Moving Companies

[bofa]

I'm revisiting some of my quotes that I obtained last year and, to my surprise, the updated quotes are considerably more. The lowest quote was from ABF, who I called and managed to get them to meet me a little more than halfway on the difference, but is still 20% more than the original quote for the same exact terms.

So that said, does anyone else have a positive experience and reasonable pricing with van lines / cross-country movers? I guess I need to shop around again.

 

[bofa]

:bump2:

 

[shadow247]

Do it yourself. Buy a large enclosed trailer, pay some guys to load it for you at home. Tow trailer to destination, pay guys to unload. Sell trailer.

This is what I did when I moved from Dallas to Virginia. It would have cost me $1400 dollars to have my stuff moved out here. I bought a brand new 12x6 single axle trailer and paid some people to load it for me. I towed it out here with my 4 Cyl Colorado, unloaded myself, then sold the trailer for a $200 loss. Only cost me 400 dollars to move all my stuff across the country. I did sell/donate/trash a lot of stuff before moving though.

 

[bofa]

The online reviews seem to be all over the place for both local and national companies. :doh:

Do it yourself. Buy a large enclosed trailer, pay some guys to load it for you at home. Tow trailer to destination, pay guys to unload. Sell trailer.

This is what I did when I moved from Dallas to Virginia. It would have cost me $1400 dollars to have my stuff moved out here. I bought a brand new 12x6 single axle trailer and paid some people to load it for me. I towed it out here with my 4 Cyl Colorado, unloaded myself, then sold the trailer for a $200 loss. Only cost me 400 dollars to move all my stuff across the country. I did sell/donate/trash a lot of stuff before moving though.

I would need one hell of a trailer for a 3 bedroom house. As it stands the estimates I've gotten are for 17 feet of tractor trailer space or roughly 6000lbs. I'm going to see if I can get some more detailed quotes next week. Thanks for the idea though.

We did sell quite a bit of stuff and donated a lot more, but still have some larger furniture items moving with us. Plus we have to move all the crap in my wife's classroom.

 

[koulee]

Or you can rent a UHaul and do a cross country road trip.

 

[shadow247]

Or you can rent a UHaul and do a cross country road trip.

We looked at that option too. By the time you rent the U-Haul, pay the mileage fees, plus the one-way fee, plus rent a trailer to haul your car, unless you have 3 licensed drivers to drive your car and your wife's car, you have spent just as much as paying a moving company and you haven't even loaded anything onto the truck yet.

 

[bofa]

We looked at that option too. By the time you rent the U-Haul, pay the mileage fees, plus the one-way fee, plus rent a trailer to haul your car, unless you have 3 licensed drivers to drive your car and your wife's car, you have spent just as much as paying a moving company and you haven't even loaded anything onto the truck yet.

Yup, it's pretty expensive. Penske was a bit cheaper and has diesel engines, but the problem is that we have 2 dogs and no where to put them if we do that. None of the rental companies have crew cab trucks and I can't imagine me + wife + 2x dogs on a bench seat for 3 days. I thought about having her drive separately too but the extra gas puts us back to the price of the full service movers.

I have a couple of places coming out Friday for "binding quotes".

 

[bofa]

I got my quotes, but every single major moving company has a litany of nightmarish complaints... not sure what to do here.

I priced out getting a Penske truck too and hiring labor to load it and it wasn't bad. My wife isn't thrilled about driving separately, but I think that's our only choice given the dogs.