OK, so remember back when I was all “I CANNOT DO THIS THERE ARE TOO MANY LOGISTICAL ISSUES YAAAAA“?
You guys were SO helpful. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And an extra-big thank-you to Angela, who wrote me to tell me that she’d done a cross-country move herself and had done a ton of research about moving companies, and had ultimately decided to go with U-Pack. I looked into the company, and: YES. Big yes.
How U-Pack works: you talk with a rep (the guy I talked to was SUPER nice and helpful) and come up with an estimate of how much trailer space you’ll need (you only pay for the space that you actually use). On a set date, they drop off a trailer in your driveway, and you have three business days to pack it yourself in whatever way suits you. (We hired movers from Thumbtack to come over and help us load in and out, but if you want to pack yourself up the site has a ton of information on the best packing strategies, the supplies that you’ll need, et cetera.) Then they drive the trailer to your new city, store it for a bit if you’re not ready to move in, then leave it in your new driveway, and you unload it. Done.
So let’s break it down:
- Cost-Effectiveness. I got an online quote from the company and discovered that it came out to about half the cost of what a standard move would be (not including hiring the movers to load in and load out, but that should only be a couple of hundred dollars on each end – it was a bit more for us because we have a piano, and pianos are pricey to pack and load). If you go over your predetermined space allocation (we asked for 17 feet and ended up using 20), you just pay a little extra for each additional foot of space.
- Transparency. A major issue I’ve had with movers in the past is that all of a sudden extra costs are sprung on you (“Oh, no, that’s not two flights of stairs; there’s a landing in the middle so we’re counting it as four,” etc etc), and with this system you get handed a breakdown of all the costs at dropoff. I enjoy surprises generally, but not when it comes to moving. Let’s keep it straightforward and boring, please.
- Reliability. I’ve been super impressed by the company’s responsiveness. Follow-up calls, emails, check-ins, an on-time trailer delivery, an on-time pickup.
- Security. Nobody else’s personal property gets packed in with yours – your property is separated from the remainder of the trailer with a wall, and the rest is filled with freight, so you don’t have to worry about, like, some random guy’s moth collection getting into your wardrobe boxes.
Oh, and the best part: you have a trailer sitting there empty in your driveway for a bit, before you actually start packing it. You know what’s really fun to play in?
TRAILERS.
P.S. Some helpful moving-related links:
