Interstate Moves - Your Experiences and Advice

In My Humble Opinion
1

My SO and I just returned from Las Vegas where he had a very good 2 1/2 hour job interview. We are hoping to hear sometime this week if he gets offered the job, and if so, we will be moving from Southern California to Las Vegas.

Neither of us have any experience with moving out of state so I’m hoping I can get some useful advice from dopers who have.

What I’m looking for is recommended moving companies and what is involved in hiring a reputable company and what to look out for.

We are planning on renting a home to make sure we like it there before buying. How do you find a good Realtor?

I would love to hear your experiences on moving, either good or bad. Thanks.

2

There have been numerous posts about moving experiences, but I’ll offer a couple of pieces of advice:

  1. Hold a garage sale or take everything that you don’t need or want to a charity or to the dump.
  2. Make sure you get a thorough inventory of anything of value in the house. Take dated photos of the TV working, and a sound shot of the stereo functioning.
  3. Thoroughly clean and dry all appliances.
  4. Make sure the packers correctly inventory the boxes they are packing. This will usually be a general description such as “books”, but when it comes to unpacking, you want to know where to tell them to put the boxes.
  5. Make sure the box has the correct room written on it, unless you want to be carting boxes all over your new digs.
  6. Make sure there is no excessive packing materials in the boxes to pad up the weight total. You want your stuff protected, but you’re paying for all that material.
  7. Have some donuts, soft drinks and cold water for the packers on moving day. NO BEER! Offer to buy sandwiches for lunch, if you’re feeling generous.
  8. Most moving companies that are national are decent enough, although everyone has horror stories to tell. United, Mayflower, etc. are all reputable companies.
3

This probably isn’t helpful for you, but whenever we moved his new workplace would set us up with a moving company. Both have been comparable.

Last time it was Mayflower. Why don’t you estimate how much you are going to move (in poundage) and call around to see who has the best deal?

Also, document, document, document. If you have something valuable, take pictures of it in case it gets scratched or broken. Keep all paperwork, and try to be there when the movers show up. They will be a little more careful with someone there to watch them.

As for realors, you can ask the people he is going to work with for suggestions. That’s a bit better than the shotgun approach. When we moved here we queried for realtors through realtor.com, and the one we ended up with wasn’t a very good realtor.

That’s all! I hope you like Nevada.

4

No good advice beyond what’s been said, but I have one piece of advice: moving is a great opportunity to clean house. Sell, throw away, or generally get rid of as much crap as possible. You don’t know how much junk you own until you move it. Even if you’ve only been somewhere 4 or 5 years :rolleyes:

5

You’re doing a little more than I have. My moves have been along the lines of “Throw Everything Into Boxes, then UPS or Ryder em.”

That said: Plan, plan, plan.

6

Well, we were thinking it might be safer and cheaper if we pack and put everything we can carry into a U-haul and move that ourselves and then just have the movers move the big, heavy appliances and beds etc. That way they have no real personal items of ours in their posession.

7

Last week I helped my elderly father move. It was a long-distance move of around 400 km, but still within the same province (Ontario).

We hired Tippet-Richardson, a reputable Toronto-area firm who had previously moved my office, and the family pitched in for the cost. This was probably one of the smartest things we’ve ever done; it basically saved the sanity of everyone concerned. Having the job done by professionals with the proper tools and packing supplies was well worth it.

My father and I tossed a LOT of stuff before the move: furniture, a non-working TV, the tobacco-stained drapes and blinds, food of unknown age, the crap from the storage room, newspapers and magazines, carpets… I think he appreciated the ruthlessness of tossing all the stuff and making a break with old patterns.

He was moving from a grubby old apartment where he’d basically been a hermit for the past decade (ever since my mom, my sister, and my stepmother (his second wife) died), to a brand-new seniors-oriented development on the Bruce Peninsula not far from my cousins’ place.

