Earlier this week my husband and I rented a U-haul truck and drove on up to my sister’s house to pick up some furniture she was off-loading.
Instead of hiring someone to bring it to us, we (read I) decided we (read Mr.Jawofech) should be able to move this stuff ourselves.
Now, two days later, my back still hurts from lifting a gigantic desk on the truck, off the truck, into the house and up the stairs. This thing weighs, and I am of course guessing here, oh I dunno, a kabillion pounds perhaps. Maybe more.
Never again. Never * ever * again I say! I will never move my own crap again. If every moving company in the whole world is unavailable I will leave my stuff behind and buy new stuff. All those things I thought I was truly attatched to took on a new and sinister look when I began thinking about picking them up and carting them off anyplace. (Except my computer. It’s coming with me. I am tired and sore not insane.)
I know it is cheaper to do it yourself but, well, it ain’t gonna happen. * Ever again! *
Do you hire movers when you uproot or do you do all that back breaking labour yourself? And are you crazy?
What you do is order a couple of pizzas, buy a few six-packs, and call over all your big macho friends. Offer to feed them, if they’ll help you move. My family’s done this 3 times now, and I’v helped out with 2 or 3 moves. Definitely cheaper than moving services…
That resolve lasts all the way up until you price actual moving companies: if you are talking about moving a mid-sized household any distance at all it is thousands and thousands of dollars more, even if you only hire someone to do the heavy stuff. Here around town the cheapest moving service starts at $80/hour. In addition to all the other expenses that come up when you’re moving, I can’t imagene ever being able to afford something like that. Next time we move I really hope we can aford to splurge on buying book boxes which are regularly shaped and stack well and hold up instead of having to use irreglar liquor boxes. (We have 14 full bookcases, so this is not a minor concern)And I hope to be able to afford a couple hundred dollars to get someone (students)to help with the actual unloading, since we will be sans suckers, I mean friends, on the other end. (We are moving in December. I am already stressing about this)
Not all companies charge by the hour. The one I use doesn’t. As for boxes…computer boxes work well. Ask friends who just moved, or at work…lots of boxes there.
I’ve never thought about calling a moving company, actually. The secret is to get as many friends and relatives as possible to help you on moving day. Get big strong people to help with heavy lifting, and not-as-strong people to do the not-so-heavy lifting and the cleaning and stuff like that. Get people with trucks and vans, and you may not even have to rent the truck. Pay them with pizza and reciprocity.
Sure, it means that you have to spend a few weekends a year hauling other people’s stuff around, but then you have a whole network of support when your turn to move comes around.
And, if you move a lot, get rid of the heavy stuff that weighs “a kabillion” pounds. One of our friends has an old desk that is particularily notorious. Someone always suggests taking a chainsaw to it.
I haven’t, but I’ve only done a move from university…I now have a whole houseload of stuff (and I’m a hoarder & I have about 2000 books), so there’s no way I would do my own move. Friends that have have always done the move over several days - by which time, after paying for all the rental for the truck, it has got to be close to the cost of a removal team & no back strain. Easy choice.
We always moved ourselves, with much aches and pains, and incredible amounts of time involved with packing. Last year, when we moved from CA to St. Louis, movers did it. What amazed me was that where we would take weeks to do all the packing, they had our entire home packed and sealed in about 6 hours. It took 4 hours to load the truck. The cost of the move was, IIRC about 6500 and another 2000 to move two cars. In checking Uhaul rentals at the time just for comparison, the truck rental would have been about 3500 itself. So when you factor in fuel, time, effort, etc… it’s usually a better deal to have movers do it. But if you get a bunch of friends together to help you, making it a party with a BBQ going, it can actually be somewhat fun to do a move yourself.
If nothing else, try to hire professional packers. It’s amazing to watch them work, plus they provide boxes and protective packing.
I moved three times in 1999. The experience embittered me to the point that I renewed my lease last year simply to avoid moving again. Because I have to move myself. I’m so poor I can’t hire a moving company. Hell, if I had had money I wouldn’t have needed to move three times in a year.
