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<p>This is a big “no”. Driving 13 hour days back to back is not wise and it’s up to you to say no to this dangerous idea.</p>
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<p>Don’t forget food and hotel rooms as well.</p>
<p>We have loved the ABF system of moving – used it twice so far. The negative would be the size of the trailer that gets dropped off – much bigger than the little pods you see other companies using. But you only pay for the portion of the trailer that you use. Your initial estimate is based on the size of the home you are moving from (and really is an estimate) and includes a +/- per foot so that you can instantly know how much you saved by reducing your use. The estimate also an estimate of the number of days before delivered. Once the trailer is picked up, the driver will indicate exactly how much space you have used and a code number for tracking your “trailer”. They drive it to the hub closest to your destination and wait for your call to have it delivered. We loved this method and never had a problem with broken or missing household items.</p>
<p>If he is a twenty eight year old man who owns his own home, why are his parents involved in the decisions being made about this move? </p>
<p>Sorry for the snark, snowball, but your first post here lead me to in a completely different direction than your last post. A twenty eight year old homeowning man is perfectly capable of planning a 1600 mile move on his own, and arranging for his own help.</p>
<p>That’s great about the furniture. I see now why you want to take the trouble to move it. It’s unusual at his age to have had the good fortune of a furniture store owning family friend helping him obtain quality furniture at discounted rates. I was picturing the usual mid-20-something collection of random items. HIS furniture sounds worth the trouble.</p>
<p>A resident moving in new to town with good furniture? Be sure to also pack a tennis racket to bat away all the people who’ll want to date him. :)</p>
<p>pugmadkate-The food and hotel will be in the mix no matter whether we drive a truck or just my son’s car. Even at the age of 28, my son is willing to share a room with mom and dad; I don’t think at that age I would have shared with my parents, but then again, I was married!! </p>
<p>There is no way we will drive 13 hours in a truck, although we will have 3 drivers if we towed the car. I can not imagine my husband’s back would be happy with that long of drive, although we have done 12 in the comfort of our own car with 3 drivers. The 2 not driving will be sleeping!</p>
<p>I looked at ABF, but don’t like the size of the systems. I worry at the receiving end there being a problem with where to put it while unloading. Once we know where my son’s new apartment will be, we will finalized what to do. I am glad to hear you have been happy with ABF as I still have them on the list.</p>
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Does that mean your S still owns the house? If so, can’t he leave his furniture there and just get the basics of what he needs for his 1 year residency stay? From what I’ve heard he won’t be seeing much of that furniture anyway since he’ll be working all the time.</p>
<p>On the w/d - it’s very hard to find an apartment where you could even install a w/d - especially a full sized set.</p>
<p>It depends on how much the furniture worth and the size of the total content. We moved from NJ to CA DIY, 12 years ago. We had a lot of furnitures. But after getting quotes from the movers, we have determind that its not worth the cost of moving large pieces. Yes, It ended up costing us around $10K to replace all the furnitures, but to move the old ones will not work as they may not fit in the new place, besides, we did not buy a house before we made the move.</p>
<p>I packed up about 130 boxes of belongings and ship UPS to a warehouse in CA and took what we can in our Van and drove across the states and we visited many interesting places along the way. </p>
<p>UPS gave me a big discount on shipping 10K(or 1k?) lbs plus to the same destination in one shipment.</p>
<p>Will he have time to make a trip and scout out an apartment? The only reason I ask is that my S’s apt does have a full size hook up for a washer and dryer, he also rented an apartment before this one that had a washer and dryer in it. I’ve been looking at apt for my D and many of the new buildings do have a washer and dryer hookup. At least I am finding this to be the case in the midwest. People do not want to schlepp their stuff to a laundry room.</p>
<p>I’m not sure he will have that near the UC campus as that is an older neighborhood but it does seem the case in many newer buildings.</p>
<p>Good luck, we moved our S quite a distance a year ago and may have to do the same with D this year. When we moved our S, we did it in 2 long days. My H likes to get the trip over with but we spent a couple of days in one location before driving to our final destination. We moved with one van and one car and 3 drivers. One of whom(me!) had back trouble so I have to say that it was mostly S and H.</p>
<p>If all goes our way the current house will sell or be rented to an upcoming medical student or resident, so leaving the furniture is not an option. My gut is the washer and dryer will not go with him as it is a full size set. Most places he has looked at online either have stack units in the apartments or laundry rooms to share. As he hopes to get a one bedroom, chances are he will only take her bedroom furniture, some of the living room furniture, leaving mom and dad’s basement with the rest. Oh, the big screen tv is going even if it is the only thing that can fit in the truck ;)</p>
<p>All these luxuries while he was a medical student ? Wow, lucky kid.</p>
<p>He worked a few years full time between his masters and beginning medical school, also didn’t have a lot of expenses. He did use student loans during medical school which were more than enough to cover his expenses, including his house note for all 4 years; a scholarship didn’t hurt either 
Can’t say he has much money in savings, but he is working on that now. </p>
<p>My son that never cared about furniture, decorating or a clean house turned into a whole different person when the belonging and house were his!</p>
<p>Pack up all the books and send them USPS media rate.