The packers came in the day before the move, and were ruthless and quick in packing. They have to be; how can they distinguish vhat is valuable and what is not? They packed everything. We found quite a few little surprises on unpacking, like a wastebasket full of crud.

The movers arrived the next day (March 31st), and loaded everything that was packed. There was an insurance form that Dad had to fill out, listing replacement values of various items. Since the appliances weren’t going (we were moving to a place with better new ones), there weren’t that many items of individual great value.

My friend Mike came over by arrangement to help with the final cleanup, and then to drive me and my father to the new place. We would also be taking my father’s personal items and food to the new place at this time.

My friend took a final load of stuff to the dump as my father and I made the final checkout of the apartment with the landlord’s representative.

The apartment was not in good shape; 18 years of tobacco smake had stained the walls, and we didn’t have time to properly clean it. We were very lucky in that the next tenant (a smoker under time pressure of moving out from his apartment in the same building) had agreed with Dad in writing to take the apartment ‘as is’; otherwise we’d have had to pay for some fairly serious wall-cleaning and floor-stripping.

In the afternoon, we headed up to the new place. My father was the first tenant, so we were able to arrange overlapping tenancies: we had the new place in mid-March, and my aunt was able to arrange for food, certain new furniture, and supplies to be there before we arrived. We slept in the new place. The movers brought the stuff on the next day (1 April), and unloaded it very quickly–my father’s new place is a townhouse all on the ground level, so they just backed the truck up, put down a ramp, and carted the stuff in. We offered the movers food and drink afterwards.

The final invoice from the movers came in at 500 dollars LESS than the quote. :slight_smile:

Since I’d paid the largest share of the total moving costs, my aunt elected to give me back that $500. Dad was getting a new satellite system, so that he could watch his beloved Discovery Channel, so I sprang for the satellite receiver and installation. And a DVD player. Now Dad can borrow my cousins’ movies. :slight_smile:

8

I’ve made two interstate moves (Texas to North Carolina, North Carolina to Kentucky) in the last two years.

For move #1, here’s what you shouldn’t do: Don’t use a broker. They sent a different company that they’d originally said, and they charged us WAY over the estimate. Also, they tried to rush us–we needed it delivered in four days (when our place would be ready) and they tried to force us to take it in two (we didn’t budge, however).

For move #2, here’s what you should do: Call Mayflower. A guy came over, looked around and gave us a reasonable estimate. When the movers showed up, they were fast, efficient, and courteous. They delivered our stuff exactly when they said they would and the final cost came in UNDER the estimate.

For move #3 (across town), I’m just using students who will work for beer and food.

9

I’ve done big moves twice. once from Louisiana to New Jersey, once from New Jersey to California. What to do depends on what the company is paying for, what you are paying for, and how much time you have. The first move was right after I finished my dissertation, so they packed everything. The second was after a break, so we had a nice yard sale, and got rid of lots of stuff. We had packed a lot before the move, in order to make the house less cluttered to show.

Check to see who is going to move you. The first time we had a moonlighting cop, and we were not happy. They left our stuff out on the driveway for hours in Louisiana in August, where it nearly always rains every day. We were lucky. The way they packed our TV, it was a miracle it didn’t break. They didn’t have the right ramp for my car, so they wound up putting a hole in the gas tank when they unloaded it (and it was a Pinto :eek: ,) but since the insurance was by the pound of broken item, they had to pay for a new tank. The people on the second move were professionals, and they were great.

Decide if you want an unpacker. If your house isn’t going to be ready, move your stuff into storage, and have them unpack when you are ready to go. Both of you should be there for the unpacking, or you’ll never keep up with them.

As for Realtor, I got a recommendation from the HR guy I worked with in my new company, and it worked out great. I don’t know how Las Vegas is, but in the Bay Area realtors have very limited ranges, so we used a couple while looking in different towns.

If you have books, check to see if mailing them book rate would be cheaper. Movers love books - they are heavy, and very hard to break. My moves got paid for, but if I move myself I would check out mailing them.