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I'm currently located in Milwaukee, WI. My partner is probably getting an offer for OHSU in Portland for a PhD program, so we're potentially staring down the barrel of packing up and moving across the country come probably late May. She's probably going to start end of June. Her current lease is up June 1, and I'm on a month to month, so we'd aim to get there right around the beginning of the month. Stuff-wise we'd be looking at the equivalent of a 2 or 3br apartment move. Bed, couple TVs, couch, chairs, lots of boxes of books, couple desks, etc. It looks like our options (aside from comedy SELL EVERYTHING! option) are: 1) Rent a bigass truck, fill it ourselves with our stuff, tow my car behind it (or have 1 person drive the car and 1 person drive the truck). The big cons I see are the whole "driving a big loving truck cross-country" thing, gas costs probably being outrageous, and it probably not the most comfy route to go with multiple hotel stops, etc. 2) Use one of the various companies that'll drop you off a big storage container(s), fill those ourselves, have them delivered on X date, drive my car out to Portland and meet it there. 3) Use a company, have *them* load and unload and drive the truck, drive my car. Does anyone have any experience with the above methods, or suggestions, or recommendations for companies to look into (or to avoid at all costs)?
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Mar 8, 2019 05:28
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| # ? May 3, 2024 07:00 |
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I drove a Uhaul (Penske, actually), from Chicago to Seattle in the dead of winter across I-80. It was significantly cheaper than option #2 and #3. If you have too much stuff you don't want to get rid of, you are essentially stuck with option 1. PM me if you want more details on the route, but you are looking at around $2k. Having a company do it is at least triple that. Driving a truck isn't that bad, try to sell some stuff so you are driving the smallest or 2nd smallest truck, its very similar to driving a car. Can you sell your car? Driving two vehicles is a lot of gas. You can tow the car, but its probably easier to sell it and buy a car in Portland. You should really plan on driving in the spring or summer, you do not want to do I-80 in the winter if at all possible. Other then that, its pretty boring, nothing too crazy on the route, except for Eastern Oregon and maybe Wyoming. Very easily doable .
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Mar 8, 2019 07:31
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I've done option 2 (LA to Boston) using a PODS service after selling both cars, which was nice cuz I just hopped on a plane and all my stuff showed up about a week later. I've also done option 1 (Boston to Lansing), towing my car behind the moving truck. It was a lot of gas, yes. I don't remember how much. The driving itself was alright. A little slower than I'm used to, and it's hard not to get mildly annoyed at other drivers treating you as an obstacle to overcome. The only other thing that was a pain in the rear end was parking at the hotel. Ended up having to park horizontally across like four spaces, and we were lucky the lot wasn't full. A few things to note: 1) Once the car is attached to the truck, consider it permanent until you get where you're going. You don't want to mess around with re-attaching the towing thing if you feel like you need to detach it for parking reasons or something like that. 2) Don't count on being able to back up any considerable distance. That poo poo is a challenge and it seems like no matter what you do, the towed car is going to end up going the wrong direction. Think carefully about where you're going when you stop for gas and such. We had to skip a gas stop because I accidentally drove past the pump, and it was impossible to back up or turn around. The next gas stop was closed, and we came very close to running out of gas. 3) This is very important: research bridges on your route ahead of time. It's very easy to ignore the height warnings, and you can break all your poo poo and owe the truck company a lot of money if you run into a bridge. I only know of two bridges that are too low for box trucks (one of them is in Boston, and students hit it all the time), but there might be more. I'm happy to answer any other specific questions you might have about my experiences.
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Mar 8, 2019 18:35
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Oh, I did think of one more thing. For the PODS service, it was going to cost like $3,000 to ship from San Luis Obispo to Boston. We almost gave up on the idea, but on a whim we checked the price from LA to Boston, and it was like $1,500. So we ended up driving a moving truck to LA, and loading up a PODS container there. So, if you get a PODS quote that's too high, check the price from nearby areas.
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Mar 8, 2019 18:36
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I did a variation of #1 - my then-partner loaded up their car with as much of our stuff as would fit into it, and drove from Nova Scotia to Victoria with one of our roommates. Then I flew in with more of our stuff and our cat. I'd recommend getting a POD or a Ucrate or something, or see if you can fit your stuff into a uhaul trailer. Trying to hitch the car up behind the moving van and then driving with it like that is going to be difficult.
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Mar 8, 2019 21:59
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ExplodingChef posted:I'm currently located in Milwaukee, WI. My partner is probably getting an offer for OHSU in Portland for a PhD program, so we're potentially staring down the barrel of packing up and moving across the country come probably late May. She's probably going to start end of June. Her current lease is up June 1, and I'm on a month to month, so we'd aim to get there right around the beginning of the month. How often do you actually read the books you have? How nice is your couch/table/chairs/desk? How old/nice is your bed? How nice are the TVs? You can often buy new stuff for a price comparable to--or for not much more than--shipping your old stuff. I moved from California to Seattle in a 1990 Honda Civic. Getting rid of my books was the loving BEST THING I DID. Especially if you're moving to the Pacific Northwest, where you're virtually guaranteed to move again in the next year or two, and again in the next few years after that. Don't plan just for this move, plan for the next three.
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Mar 8, 2019 22:17
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I chose #3 moving from Cinci to SF (company more or less paying for it). They gave me a 22 day delivery window and actually delivered a day late, most likely because I called on the last day to complain that they weren't there yet. Still it was pretty chill on my end. Some people who know wtf they were doing showed up and packed my whole place up, then I flew to SF and waited for them to drop it all off. The only work I did was unpacking.
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Mar 10, 2019 04:23
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Do you have a newish TV? If not, sell the TVs and get a new one. Sell or donate any books that don't have some great meaning. Actually, just sell everything other than the stuff that isn't replaceable.
