Em Emalb's Journal: moving companies....

Hey folks, been a while.

Been pretty busy with work, and all that.

Anyway, the wife and I are moving.

I was hoping some of you out there have experience moving long distances (state to state)...if so, care to share some wisdom?

Thanks.

What I remember from a transcontinental move...

[Interrobang]

1) Make lists of everything that goes in every box, the more detailed, the better.
2) If you can pack over a long period of time, so much the better.
3) Get rid of or sell what you don't need and/or can easily replace once you get where you're going.
4) Have a fund in place and ready to replace things that you've gotten rid of/sold intentionally, and also for stuff that goes missing or gets broken in transit.
5) Expensive and/or irreplaceable items and electronics should travel with you, and not be tru

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[bethanie]

Good list -- and I'd like to add that for Line Item #1, make lists of all box contents, affix said "packing list" to each box AND keep a hard copy with you... AND email one to yourself.

I moved from one location shipping stuff to three other places. Keeping track of the stuff on paper made life SOOO much easier, particularly when prioritizing what to unpack first.

Good luck to you & the Mrs in your new locale!

....Bethanie....

Moving CO's are thieves.

[mekkab]

Check out all reviews, tip the guys, and uhm... carry a gun.

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[sielwolf]

Mos Definitely. If you can I'd try to have your new corp's HR set you up with a mover. That kind of puts the responsibility on them as pissing you off means pissing off your company. Of course that doesn't help: a coworker's brother had paid a company to move her isht from Pittsburgh to Colorado... the company drove it to Florida and then kept saying "if you pay us XXX more we'll gladly get it there for you". So he had made the rookie mistake of paying all up front. The problem for those asshats is th

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[Em Emalb]

thanks for the info. Not too worried about it, a good friend of mine has a place nearby, so it's just a matter of dropping all the shit we brought with us off at the house and then heading over to his place to sleep in an actual bed until our stuff arrives.

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[mekkab]

Find out if you need to pay tolls and have the $ on hand to do it (as some states *cough*Ohio*cough* still haven't gotten to the 20th century and EZPass yet).

TOTALLY!!!

I had to hit REVERSE on a Major Flori-duh highway to get out of the exact change lane;

The toll was $3 and they wanted $3 in quarters. Like, in REAL shiny change! I took my dollar bills to a different booth but that might have been disastrous!

moving sucks

[stoolpigeon]

i found this site to be very helpful:
http://www.movingscam.com/ [movingscam.com]

i think interrobang's suggestions are really good. we kept a list and having it in a text file was very nice as we could use 'find'. the only thing is i often wished it had been more detailed.

we moved our family of 5 from phoenix to orlando in may. we used abf u-pack. full service movers were just way more than we could afford. if you have any specific questions in that direction, i'll do my best to answer them. bu

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[Em Emalb]

actually, u-pack is just about exactly what I am looking for info on.

I'm pretty good on the how to pack, lists, etc, but those ideas are appreciated as well.

I looked up the u-pack stuff and it looked pretty decent, but I'm a little unsure of how much space I need, how it specifically works, etc.

Like...we have a pretty much fully furnished 3 bedroom house...is the 19 footer enough? I dunno.

Thoughts? Thanks for the info.

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[stoolpigeon]

We did a 2000 sqare foot 4 bedroom house and took one full trailer. I could have got a little more in there, but not much. So that's 28 feet I think. You can double check, but if I remember correctly, you can use as much as you need. So if you have a trailer, you ought to be able to fit it all for sure, and probably wont take all of it, so you'll pay less.

I read a ton of info from movingscam.com - there are a lot of people there with write ups and suggestions. Loading was so much more work than

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[Em Emalb]

Thanks for the info. This was what I was looking for.

How did you go about insuring your stuff? Add a rider to your home owners or what?

I had been reading the movingscam webpage before I posted this journal, so I was aware of the moving companies out there and what they try to do.

I can't believe it isn't better regulated, that's insane.

Not looking forward to moving, of course, but so far ABF sounds like the way to go. I hear you on the "OMG, I'm so sore I don't think I can move" stuff, been there, done th

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[stoolpigeon]

no problem.

well, what i did about insuring it is nothing. which was extremely risky, but there was just so much crap going on it basically fell through the cracks. i had already purchased insurance for the contents of the condo before we moved, and i think when i talked to them, it looked like in a lot of cases, that would give me some protection. but that was a "don't do what i did" part of it. came out o.k. but could've been ugly.

the moving really did beat me up. i still have some pro

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[Iamthefallen]

For reference, we packed up a slightly smaller house and used most of a 24 foot U-Haul.

You have more stuff than you think. And all the stuff that isn't furniture or suitable for boxes, lawnmower, bikes, grills, washer/dryer and so on take up a ton of room.

The best investment we made was to get a ton of OfficeMax storage boxes [officemax.com] (Item # 20151540 if link no workie). They're stackable and sturdy and the perfect size for general house hold crap.

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[Mantorp]

I just moved from CT to NC this summer, we had a 3 BR house (2000ish sq ft) plus a garage full of crap, we used 26 ft in one of them monster trailers. Went with Movex.com who is a broker so who you actually get to move with is hit or miss, but their prices we're comparable to U-Haul and I didn't have to drive myself (or pay for gas). They sometimes use whatever the mover most highly recommended on movingscam is (can't remember the name), but a quote from them was 1300 more than the movex quote. I actually e

Moving

[Blackneto]

Make sure the annoying neighbor at your old house doesn't have a relative in your new city.

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[gmhowell]

And be careful who you get to transport the Saab.

Have a beer with ATLiens before you leave...

[TechnoLust]

Since you are moving, now you can meet me for a drink and not worry if we're going to bump into each other in the porn store. (Just kidding, I don't go to the porn store, I have the intarwebz!)