Way back in the '70s I remember we lived for a time in a rental while our new home was being built. When the house was completed we were ready to move-in. Dad rented a van, but Uhaul gave him an open flat-bed with rails. I remember he was furious, but they told him “take it or leave it”. We moved our stuff out in the open.
Fast forward to my move from the Bay Area to the Sacramento area 15 years ago, with my dad’s experience on my mind, I rented a large truck from Uhaul (I don’t remember the size), and we were told that size was not available, so they gave us 2 smaller trucks for the move. Worked-out OK, I guess, but I had to recruit one of my move helpers for driving the other van.
Rented from Uhaul again in 2011 - a small trailer towed by a pickup - no problems with the rental or return.
If I had to move today I would definitely check the others and probably hire movers.
When my husband and I moved from the Chicago area to Denver, his company paid for movers and their services. Most of our stuff went that way. But we also had to move some ourselves as we hadn’t yet found a house and had signed a 6-month lease on an apartment so we’d have some time to house hunt without pressure. We rented a 10-foot (if I remember correctly) truck and a dolly to haul our car. We could probably have gotten a trailer to pull, but didn’t want the wear and tear on our car. We had the following issues with U-Haul:
1 - The truck was not available until 3 full days after the day we’d reserved it for. We had to incur the cost of a hotel room for those days as the bulk of our furniture was already on the truck headed for Denver, and the bed we had left had been dissasembled.
2 - When we arrived in Denver, had unloaded the truck, and were ready to return it, we were told by the U-Haul staff that they were not allowed to unload our car from the dolly, even though the staff at the U-Haul at home had loaded it up for us. We had no idea how to do it, it was pitch dark outside, and the fool U-Haul people just stood there and let us struggle.
I would probably use U-Haul again, if needed, but I would approach the experience with considerably less naivete this time.
Uhaul does tend to be the cheapest option. They also tend to suck. They have better response times for broken down trucks, almost like they are prepared for them to break.
I’ve always been happy with Penske, They do have less locations so they don’t always have a good option for a one way move.
I would recommend uHaul only for in-town moves if you have a low budget. Penske and Budget are much more reliable vehicles for longer trips. I’ve stopped to help several uHaul families on the road with a broken down vehicle and only one Budget van. I shared driving a Penske van from L.A. to the midwest and we had no problems with the van, but it was more than twice the cost of the uHaul quote. But worth it I think.
Every single time I get behind the wheel, something dies.
This is about Budget.
I needed to haul stuff larger than my pickup.
I contacted Budget. Of course I bought the ‘additional insurance’ - as I told the agent, I want everything covered.
This one got the top crumpled on a low-overhead passage.
No problem, it’s covered, right?
No. This damage is not covered
Here’s the kicker: this is such a rare occurrence, the claim form has drawings of every major ‘Box Damaged by Overpass’ - crumpled at the top, peeled all the way back, etc.
IOW: a common enough accident to have these drawings on the form, but it is Not Covered by the $250.00 insurance.
Unfortunately, pennultimate time I moved (FL to MD) I couldn’t get a one way rental. Penske has the same quality of truck, without the lift gate. Uhaul is only OK for in town moves. Budget is OK, somewhere in between.
Does the OP have a lot of friends who can help with the move?
Also why not just sell everything? I’ve known people who sold everything in their home except their clothes and just bought new when they moved.
In my experience after long days of boxing stuff up and finding stuff still boxed up from the last time you moved 5 years ago, you wonder why the heck you have the stuff?
I’ve used Uhaul a bunch. I typically buy the insurance anyway, because I’m not used to driving those bad boys… and I have, actually, crunched up the top of one running into a carport. So I factor in that cost.
They will also charge you per mile, and you have to stop and gas up before you return it. I use google to figure out my mileage, and can generally nail it within 5 miles or so… so I have a good idea before I start what my total bill will be.
I’ve never had a truck break down or anything, and getting in and out isn’t typically a problem. I always try to get them from UHaul facilities, and not mom and pop gas station who happens to do UHaul.
I don’t know that I would say I recommend them over another service, but I don’t have a horror story to go along with UHaul. Its always seemed to go as I would expect it should.
My experience is that U-Haul is significantly cheaper but, as a result, you’re more likely to encounter poor service. Keep in mind, the quality of the equipment and service can vary widely from one outlet to another.
One obvious tip: Always inspect the vehicle completely before driving off with it. Look all over, inside and outside, for any dents, scratches, or other damages and make sure the company acknowledges they existed before you rented the vehicle.
I rented a Penske truck three weeks ago for a cross-country one-way move as part of settling an estate.
Not a problem.
Set it up online. Got an online discount. Used my AAA membership card; they tacked on another discount. Within 24 hours Corporate called me with a confirmation. A real live human. The place I was to pick up the truck called me a week in advance to further confirm. A real live human.
