If I shove all my stuff in a storage locker, including a car, and then mail a moving company the key to the locker and my car, will they take care of everything without me?
There’s only one way to find out - ring a moving company!
When we moved from New Zealand to the UK, we weren’t actually allowed to do any of the packing ourselves. So we met the movers in the morning and came back to an empty house in the afternoon. That’s a bit different to mailing them a key, though.
PODS is one way. Dump your stuff in there, and tell them when to move it. Other actual movers might take stuff if you have more crap. If you’re also driving far, they don’t expect to convoy with you. A car will probably be towed on a trailer.
Pods looks ok, anybody know roughly what they charge?
Problem though is that I have a back problem and if I try moving all my stuff myself it will take forever or be painful.
I just called PODS, they don’t transport vehicles.
Moving companies offer a full range of services, ranging from where you pack the boxes and move the stuff on and off the truck to where they come in and pack everything for you and do all the carrying and lifting. It all depends on now much you are willing to pay… or how much an employer or other entity is willing to pay. Are you moving locally or long-distance? If locally, you can hire various sorts of companies. If long-distance, you will probably deal with one of the big moving companies like Atlas or Mayflower or similar.
4k-5k miles.
Doing it long-distance like that, I could see that they might be concerned whether you are the owner of that stuff, or if they’ve been hired to unwittingly participate in a crime. But assuming you can convince them that you’re on the up and up, they should be willing to do this. You might call the storage location ahead of time to let them know to expect a moving van on that date.
But note that if you’re not involved in the move, they will likely move everything in your unit, including stuff you meant to throw out, as they’re not going to take the risk.
It’s likely that you’ll be able to find a moving company that will do this. However, for security and liability reasons, you probably either want to be on hand yourself or have a close friend or relative there when if this does occur.
If the movers break something or if something comes up missing,it will be your word against theirs that they are at fault for this. An since you didn’t witness them loading their truck, you may not have a case or a claim against them.
They’ll be happy to. Very happy to.
It’s certainly possible to move without packing or lifting anything. That’s how we have done our past few moves, and IMHO it’s the only way to go. The packing and unpacking service isn’t all that expensive in the context of the entire move (at least when you’re looking at moving an entire house worth of stuff a decent distance), and it makes things so much less stressful.
However, getting them to do it without you even being present is probably going to be difficult. I’ve always had to sign things checking off that all of the items were tagged and accounted for, etc. Maybe they’d let you assign that responsibility to someone else, but I’d be surprised if they’d be ok with no one at all being present.
Is your real goal to not be present, or to not have to do any work?
If I’m moving from X to Y, it costs me ~$500-600 to travel from Y to X to Y. I want to stay at Y and have the stuff brought to me.
My experience is that moving companies will do pretty much anything you want if you’re willing to pay.
However, FoundWaldo has a good point; they may balk at not having you (or someone you designate) at the origin point. I believe this is more likely to be an issue if you use one of the major national companies like United. They’ll want to tag everything and give you an inventory before the truck leaves. A smaller mom-and-pop type company not be as rigid about it.
PODS is not cheap. We were looking at them for a cross-country move, and they came in at about $11,500 for three containers.
We’re going with a regular moving company that’s charging $8500. We still have to box up the small stuff, but they’ll blanket wrap the furniture and load the truck.
The two good things about PODS for a do-it-yourself move is the roughly one-inch loading height - you can just walk in with the furniture, rather than having to shove it up a ramp. The other is that the container is a storage locker. For around $200 a month, they’ll be happy to park the container in one of their warehouses until you call up and ask them to deliver it.
Full-serve movers can also handle moving a car. Some companies have trucks with platforms to hold a car so it travels along with your stuff.
Last time I checked moving companies don’t use teleporters yet. They typically load it onto a truck and drive to the destination. 4k to 5k miles is going to take them a few days to get to Y. If your not driving your car, you can fly to Y and beat them there.
Where are you going to / from? 4k - 5k is further than any distance in the lower 48.
It seems unlikely any moving company would want the liability of packing up and moving items without the homeowner or his representative being there to supervise. Somebody has to sign the inventory list. The moving company has to protect themselves against claims over missing or damaged items.
What about hiring some college guys to load your pod, and shipping the car separately?
And that missing jewelry could buy a lot of Natty Light.
I meant pack and load under supervision, then pay PODS to ship it later, since the OP doesn’t want to have to load it himself.