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Mar 11, 2019 06:27
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I made a similar move from Illinois to Seattle and I sold all my poo poo and just drove over in a car with me and my girlfriend's clothes and whatever else we packed in the car. It worked out well.
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Mar 17, 2019 00:01
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What kind of car are you driving? If it's modern and reliable it should be able to tow something like this: https://www.uhaul.com/Trailers/5x10-Cargo-Trailer-Rental/MV/ Then you could just pare your holdings down to the two good pieces of furniture, essential stuff, most of the books, etc, and sell everything else. Just be prepared to drive slower and don't gun the engine on uphills.
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Mar 17, 2019 00:32
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On the topic of sell everything, what's the best way to deal with furniture? Best sites to try offloading that? I'm not in any particular rush, but I see myself moving again around the end of the year. I'd consider just throwing / giving my stuff away if it comes down to it, but it's nicer than the typical IKEA junk so I'd hope to either keep or get something back on some of it. I'd also say throw out all the stuff you can easily replace or doesn't carry any value. When I did my first big move I packed all my liquor, kitchen supplies, and a bunch of other junk I really didn't need. All the little things I could have replaced wound up taking the most space in packing and some of them I'd be glad to just have tossed in retrospect. I ended up doing U-Haul from LA to Seattle but didn't have to pay for it or drive it myself, so I can't speak to that. From what my roommate said it was a few hundred bucks worth of gas but it still wound up being cheaper, faster, and more flexible than alternative options. If you're disassembling a bunch of wooden furniture you might want to get some wood filler / wood glue, not to mention wrapping it fairly aggressively.
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Mar 17, 2019 00:40
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I've had to move cross country several times and doing option 1 isn't terrible but it is true that there are some costs and to go from WI to WA is going to take at least 3 or more days just to do the driving (assuming you do roughly 8-9 hrs a day with just one person driving). Add at least a day to load and a day to unload, you're looking at 5 days of rental minimum, but realistically you might want to plan for renting at least 7 days. Depending on the size of truck, you're probably going to get around 9-10 mpg to help you budget for fuel costs you can google the mileage and do the math to get a rough gas budget. I'm guessing probably in the $500-800 range for gas costs. For towing a car, if you have a awd vehicle, you'll need to use a car carrier which puts the whole car on a flatbed trailer as opposed to just front wheels like a dolly. One of the things I would recommend is packing your car with the majority of the fast grab items like bedding, clothing, etc. I have a wagon, so I put all my main things like my desktop, clothes, and basics...while I loaded the rest of my stuff in the truck. Once everything was loaded in the truck, I then attached the car carrier, then loaded the car. It can be hard to attach the carrier if you have the vehicle already loaded on there. Another thing to be aware of is depending on your state's licenses...make sure you're under the vehicle weight that your license allows. Rental companies often don't check that you meet this requirement and most basic licenses only allow for the smallest or second smallest size of box truck before you exceed the weight. Anything larger than that and you will need a CDL for larger weight. Make sure you check your state's allotments before you rent.
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Mar 17, 2019 03:02
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I've only made a big move twice, the first time was from Portland to southern Oregon, which was only a 5 hour drive so we made a weekend trip about 6 weeks ahead and scouted out the town, and figured out where we wanted to live and rented the place ahead of time. If you can afford it, I'd suggest that you fly out and do this once it's official that you're moving. Second move was from southern Oregon to Denver, and we had friends here with a guest room so we did the truck rental with our car on a trailer and only had one overnight in SLC. Hotel parking is a nightmare so I was glad we only did it once. When we got to Denver we spent a week with the friends while we found a place to live and just kept all our crap in the truck for the whole week. It was actually pretty risky now that I think about it. My ex had been accepted to college but other than that we had zero plan. Just put poo poo in a truck and go. We had no choice but to do the cheapest option, and I love driving and road trips so it worked out. Do not drive separately because you'll both be fatigued with no way to trade off driving duties or sleep. Do you have any friends there or knowledge of the town? If not I'd suggest going to the Portland thread in YCS and asking around about where to live.
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Mar 17, 2019 16:20
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I had movers do my stuff when I moved from Ontario to rural Cape Breton and drove myself out. It was insanely expensive and if work didn’t cover a portion of it I dont know if I would have even bothered. Movers are very efficient and if you have kids it’s worth it. If you are just moving as adults I would try to do it on your own. Any truck you don’t need a special license for takes about 15 minutes to get used to.
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Mar 18, 2019 23:23
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I agree with the goon that said to sell most of your stuff. I've lived in Portland for the past 8 years and lived in a new place once a year on average. It's relaxing to have less stuff too.
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Apr 2, 2019 02:23
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A moving company (truck or pods) is going to be expensive for a cross-country trip (think 1-2 grand for a moving truck or 2-3+ grand for a pod not counting the costs with the actual driving and rest stops). I think the cheapest pod service is U-Haul's UBox which is like half the cost of the other pod companies. I did my real big move from Texas to Washingston state by myself. Left my furniture to my roommate and fit anything I could on my 4-door sedan. Most of my stuff is Ikea-tier so it was a no brainer to leave them behind.
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Apr 26, 2019 12:20
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I'm thinking of moving from Alberta to Manitoba this summer and I've been wondering how best to do it, too. I have some antique furniture my parents gave me that I will not sell. I have a bed that was very expensive and is specialized for chronic pain. I also have 2 cats. I have no idea how to make this work efficiently. Also how do you find an apartment when you live 2 provinces away? I am heading out there to visit a friend for a week in June, so I can scope some places out, but that's a narrow window to find a place, sign a leave, give notice at my job and with my landlord and then move.
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May 26, 2019 01:39
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May 26, 2019 12:46
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