Editor for the Southern Standard (McMinnville, Tennessee)

State leaders frequently emphasize the need to attract people to live in Tennessee.

That plan appears to be working, at least according to U-Haul.

U-Haul has released its annual migration report which reveals which states were the recipients of the most one-way U-Haul rentals.

Tennessee claimed the top spot for the first time in company history in 2020 for the most one-way U-Haul arrivals versus one-way U-Haul departures.

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.

“I’m seeing a lot of people from California move to Tennessee because they’re attracted to our lifestyle,” said Jeff Porter, U-Haul Company of Nashville president, in a statement. Porter also noted Tennessee has no state income tax, an abundance of jobs and is business- friendly.

The 2020 U-Haul report compiled data from more than 2 million one-way U-Haul rental customer transactions.

California ranks last on 2020's list, behind Illinois and New Jersey, as the states with the least oneway 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.

Here are the top 10 growth states, according to U-Haul data analyzing migration patterns from 2020:

1. Tennessee 2. Texas 3. Florida 4. Ohio 5. Arizona 6. Colorado 7. Missouri 8. Nevada 9. North Carolina 10. Georgia