<p>We have moved several times in the past few years, using professionals every time. We do not have them do the packing (very expensive) but they do all the carrying and driving. Good movers (check out carefully) do a great job of wrapping furniture with mats/blankets, and delivering everything in great condition. They also take apart and reassemble furniture as needed - like the beds! Our last move was from east coast to west; not one thing was broken, scratched, or missing; it was a great pleasure watching three burly men gently carry everything into our new home, put things back together, and leave us just with boxes.</p>
<p>We used professional movers the one time we moved from our apartment to our current house. It was well worth the money. We had them retrieve a table from a house 66 steps above the street level & bring it to our new home. They did make a small scratch on the table, but we are glad it was them dealing with the table, not us. The price was quite reasonable–paid by the hour with I believe a minimum of 4 hours. I believe they also moved our other furniture from our apartment (dresser, table, mattress & few odds & ends), which would have been a struggle for us but was very light & not difficult for them. We figured hiring professionals & saving our back & knees to be a good bargain for the price we paid.</p>
<p>Get several quotes–you’ll be surprised at how reasonable it can be. Best if you can get referrals from satisfied customers instead of just going to the yellow pages. For S, he went with the movers recommended by his employer (who paid for the move).</p>
<p>A different spin on the “unavailability of what you thought you’d reserved” idea. This past May, I had to move D into a city apartment. H was just home from an unexpected major surgery, so I was on my own for this. We reserved a u-haul, one way, with a plan to put some of her stuff from home in it, drive out to her school in PA, load her off-campus house stuff in it, then go down to her downtown Baltimore apartment and unload. Went to the local u-haul place to pick up the truck (14-foot), which was sitting in the parking lot. Went inside to claim it, and was met with a panicked look. Turns out they fired the manager of the place that morning, he was in charge of check in/check out of all the u-hauls. So nobody knew how to check it out. Called in another manager from the next town over, who discovered that my truck was never checked IN (evidently he got fired first), so it couldn’t be checked OUT. He tried really hard to convince me to take a 20’ truck that he had…all I could think of is little ol’ me driving that thing around downtown Baltimore. He couldn’t understand why I said NO EFFIN WAY…I think his exact words were, “Oh, really, it’s only a couple extra feet…” An hour on the phone with uhaul and I was on my way with the agreed upon size.</p>
<p>Other than that, I was pretty happy with u-haul. And they partner with Moving help dot com, which helped me hire a couple of random guys for a couple hours to get the stuff out of the truck quickly while it was parked next to the apartment.</p>
<p>We have mainly gotten trailers (of various sizes) from UHaul and we always got the size we reserved. We towed it with our SUV. The largest size can move a 1bedroom apt with room left over. Interestingly, one way rental prices vary a LOT depending on what market you are leaving from/going to. We’ve paid through the nose on occasion (Nashville to Denver) and had very low rates on occasion (Denver to Philadelphia).</p>
<p>I never thought about a trailer, we have an SUV with a hitch. I didn’t realize they could hold so much.</p>
<p>Don’t count on insurance coverage with professional movers. When we used them, they basically listed all of our stuff as scratched and damaged. If they actually did scratch or damage something, you’d be hard pressed to prove it. </p>
<p>We did a short move and used U-Haul and yes, we ended up with a bigger truck. It did allow us to make one trip vs. two, but when the distance was only 3 miles between houses, the mileage savings didn’t amount to much. We also lost out on filling the tank. I’m thinking it was down about 3-4 gallons when we got it and the gas station topped off the tank for us (I would have only put in about 5 gallons).</p>
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<p>Never count on this. No matter where you are in the country, UHaul operates the same way. You make a “guaranteed” reservation with the company, but actually getting what you reserved is based on how lucky you are when you show up to the local dealer. There is no place in the country where you are actually “guaranteed” anything.</p>
<p>There are multiple states that have sued UHaul over their supposed guarantees, including a class-action lawsuit from California that was settled a few years back. Nothing’s changed though.</p>
<p>Budget gave my D such an outsized truck (she had a reservation on the smallest one) that she wasn’t able to park it in her neighborhood streets in DC. She had to park it overnight in a grocery store parking lot, metro back to her apt and did the reverse the next morning. She had a lot of trouble maneuvering the truck out of town.</p>
<p>We are going through the same process as we prepare to help D2 move across country. Got a quote from U-Haul, then a quote from PODS. PODS came in just a few dollars less than U-Haul, and it would save us the hassle of driving a truck across country.</p>
<p>We called some of the major moving companies, but they won’t give us a quote without coming out and seeing the stuff. The problem is, until D2 commits to an apartment lease at the end of this month, she doesn’t know exactly how much she will be taking; but we know the smallest POD will be big enough, so it is the moving companies who will lose out by not giving us a quote on an area similar to a 8’x7’x7’ POD. </p>
<p>However, I’ve not heard of ABF. Are they a reputable company?</p>
<p>I heard about ABF on another CC thread where someone had a good experience. 