Pack furniture into a POD and have that shipped by a moving company. [Portable</a> Moving Containers for Local and Long Distance Moves | PODS](<a href=“http://www.pods.com/Moving.aspx]Portable”>Portable Container Moving Services | Moving & Storage | PODS)
Pack valuables and breakables into the car and plan a nice drive. Remember not to park where the car will get broken into for the valuables and breakables, or cover them!</p>
<p>Thanks for all the suggestions and to those that send PM’s. After checking on prices, it looks like PODS, PACK RAT, and ABF would run two to four times more than a rental truck that my son and husband drive, including gas. Assuming gas doesn’t double before the move, we will go with the rental truck. </p>
<p>The only decision is whether my son’s car is towed with the truck or driven separately. The main reason to tow is to have the extra driver for the truck which would allow the guys to cover more ground in a day. The plus of driving the car is I can drive the car and the person not driving the truck will have a more comfortable seat to take a nap 
Unfortunately, the smaller rental truck with most companies can not tow so if we go that route, we would have to get the next size up; the price is basically the same, so the only difference would be driving a bigger truck.</p>
<p>Now I just have to convince my husband that this drive needs to take 3 days and not two; I think he gets it, but just a bit more nagging might be needed ;)</p>
<p>I know it is less likley, but in the SF area, there are many Foreign Movers (Chinese, Viet-nam, hispenic…) They will charge by the hour to move stuff for you. I had to renovate the family room floor, which has the most of our stuff in it. Including all my 5 book cases of books floor to ceiling, TV and furnitures. It is about 60% of the house contents, they pack and move it to my living room and returned to move the stuff back after the renovation. Total cost: $200.</p>
<p>I would hire those to load the truck and unload by some one else at the other end, if you can find them.</p>
<p>Now that my son knows where he is actually going to live and what furniture goes with him, it is time to tidy up the moving plans. We are still renting a truck so that we can drop off some of his belongings at our home before heading out. I had what I thought was a good idea and need some help.</p>
<p>The woman that keeps our dogs when we are out of town is married to a man that drives a truck for a living, but in the last month has decided to stay home and help her with the dog boarding business. I do not know if he only drove local or if he was a long haul driver, or if there is a reason he stopped driving. My brilliant idea was to ask him if he would be willing to drive the truck the 1600 miles. We would obviously pay him for his time, hotel stay along the way, and airfare back home; I don’t know if his food cost should also be included, but I would assume so.</p>
<p>The question is, how much should we offer him to make it worth his while? I would first ask if he is interested and then see if he has a price before offering an amount, but I need to have a figure in mind. The thought was if he did drive the truck, we would not need a moving crew to help unload as he along with my husband and son could handle it. My husband and son are not pros at moving, but can handle most of the items; the sofa, mattress and dresser would be the only items they might have difficulty with. The man is a big man with muscular arms; I am guessing he does some major lifting in his driving days!!</p>
<p>Thanks for this post snowball. I do not have any answers for you but a thank you for posting. My D is deciding between 3 medical schools and 2 of them are 3,000 miles away and we are trying to figure out what is worth moving. Also, she does not currently own a car and we are trying to decide whether to give her our very old one or have her buy one in her new (for 4 years) home.
Your son is headed for a 3 year residency–right? Or is he specializing? Another post suggested one year–which would be a different scene altogether.
Congrats to your S and to your family.
I hope you will let us know what you have decided.</p>
<p>One of the ways to figure that out is by replacement cost. You can figure out by adding all the large pieces that you need a truck to move and goto local used furniture stores to find out the price. I would think in some cases the replacement cost will be far lower than the total of trucking, driver and flights home. If the total cost of trucking is 50% of the replacement cost, then it is worth the trouble.</p>
<p>Also, I think the drive should be paid around $150 per day from beginning to the end.</p>
<p>We just finished helping our son move from Denver back to the east coast. He got a signing bonus from his new employer which covered moving costs, but the only thing that made sense was for my husband to tow a rented UHaul trailer with my SUV. H drove from Nashville to Denver in 2 days then they got a reasonable 1 way rental (largest trailer) in Denver and spent a day packing. 2 days back to Nashville with son driving his car and H pulling the trailer. Unloaded stuff in Nashville that he wont be able to fit in much smaller center city Phila apt. 2 days up to Phila. Not easy, but best option.</p>
<p>I did a quick search online to see what truck drivers earn just to have an idea. It looks like long haul driver get paid by the mile, while local drivers get paid hourly; looks like they get around $12-$14/hour. I was surprised to see the per mile rate ran under 50 cents a mile for long haul drivers; more like 35-40 cents per mile. If that is a true rate, it would be worth it for this man to at least drive the truck from our home to Denver; my son can do the drive from his home to ours to unload the furniture that he can not take with him. </p>
<p>Moving from a three bedroom house (he had a roommate in one bedroom) to a small one bedroom apartment, leave a good bit of furniture coming to my house! I have no idea where all this furniture is going other than the our unfinished basement; the grill and washer and dryer can go down there, but the furniture will need to be stored inside the house. </p>
<p>While my son and husband are willing to drive the truck, they figured if we could get this guy to do it and it cost less than $1000, it would be worth it. No moving cost covered here! Also, if this man would do the drive, the 3 of us could drive my son’s car and take a mini vacation on the way with a couple of stops. Much easier to do without a loaded truck!</p>
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For a small apartment for a short time frame and one from which he might move again if he decides on some other living arrangement a year later he really should consider not taking his furniture at all but just buying what he needs when he gets there. He can probably buy all he needs from craigslist and Ikea (or similar) for a few hundred dollars - much less than the cost of this move and less hassle than this move. A person in his situation doesn’t really need much in the way of furniture. All he needs is a bed, a dining table (which can double as a desk), and a chair or two. He might also want a TV for a distraction. I’ve lived with about that for years before and managed just fine. I usually could always find a sofa for free from someone moving out while I was moving in but a sofa isn’t really even necessary.</p>
<p>If you have a reasonable sized SUV or pickup you could load that up but if not just cram what you can in the car, perhaps use a car top carrier to fit more stuff, and maybe ship some boxes of stuff to him later when he figures out where he’ll be.</p>