.com to view the top 50 growth states and the top 25 Canadian growth cities.
U-Haul is the authority on migration trends thanks to its expansive network that blankets all 10 provinces and 50 states. The geographical coverage from more than 23,000 U-Haul truck- and trailer-sharing locations provides a comprehensive overview of where people are moving like no one else in the industry.
Independent small business owners interested in joining the U-Haul Dealer Network at no cost and earning commissions from rental transactions at their locations can visit www.uhaul.com/dealer to learn more and submit an information form.
Plus five more notable cities that just missed the cut but posted big growth numbers in 2021: Greenville, South Carolina, Fort Collins, Colorado, Seattle, Washington, Conroe, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee.
ABOUT U-HAUL
Since 1945, U-Haul has been the No. 1 choice of do-it-yourself movers, with a network of more than 23,000 locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. U-Haul Truck Share 24/7 offers secure access to U-Haul trucks every hour of every day through the customer dispatch option on their smartphones and our proprietary Live Verify technology. Our customers’ patronage has enabled the U-Haul fleet to grow to approximately 176,000 trucks, 126,000 trailers and 46,000 towing devices. U-Haul offers nearly 825,000 rentable storage units and 71.6 million square feet of self-storage space at owned and managed facilities throughout North America. U-Haul is the largest retailer of propane in the U.S., and continues to be the largest installer of permanent trailer hitches in the automotive aftermarket industry. U-Haul has been recognized repeatedly as a leading “Best for Vets” employer and was recently named one of the 15 Healthiest Workplaces in America.