So far our D’s move is going great, and they are quite a bit cheaper. They were very organized with the quote, the pod was in good shape when it arrived and the driver was nice and helpful. There is a lot of info on their website.</p>
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Some of the trailers can hold quite a bit and I think they’re generally quite a bit cheaper than a truck, especially considering no mileage charge and possibly much better mileage using your SUV rather than the big truck. I think U-Haul’s website has a sizing function and will let you know what your SUV is permitted to have attached to it as far as their trailers go - i.e. so you don’t have a huge trailer on a little SUV and end up with problems. </p>
<p>If you’re not used to a trailer they can be tough to maneuver in reverse so be careful that you leave room for a ‘pull-through’ and minimize the backing up unless you’re used to it.</p>
<p>Also make sure you load them carefully and make certain there’s more weight ahead of the axle rather than behind it or else you can have major issues with the trailer swaying out of control.</p>
<p>I’ve rented U-Haul trailers before in lieu of owning a pickup truck. They’re usually quite cheap to rent.</p>
<p>Back in 1978, I rented a UHaul truck to move my stuff from NC to VT. The truck broke down near Albany, NY and I called the number I’d been given. No cell phones then- I must have found a pay phone or the police helped me. A nice young couple came and picked me up, had the truck towed, invited me to stay at their house for the night–ok, that sounds weird, but I did it and it was great. In the morning, they got me a new truck, packed my things in there and sent me on my way. Don’t know what their service is like now, but I was impressed.</p>
<p>We have also used the method of sending our stuff on a moving van that wasn’t full. For a move across country, that might be cheaper.</p>
<p>If you’re feeling adventuresome, I can recommend U-Haul. Every “encounter” has been an experience for our family. Old trucks, store doesn’t have the size you reserved, vehicle pick up at a distant (rather than local) store, closed stores listed on the Web Site, open stores not listed on the Web Site, counter people who can’t even tell you what size ball the trailers take. But you’ll eventually get your stuff to your new home, and inexpensively. Perhaps that’s why they’re still in business!</p>
<p>I went to the ABF website and got an online quote. It is quite a bit cheaper than PODS. But the website doesn’t say what sized container it is. If it’s the same as the POD container, we’ll likely go with ABF.</p>
<p>One of the reasons we used a trailer/SUV instead of a POD to move Wildchild back to the east coast in April was because he had too many things he would not have put in a POD and it was too much to fit in his little Subaru. i.e. expensive bicycles, electronics etc. The other reason was that he wasn’t going to have room for everything in his new apartment so he wanted to drop off some of the stuff (too good to toss but too much for the new space) at our house in Tennessee. We now have a full basement so plenty of room to store. My husband drove the SUV from Nashville to Denver and came back through Nashville, dropped off the stuff here and then they went on up to Philadelphia with the rest. He got a decent “signing bonus” (i.e. moving allowance) from his new employer so it all worked out well.</p>
<p>S1 used UHaul for a couple of moves. No pbs with service with the trucks were old and it wasn’t all that cheap. S2 used Budget for a cross town move. He and a friend rented the truck and then both moved on the same day–two for the price of one.</p>
<p>I always had good luck getting boxes at Wal-Mart. If you go early in the morning -5-7 a.m. when they are restocking shelves, the stores I’ve checked with let you go around and take any boxes you want. (We did that to get “building” materials for a cardboard boat race). </p>
<p>We also had a dymo label maker and labeled each box on at least 3 sides. You can never have enough packing supplies like tape/bubble wrap/newsprint. Also don’t forget a roll of masking tape to put on mirrors/glass doors/etc. You can also use it to write on if you need additional labels. I used towels/sheets to pack breakables. </p>
<p>Purge! Purge! Purge! </p>
<p>Don’t use garbage bags to pack anything because it’s too easy for you or someone else to think it’s trash.</p>
<p>Label boxes as to which room they go to in the new house. We found this very helpful when using movers so they knew immediately where to put things without (1) having to ask us or (2) putting it in the wrong place so we’d have to move it ourselves later.</p>
<p>OK… called ABF today and found out their pods are 6’ deep, 7’ wide, and 8’ tall, so just a tad smaller than the PODS. Regardless, their price is so much less that we’ll likely go with them. Thanks to everyone who suggested them upthread.</p>
<p>Teriwtt–in addition to my post upthread, one of the nicest things about using the ABF pods is that they really do fit in a standard parking space, which is amazingly convenient in an apartment/condo complex or on a city street.</p>
<p>Teriwitt, as I mentioned near the top of the thread, we got a pretty good deal on moving supplies at the U-Haul online site. They were cheaper than ABF’s website for supplies, and delivered free if you ordered more than $25 of stuff. Just to give you an idea of what we used to pack one ABF pod the size you are talking about:</p>
<ul>
<li>2 coils of that sisal rope</li>
<li>1 roll of the mover’s stretch wrap (bought 2, did not use the 2nd). We bought the 5", it worked fine for us.</li>
<li>mattress bags</li>
<li>4 of the 7.95 furniture pads. We had three old comforters we also used. Maybe could have used 1-2 more of the pads in addition to that, one large piece of furniture could have used 2. They are washable/reusable.</li>
<li>Misc package of bungy cords.</li>
<li>One spider package of bungy cords</li>
<li>We used 2 of the rachet tie-downs, too. A bit puzzling to figure out, but they were good once we understood them. I might have used a couple more of those if I had figured out how they worked before we started packing.</li>
<li>Lots of bubble wrap (can’t tell you how much, we had a ton left from a project a few years ago, so used it very liberally). We had a huge wall hanging to wrap, and also wrapped the side slats from the bed in it as well. Plus some miscellaneous use with other pictures.</li>
<li>1 roll of packing tape (we did not get it from U-haul).</li>
<li>As I mentioned before, it takes 2 locks to lock the ABF pod. Make sure they are combination or you can get the keys to the person on the other end.</li>
</ul>
<p>We also bought the package of picture corners (16), but I do not recommend those. They are too thin, flimsy, and the sticky part did not stick. The “picture packer kit” might be a better purchase.</p>
<p>I may be posting for a talk-me-down on this thread come Monday, if my D doesn’t hear about her furniture. She called this morning to vent.</p>
<p>The move is from SA, TX to IL.</p>