I’ve got a move coming up in about six months, and between being on the fourth floor of a walk-up and having some big things like floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a huge bed, I’m considering just going with movers when the time comes.
I know that each moving company is different, but let’s say we’re talking about a one-bedroom apartment with a few big pieces like a couch, some big bookshelves, a king-sized bed, and then everything else boxed up into manageable boxes, doing an in-town move (probably just a couple of miles or even a few blocks away).
What’s the ballpark for what it’ll end up costing?
$500-700 sounds about right in Chicago. I had an overstuffed 3 bedroom place with lots of furniture and a $300 budget, and that was enough for enough time for all my furniture and all the boxes I had ready to go (about 30 of them) down from a third floor unit and up and placed into the right rooms in a first floor unit (Chicago apartment - first floor means one half flight of stairs). Consider drive time, as well. My old place was only about 10 minutes drive from here. (Time is money, but mileage is mostly irrelevant in Chicago! Three blocks can take 15 minutes if it’s the wrong three blocks the wrong time of day.)
Next time I’ll find more money and have them pack, as well. These guys move FAST! And if they pack it, it’s insured. If you pack it, it’s not.
Check out the U-Haul affiliated eMove. You can rent the truck through U-haul and then hire local guys to come help you move the stuff. The best thing is the site has reviews by past customers so you can get some good feedback on the quality of the different guys and they have their rates posted.
I used it for a local move with about the same amount of furniture (and a lot of books, 30+ boxes) and it cost me about $275. I was booked for $175 but it wound up taking longer than I estimated so I gave the guys a hndred bucks to cover tip and the extra time.
I paid I think $300-$400 to move a metric assload of books, some real furniture, and a bunch of boxes maybe two miles. Worth every. single. penny. When they saw the stack of book boxes they turned a little green, though. “Have you read all these?”
I don’t know if you supposed to but the guys that moved my stuff were so helpful and nice that I wanted to give them something. (it was actually a guy and his gothy teenaged son who I had a great conversation about manga and anime with and wound up giving my extra copy of the Venture Brothers anyway)
A few years back, we hired some movers when we moved from our duplex into our new house, a fairly simple cross-town move. We had a big projection TV, couch, loveseat, two queen-sized beds, a super-heavy armoire, washer and dryer, and some other stuff. PLUS, they moved a bunch of stuff from my storage locker, so, we were charged for an extra stop. They were very professional and very fast; they disassembled and reassembled beds, unhooked and rehooked the appliances, everything, and didn’t scratch any furniture. They worked for just under three hours, and the bill came to maybe $210. I tipped each guy (there were 3) a $20 on top of that. I consider every penny of that to be money well spent.
Now, that was for a relatively easy cross-town move. My parents are currently looking at a major move, relocating over about 600 miles, and they have tons of heavy stuff. I think that for 15,000 pounds of freight, they’re looking at over $8,000. I just about choked, but Mom seemed to find that reasonable.
I should mention also that my wife’s parents also recently moved, a distance of maybe 2 miles from their old place. Unwisely, they didn’t use the same firm we had used, and the movers were old, incompetent, and slow. As a result of their lackadaisical pace, they milked the job out to about 8 hours, which means that my in-laws paid nearly three times as much for their job, and had increased irritation besides. My point being: ask around (locally, that is, not on a message board) for recommendations and advice about good moving companies in your area. Finding a good one is worth it.
There’s a common scam addressed in either a 20-20 or a 48hrs episode I can’t find a link to: Movers quote you a really low price. They then move your stuff and park their truck outside. They then present you with a triple priced bill and if you don’t agree to pay it immediately, the driver says he has to go outside to call the office from his cell phone. He then drives away & the company holds all your stuff hostage until you agree to pay.
I found loads of local news sites reiterating the exact same scam and a few boards where people list names of offending companies, but I can’t find a link to the original (John Stossel?) episode.
Four years ago, we moved my father with Tippet-Richardson (the same firm who moved the office I work for). A 1-bedroom apartment from Oshawa to Owen Sound cost CAD 3500, but that’s an intercity move of about…
I’ve been out of the biz for a few years, but 5-6 years ago a local move could likely be done w/ a truck and two guys (w/ some help by you) for $80.00 an hour. I’d guess it’s around 90 to a hundred by now. Hiring a truck from a moving company is usually a smart move, as the guys are experienced in moving HHG. Using a couple of “joe blows” may not be the best choice, but things vary. Proper packing and good organization are a big part of a successful move.
The last time we moved, about six miles across town, we paid around $1200. But they packed all of my china (a considerable amount – 22 boxes) and all of our clothes. (Hey, I was 7 months pregnant, with two small children running around. I didn’t have time or energy.)
It was so worth it. They packed and moved us in 6 ½ hours, including our heavy furniture. Only one toddler bed was damaged, and they replaced it.
Hmm. Just to insert a question for possible future reference, what are the usual averages for a cross-country move (say from an East Coast state to a West Coast state)? And what’s the usual thing to do with one’s car in such an instance?
The last time I moved, we hired movers, as we had acquired several appliances and a great deal of furniture and other stuff since our last, mom’s-minivan, starving-student-mode move six years previously.
IIRC, it was about $150/hr, with an hour minimum travel time. We were charged for three hours. I tipped them enough to bring the bill up to $500 even.
As you might have heard, the entire population of Montreal moves house on July 1, for some reason. Mercifully, we were able to get into our new apartment early and move on June 27. Any closer and we would have been selling more organs than Wurlitzer to pay for it.
I found a good mover from the MovingScam website. They have a lot of good tips on how to find a good mover, a blacklist of bad movers, and a board you can search for tips and recommendations. I got a good recommendation there for a local move. Mine was under $1,000 for a small 2br stuffed to the rafters, with a good hour and a half travel time to the new place.
A lot of your major scam-like problems are with long distance moves, where they charge you by weight and distance. Local moves are more like $x plus $y/hr plus some materials, written into the contract, so it’s less likely to triple in price unexpectedly.
My last move was $20/man/hour, for some unlicensed college guys I found on craigslist, plus $20/man tip, so $200 total. It was mid-month at the start of the summer, the next month they charged my friend $30/man/hr for about the same move. I don’t own anything valuable, it wasn’t a big deal if something got damaged. In the end some wine glasses broke, but I didn’t pack them well and I didn’t label the box as ‘Glass’ so that one is really my fault.
Five years ago my company moved me from Minnesota to Oregon. The bill was about $8000, if I remember right (the company paid it), and they just drove the (extra) car right up into the moving truck – we drove the other car out here with two very unhappy cats in it. They did all the packing; they even unpacked the couple of boxes we’d done and redid it themselves so that their insurance would cover it. I don’t think they so much as scuffed anything during the move.
Now, I work for a large company that did a lot of relocations at the time, so they probably had a deal. I’d guess that personal-pay, east coast to west, for an average house now would be in the vicinity of $12K, but I might be way off.