Moving - Hire Movers or Rent Truck

I wouldn’t recommend a uhaul. Use a budget or Penske or enterprise instead. Make sure you get an automatic transmission but expect a manual the day you get it anyway.

Uhaul doesn’t really maintain their trucks well in my experience as well as budget or Penske or enterprise.

You can hire laborers from Craigslist to load your truck and drive on down to sunny Florida Andy hire laborers to unload it.

Or hire a company.

Some people use pods and fill up the container, make the call and it shows up at the destination. Usually. Sometimes it gets lost from what I hear.
 
Agree with @Scorpion12 Uhaul trucks are some of the oldest on the road from my experience.
 
There are three types of moves:

Full Service - This is were you hire a company to come in and handle everything; pack, load, drive, etc. This is a very convenient option but obviously comes with a higher price. It also comes with downfalls. First, if you decide to go this route make sure you get a binding quote, not an estimate. Companies in this space will give you a low price based on weight, then suddenly the they arrive to the destination they will have actually weighed the truck and now the quote is thousands more. They will also refuse to unload until you pay the new price. If you go this route, skip the internet quotes and have a company come out and give you a in-person quote.

One other drawback of this is your good will likely be cross loaded multiple times. The truck they load the stuff on to isn't the truck going to Florida. They will take your stuff to a hub, unload it and then load it onto at least one other truck. The more times this happens the more you risk damage.

Self-Service - This is the bare bones, load it yourself and drive it yourself. Its cheap but depending on the size of your move you're gonna be miserable. Rent a truck from U-Haul because the lower deck will be less work.

Finally, there is the "Hybrid" move. This is where you get the best of a Full Service and a Self Service move. You rent the truck and drive it and you hire people to help you load it. The company I run is movinghelp.com and you can find local providers and read ratings and see pricing up front. You can book as little as two hours and they can do as much or as little as you want.

If driving the truck isn't something you want to do, consider portable storage containers. We have a product called U-Box. We deliver the containers to your house, you load them or pay someone to load them, we come back and put them on a truck and take them to your destination. Its a little more expensive up front, but you will save money not having to fuel the truck and have to deal with driving it.

Let me know if none of this makes sense or you have more questions.
 
I wouldn’t recommend a uhaul. Use a budget or Penske or enterprise instead. Make sure you get an automatic transmission but expect a manual the day you get it anyway.

Uhaul doesn’t really maintain their trucks well in my experience as well as budget or Penske or enterprise.


You can hire laborers from Craigslist to load your truck and drive on down to sunny Florida Andy hire laborers to unload it.

Or hire a company.

Some people use pods and fill up the container, make the call and it shows up at the destination. Usually. Sometimes it gets lost from what I hear.

We don't have a single manual transmission truck in our entire fleet of 125,000 trucks.

And I can assure you our trucks are maintained as well or better.

Source - I am an executive at U-Haul
 
My brother in law used Old Dominion. They basically drop the trailer in the driveway, you load it yourself, and then they pick it up and deliver it to your new home. Seemed pretty easy since he had slave labor here!
 
did you look into pods they deliver it to you. you pack it then they deliver it to your location
 
What about a pod? Cosourced moving truck where you get a section to lower general costs.usually in really long semis.
 
@fupresti appreciate all of the information you provided ?? & makes a lot of sense.

The most logical option is moving ourselves as I know when the load will arrive & I know where my valuables will be. The worst part is the drive itself.

Looks like U-Haul will be the route to go!
 
@fupresti appreciate all of the information you provided ?? & makes a lot of sense.

The most logical option is moving ourselves as I know when the load will arrive & I know where my valuables will be. The worst part is the drive itself.

Looks like U-Haul will be the route to go!

FWIW my wife and I have moved....a lot. The military paid for a couple of them using movers. I wouldn’t bother with it honesty. The drive isn’t fun but driving a uhaul isn’t much worse than driving a car.

Id say unload what you can at the destination, hire some help for the rest.
 
We don't have a single manual transmission truck in our entire fleet of 125,000 trucks.

And I can assure you our trucks are maintained as well or better.

Source - I am an executive at U-Haul
Good to know. It wasn't that way in 2000 when I moved. I requested an automatic and the truck that I was given the keys to was a manual. Granted, it's 20 years ago.

Regardless, I'll update my information. Thanks!(y)
 
Regardless of the distance, I would be calling a firm to do the move

Not sure of the laws around driving over there, but here in the UK you have to pass specific driving tests to drive vehicles of certain classes (HGV, motorcycle, bus, etc) so unless you are hiring a van you may not even be legally allowed to drive something big enough to contain your belongings
 
There are few things in life I hate more than moving. Very few. One of those few things is giving away money. That said, considering the distance you're traveling and the exhaustion you would probably experience after making the trip, getting movers seems like a pretty good idea. Obviously there are some horrible ones out there so definitely do the research, but it could definitely be worth it...unless you've got a college football team there waiting to unload the truck for you. Hehe
 
It’s all about weight in the states, Good Doctor. Unless you’re are loading it with gold personal belongs are gonna tough to be over the weight to need s CDL.

Some good info and some outright bad in this thread. It’s all in how much work you wanna do yourself. If you can fit it all into a
24-38” truck, it’ll be a crappy drive but much cheaper. If you can’t the movers likely can. I was amazed that what took me three trips (coulda done in 2, but since moving 5 miles, I wasn’t pressed) they fit into one.

If I have to move, I’ll do it with movers so long as I can afford it. Pack it up and they’ll get it done. Fast and painfree. Awesome how took care of it. I could work that hard when I was 20, I just can’t anymore.
 