The day I picked up the truck, the paperwork was a snap. (I opted for most of the optional insurance; it was going to be a cross-country trip!) Out the door in 15 minutes and personal walk-around with my truck (which had magically appeared out front while I was inside doing the paperwork). I took pictures, inside and out, of all angles of the truck (don’t forget the tire treads of all four tires!) as we did the walk around. (Every time I rent a vehicle I take pictures before I even get behind the wheel and drive off. Trust me on this. It’s free insurance you hope you never need.)
I played it safe. I never let the tank get below half full. Using the GasBuddy app in my smartphone I knew ahead of time exactly where I was stopping for fuel the entire trip. I paid cash at every stop so as to avoid credit card skimmers. Every time I refueled I checked all of the tires, mirrors and cleaned the windshield, lights (front and back).
The truck performed as expected. No issues. No problems. I arrived three days ahead of my eight-day time limit (covered 2,200 miles). The sign-off went faster than when I picked up the truck.
I researched Penske, UHaul, Budget for this trip. I also looked into ABF UPack and Pods. Driving my own was going to be cheaper and I would be in control. (I might consider ABF UPack for something, but never Pods. Pods will scam you, every time.)
[ul]
[li]I used UHaul in the past. Crap. Seems they haven’t changed.[/li][li]Budget didn’t fit my requirements and contacting them proved worthless.[/li][li]Penske was upfront and helpful from Day One.[/li][li](Addendum. Never, ever rent from Home Despot for a local move of stuff. That promised $20.00 for 75 minutes of basic use is really $100.00 or more.)[/li][/ul]
I’ve found it depends very much on the local branch you’re renting from and/or dropping off at (if it’s one-way, which I’d imagine is the OP’s case), no matter who is the parent company.
I have never had a positive experience with U-Haul and know of no one who has, and many of my negative experiences were of absolutely comical proportion. If there is a successful company with worse customer service I have never encountered it.
Another vote for Penske. Extremely easy to deal with on my last cross-country move. 24 foot truck and a car dolly. All equipment as reserved, on time. Easy to add an extra day or two when I needed it. Easy return.
I’ve used rental trucks multiple times over the years for medium-long moves and only had a serious problem once - with Penske.
Their truck developed an electrical problem in the course of a move from Kentucky to Texas, finally breaking down completely on a godforsaken stretch of Route 59 in northeast Texas, far from food and water. Along with my faithful small spaniel Bubba, I had to trek a considerable distance in order to knock on the door of a suspicious hermit, risking injury at the hands of his baying hounds (who especially didn’t like Bubba). He grudgingly let me use his phone to call for help (this was in pre-cellphone days) and the local garage at Penske’s behest fixed the problem and got me back on the road the next morning (the less said about the motel they gave me a lift to, the better).
On the other hand I can’t recall anything bad about U-Haul in all the times I used them, apart from once getting stopped by cops on the Interstate because I had a taillight go out. Their trucks were available as promised and I was able to get any supplies I needed. The only off-note about U-Haul was, and is, their motto. Who the hell wants “Adventure in Moving”?
There are options other than U-Haul, Penske or Budget. Enterprise, for instance, rents trucks. And there might be a local company that does so as well. We used one at one company where I worked because we needed a truck with a liftgate and U-Haul didn’t have those.
It really depends on how much stuff you have, how far you’re going and your willingness to work at it. We moved cross-country two years ago, and for our volume of stuff, we were primarily looking at four options:
Three PODS containers
Most or all of an ABF U-pack trailer
A 26 foot rental truck and the largest available box trailer to tow with our pickup
Professional movers
The delivery service is pretty slick and the containers are a snap to load with their ground-level floors, but PODS is crazy expensive. For our move back then, the cost was $11,500
U-Pack was a bit less, but the spectre of having to horse the contents of a four bedroom house, including a piano, large appliances, etc up the ramp was daunting and not enough cheaper than PODS to be worth the extra labor.
Rental truck and trailer was cheaper, but not cheap once we factored in the cost of fuel at an optimistic 5 MPG. Plus there’s the unknown factor of wondering if that beaten-up rental is going to break down in the middle of Nowhere, Texas. It also would have required both of us to drive 100% of the time. Cost in 2013 for us would be about $6500.
For us, packing everything and hiring movers to load and transport it all came to be the best option at $8500. We were pleasantly surprised to find professional movers were more expensive than UHaul, but cheaper than PODS. We did have to pack everything and have furniture ready for them to wrap and grab, but we’d have to do that with PODS or UHaul anyway. We also wound up selling our washer/dryer and range as it was cost-effective to replace them vs moving them as movers charge by the pound. Their estimator came out and eyeballed the heck out of everything and decided we had 12,000 pounds of stuff. No idea what the actual weight was.
At the end of the loading, we were perhaps emotionally worn, but we weren’t physically beaten up. For the cross-country drive, we were able to switch off now and then.