By the end of this month I'll be moving to Austin, and am looking for advice on how to do it. All my previous moves have been across the city only, never anything like this. I am planning on packing things myself, as this is a good excuse to slim down what I keep around. I am moving into a friends place for a few months so I can get my job started first before worrying about a new living situation as well.

Does anyone have any experience with different moving companies or rental places? I may end up driving down myself, or just driving my car, not real sure yet. I think one of the biggest hassles will be the motorcycle, since furniture wise, I am only taking a kitchen and dining room table. The couch I have is on its last legs and will be replaced after the move.

I haven't done it myself but I know I wouldn't hire a moving company. There has been too many local news expose segments about people getting ripped off by moving companies.

$0.02 - With the right truck you can carry all that and pull a car trailer.

You are correct in that it is time to be ruthless about what to keep.

By the way I may be remembering wrong but didn't you just get done building a house ?

I've done two cross-country moves since graduating college. The first one, going to grad school, was on a tight budget. I sold all of my furniture, drove the car, and shipped everything else UPS "book rate". Amazingly enough, everything came through (with fragile-ish stuff in the car).

The second time, was starting my "real" job, and I had an actual relocation budget. Still, I sold all of my furniture. The biggest thing left, aside from the car, was a 27" TV set. I used a commercial mover. They came in, packed everything in a few hours, and were gone. They later showed up at my new place and dropped off a million boxes. (Note to self: next time, run around with a marking pen to label every box as it's being packed.) The only damage, in that move, was a CD player that gave up the ghost. They gave me some grief about it being possibly busted before they packed it and they cannot be responsible for yadda yadda. How much stink are you going to make over a 5-disc CD changer that you can replace for $150?

Commercial movers, assuming they're within your budget, really can do a good job. The trick is finding one you're willing to trust. Keep in mind that any legit moving company will send out somebody to look your place over and give you a quote. Feel free to get multiple quotes and, in this modern Internet world, do some searching for happy / unhappy customers. Or, just go old school and ask around.

people getting ripped off by moving companies.

No way. It couldn't happen. Could it?

When SWMBO made the move from California to Alaska, she hired an apparently reputable company to do the move. They came by her place, took a quick look around told here it would cost somewhere around $3800.

Then a few weeks later, the movers showed up, started packing things into boxes, and "Golly, some of this stuff is a lot heavier than we thought. It'll probably cost you more like $6,000." Swallow hard, there just is no TIME to change things -- we're on the way to the empeg meet in the Netherlands in just a few days, so... what can we do?

Now we're in New York, getting ready to catch the plane to Europe the next morning, and we get a phone call. "We have everything all packed and in our warehouse, we've weighed it, and the cost will be just over $12,000." Much argument and loud voices ensued -- but there was nothing to be done -- it really did weigh that much, and no moving company would have moved that much to Alaska for anything less. For $2500, they would have put it all back in the condominium. Not an option, it was being renovated preparatory to being rented.

Finally the stuff arrived in Alaska. Actually, it got there before we did. Well, some of it arrived, anyway. By our rough calculations, there was about $10,000 worth of items that somehow got lost along the way. And by the most amazing coincidence, without exception every single item that got lost was valuable, untraceable, and easily salable. Things like a 200-disk CD collection, a $400 sleeping bag, a computer, a stereo system, some expensive winter clothes, you get the idea.

She had $3000 damage/loss insurance on the lot, never imagining they could be such thieving bastards. And they are fighting tooth and nail against paying that. She will be back in California next week, and I'm hoping there is some way to get someone thrown in jail.

Based on that experience, I think if I ever move, I'll have a huge garage sale before I go, and when I move I'll have my car, the clothes on my back, and a credit card. Period.

tanstaafl.

It looks like Budget and U-Haul are right about the same price on a 24` truck, but U-Haul turns out to be $150ish cheeper for the 17` trucks. As I get things packed, I should have a better idea of what size truck I would need. The tables both tear down, so they shouldn't be all that big of a deal.

And my house is pretty new, it was completed in the summer of 2003. It wasn't exactly built for me, was just a newly built house for sale by the builder. The nice thing is that it has gone up in value a decent amount, so I will make some money off of it even though I haven't even been in it 3 years. The house is not enough to hold me here though, because my local job search has not gone well. And being that the new job is in the game industry, it would take a lot for me to cancel the offer now.

Wow.

Doug, I knew the move was bad, but I didn't know it had been THAT bad.

You and Jean have my sympathies.

Congrats on getting away from your evil neighbor. Good luck with the move.

Did that situation ever get resolved?