I will always use movers.
 
No way I'd hire movers if I could get it in one truck. I've had too many moves completed by hired help and had to many broken items because they don't give a shyt about your stuff.

Good luck with the decision.
 
No way I'd hire movers if I could get it in one truck. I've had too many moves completed by hired help and had to many broken items because they don't give a shyt about your stuff.

Good luck with the decision.

I guess I lucked out then. The company I used not only provided 3-20ish year olds, they sent their owner to inspect the only minor damage, they dinged a corner in my new house. He offered to personally patch it. I didn’t ask for him to come out I merely mnetioned it in passing when I called to brag up how hard working their crew was. I assured him it was fine and I’d patch it myself.

Granted it was just across town but they accomplished in 4 hours what would have taken me 3 days. Cost was like $750.00 and I gave them a $250.00 dollar tip. It was well worth it to start moving at 8am and be moved in by noon. And since I was married at the time, we had a LOT of crap.
 
I have had 3 moves that have taken me across country 2 with movers and 1 without. The first move with movers was great they did an excellent job and made it to the new house before we did. The 2nd time with movers we were without our stuff for almost a month and a half. These were government moves so we did have to pay for these. The last move I rented a Penske a truck and if you have I believe AAA you get a discount.
 
I've moved a few times and always did it myself with a truck.....till the last time 12 years ago.
We only moved 25 miles but we hired a moving company to come in and move everything.
We did box up all the smaller stuff ourselves and they did the rest. It was one of the best decisions of my life.
I will never move myself again.
 
I guess I lucked out then. The company I used not only provided 3-20ish year olds, they sent their owner to inspect the only minor damage, they dinged a corner in my new house. He offered to personally patch it. I didn’t ask for him to come out I merely mnetioned it in passing when I called to brag up how hard working their crew was. I assured him it was fine and I’d patch it myself.

Granted it was just across town but they accomplished in 4 hours what would have taken me 3 days. Cost was like $750.00 and I gave them a $250.00 dollar tip. It was well worth it to start moving at 8am and be moved in by noon. And since I was married at the time, we had a LOT of crap.

I guess you were very lucky given those details.

I could write stories about the issues I've had while moving. After moving from HI to Germany, Germany to Turkey, Turkey to Guam, and Guam to NJ and all moves being coordinated and paid for by the gov't, I've had more stuff broken and stolen than I'd care to sit down and type out. Stupid movers in Germany stole a whole box of limited edition Hummel figurines worth $2k+ that were only sold in our US military exchanges, but they were too stupid (or rather we were too smart because we hand carried them) to steal the COA's so they'll never be able to sell them.
 
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I did most of my last move by myself. When it came down to one weekend where I moved the majority of it all, I rented a van one day and a truck the next. That O'Carroll guy seems to move every 18 months, and he just rents a truck and we get it done.
 
I guess you were very lucky given those details.

I could write stories about the issues I've had while moving. After moving from HI to Germany, Germany to Turkey, Turkey to Guam, and Guam to NJ and all moves being coordinated and paid for by the gov't, I've had more stuff broken and stolen than I'd care to sit down and type out. Stupid movers in Germany stole a whole box of limited edition Hummel figurines that were only sold in our US military exchanges, but they were too stupid (or rather we were too smart because we hand carried them) to steal the COA's so they'll never be able to sell them.


Yeah those are a little more serious moves than across town with a local and well respected company. I was just amazed at how easy it was and how those guys worked. Probably helped it was an easy move and being Friday morning they knew if they got done quick they were in for an early weekend. At first I tried to help but quickly found myself getting in the way and not able to keep up with their pace. They were literally running. So I drove over to my new house and mowed the yard while I was waiting on them, lol.

Ordered them a pizza once they got to the new house and had my wife direct where she wanted the stuff put. Tipped WAY more than I expected to but it was well worth it. They could have dragged ass and taken all day and I’d have paid even more altogether.
 
Alright fellas...so here is the question. We are scheduled to move our stuff down tonFlorida from Ohio in a month. We’ve had a few moving quotes & they are anywhere from $2000 - $10000+. Honestly we aren’t taking all of our stuff, most of our stuff is already packed in the garage. I’ve looked at U-Haul and I can rent a truck, pack it & drive down for under $2,600. I’m skeptical about movers, I’ve heard & read the horror stories.

What would you do? Anyone have any discount codes for U-Haul or know a well recommended moving company?
We just moved from Ga to Conn in November. To cut some costs, I used U-pack which a version of PODS. They dropped off a huge POD/trailer in my driveway and left it for 7 days. I packed it myself which wasn’t bad over a period of a week. Only about $2500 for them to take it up to Connecticut.

When we got here, I hired 3 guys to empty the truck into my house for $400 total. I thought it was the best way to save some money on a long distance move without having to do everything yourself.
 
We don't have a single manual transmission truck in our entire fleet of 125,000 trucks.

And I can assure you our trucks are maintained as well or better.

Source - I am an executive at U-Haul

I've used U-Haul many times with no problems. ? Trucks were well maintained & always automatic transmission (I can't believe there are many places that have manual trucks).
 
Unless you have friends to help I would get movers. I rented my own truck and packed everything last time but hired a mover to help me. Was like 150$ for 4 hours, he met me at the apmt to help me pack up the heavy stuff then at the new place to help unload anything heavy. It's great and saves a lot of stress.
 
I've never used movers, but I have used PODS and loved it. Just loaded it up, they came and grabbed it and it was at the new house when we got there a couple weeks later.
 
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