I’m with the movers. I love movers. We just moved, and we have an apartment (not a house) full of stuff. We have quite a few big heavy pieces of furniture. It’s not worth it (to me) to risk injury by tackling this myself. It’s true that it’s not cheap, but even with NYC prices, the movers were worth every penny of the $450 we paid.
Friends are a good option if you’re facing the tiresome task of lugging a large quantity of relatively manageable boxes from point A to point B. But how guilty would I feel if one of my big, strong friends hurt his back while carrying an antique bureau up a flight of stairs? How annoyed would I be if Mr. Del hurt his back, carrying the other end of the bureau, and I then had to listen to him for weeks? The mind staggers at this possibility.
For those who have moved cross-country (as we are contemplating – well, actually I am begging and Mr. Del is resisting), is it better to use a national company that does the whole shot – loading truck, driving truck, unloading, or would there be savings in hiring a local company to load a rented truck, driving it ourselves, and then hiring another local company to unload?
We did a big move, and had a bunch of friends help load the truck that we rented. We provided lots of pizza and beer (the beer came after the truck was loaded, of course.) It saved us a lot of money, but I think much of it has to do with your location. We moved out of NYC, and it’s much more expensive to pay for movers there, then say, if you are moving out of a small town. I even had to rent the truck in New Jersey to save money.
Considering I had to drive for 3 days, and unpack in the heat of the South…well, if I could afford it, I’d hire movers. Then again, the $5000 I saved bought a lot of furniture that I still have, 5 years later. My backache was gone in 2 days.
All through my youth, I moved myself. at the age of 33, with a toddler in tow, I hired some folks to do the big stuff (ok, almost all of it).
This most recent time, I had wisely foreseen the probabiltiy of moving and aforementioned toddler, was male and had lots of friends, who were all teens at the time. I heartily recommend it.
We moved ourselves from western MD to suburban MD, from suburban MD to VA, from VA to Iowa City, From Iowa City to VA…all in the space of 3 years.
So when time came to move from VA back to MD I finally figured, what the hell, we can afford it. That one cost $200. Moving from MD to rural VA cost about $800 and was worth every penny.
Delphica,
Get a quote on both. Call a pro and ask for an estimate, then call Ryder or UHaul and get a truck price. You’ll probably save a few bucks renting the truck and driving it yourself, but for us, there was a mental thing with it. Moving across town is one thing, but moving halfway across the country? That was my HOUSE we’d be driving. One blowout, one accident, one truck thief, anything… and my entire house would have been gone. It was a lot easier to just have pros do it, and meet them at the new place. Saved a lot of stress and trouble, especially when two small kids were involved too
I just moved seven months ago across the state of Washington. Rented an 18ft-long Ryder and loaded over a ton of stuff almost alone. I did have two friends provide some help, but I moved most of it. (They mostly hauled stuff to the dump for me, and I love 'em for it. Other friends promised to help, but were nowhere to be found when the day came.) It took me two full days to load the truck.
When I arrived at my destination, I called a business acquaintence and hired his son and two other high school boys to unload the truck. Took them an hour and they got each and every box in its intended room. I paid the three of them $100 total; the first boy’s father said I’d paid them too much. But I was too physically wrecked to unload it by myself, and even if I did I’d have missed not only the dropoff deadline for the truck (maybe a $150 penalty) but I’d miss my scheduled flight back to the other city to pick up my car and my pets. Would’ve also had to pay for missing the deadline on closing my old apartment, too.
I am amazed at the wide range of price differences to be found out there in hiring a moving company. Some of you have moved for $200 using movers. I paid $120 for the UHaul truck alone. Add in gas, insurance and the cost of beer and dinner for Mr.Jawofech’s father, who helped us, and it cost us well over $200.
Maybe I should have called around to see how much it actually would have cost us to have movers do it. It may have been the same price without the backache.