You can get a "binding" estimate. That way they cannot charge you more than what they guess your stuff will weigh. Of couse this esimate will be a bit higher than if you had requested a non-binding esimate, but worth it in my opinion. When they do the estimate follow them through your house to make sure the "tag" every thing you are brining with you, and nothing you are not. For moves across state lines there are a bunch of federal rules they must follow, so in theory your chances of getting ripped off are less than that of a "cross-town" move. Ask about boxes, some will bring you boxes to pack your stuff free of any extra charges, some will direct you to the back of a local store to grab some used ones...

EDIT: here is a guide

Monstermoving Mover Rights Guide (PDF)

Wow and Yikes in the same breath! That's a grand-daddy of a horror story!
I have another to add to it, but mine wasn't as bad- more like a warning.
I moved from Milwaukee to the SF Bay Area and hired a company to move the stuff.
Not much furniture, mostly boxes and boxes of stuff.
Here comes the warning- the initial quote was based on volume. They asked "Is this a one-room apartment?"
My thinking was, "yeah, all this stuff I'll be leaving in the garage for you to pick up, so, yeah, it's not a large volume."
After they picked up and during delivery a new price came through based on weight!! Boxes of books are a lot more dense than a kitchen table.
In the end I paid about double what they initially quoted. I got every single piece of stuff, though, so I'm very happy for that.
Since I was moving for work, they agreed to pay for it- but I gave them the initial quote and was stuck with the balance... hmmph.

Make sure to check out movingscam.com.
It was created just for people like you.

Now for my brief moving story. Last move I made, the company that hired me paid for the move and contracted the movers for me. (This was back during the boom years, so the company even gave me an extra cash bonus to pay for the taxes that I would have to pay because they were "giving" me the moving. (And, yes, it was calculated to be enough to cover the taxes on itself, as well.))

Sounds pretty simple and painless, right?

Well, basically it was.

They sent over an "estimator" to walk through my house and figure out how much room they would need. (They used GIANT trucks which were packed with stuff from multiple houses with separators between.) I told him I had two cars plus everything else in the house.

He took a bunch of notes, made some calculations, and left.

A few days later....

The movers stormed in, packed everything, labelled the boxes by which room they were from, and loaded it.

Next week, they showed up at my new house, several thousand miles away, and delivered my car to my temporary housing. A month later (after I found a house), I called them and they came by and unloaded the boxes inside there.

No muss, no fuss, no bother.

There were just a couple of silly things and one annoying thing.

The silly thing: they get paid per box, and they get in trouble if they break anything. So there were a (very) few loose random things (like a shoe or a CD) that they carefully wrapped in tons of paper and put in its very own box.
I actually think they do a couple of these to everybody just as a standard little joke to amuse you when you are unpacking.

The annoying thing. The Estimator badly mis-estimated how much room all my bookcases full of books would take and that my closets were packed.

As the movers finished up the inside, I asked them "so which car do you want to load first?" They looked at each other with consternation for a minute and said, "You had much more stuff than we were told. The truck is full. We only have room for one car."

So I ended up having to leave the Jeep behind!

The only reason this didn't really upset me was that I knew a place to store it, and that I was going to visit the old town frequently over the next year, and this would save on rental cars. And I had therefore considered not moving the Jeep anyway.

Had that not been the case, I'm not sure what would have happened. I think they would have had to summon an additional truck just for the 2nd vehicle, I would have gotten it a month or two later, and someone might have gotten fired for screwing up so badly.

As it was, my moving experience was easy and painless.
(Except for having to unpack all the damn boxes later!)

Anyway, be sure to check out the MovingScam link.

P.S. Have a great time in Austin. It's a very fun town. Doubly so if you are single!

Well, the evil neighbor hasn't said anything to me since last year, so I guess he is either content or sitting there getting more and more mad about something. I haven't even thought about it much, since I had no intent on letting him bother me.

As far as moving, I think I am going to just go with the rental truck solution. I have enough friends to help pack it if needed, and it looks like for my move, I'll have 4-5 days with the truck included in the price. That gives me enough time to have it loaded, drive down over two days, then unload it. This way, I am fully responsible for all my stuff, and make out with a decent bonus for starting the job, as they are paying me a flat amount for relocation.

I've been on vacation so I"m late to this thread, but I'll just chip in and say that I had a terrible experience with Allied, not so much with broken stuff (though there was some of that) but more along the lines of them moving the schedule up a day, not showing up, and then telling us it was our fault.

Also, when you movie to Texas you are required to choose between Ford, Chevy, or Dodge trucks (Toyota is not a viable option). You must have an allegience to one of these or you'll be in trouble . . .

Not to mention the strict requirement of having a gunrack in the back window.