Moving (back) to Canada, need help with logistics

February 25, 2020 3:17 PM

After thinking about it for years, my family (myself, my spouse and our two kids) is moving to Canada this summer. It looks like moving our stuff is going to be a big hassle. Looking for advice on logistics, moving companies, etc.

First off, this question is not about the immigration details: the two kids and I are citizens, and we've already applied for permanent residency for my spouse. Assume that end of things is covered. This is strictly about moving our belongings.

We're moving from southern California to southwestern Ontario, most likely in early August. We have a three-bedroom apartment. We're not hoarders by any stretch of the imagination, but we have a fair amount of stuff accumulated over a decade together. We're going to ditch our couches, living room furniture, and bookshelves, but want to bring our beds (I am aware that they need to be cleaned/fumigated before bringing them to Canada).

I started looking into moving companies, requested quotes from a few different places, and got overwhelmed. The estimates varied pretty widely (between $3k and $8k) and it wasn't clear what services were included. I also found some "moving concierge" services who coordinate everything for you, but I assume that's pretty expensive.

I do not want to rent a large truck and drive it across the country myself, so I guess that means using some kind of shipping/moving service. We do have a place to move into when we get there (my parents' house) so finding housing is not an issue.

What I'm looking for:

1. Recommendations for how to move our belongings (specific companies would be great, but general advice also would be helpful).
2. Is it possible to build in some time between shipping the stuff and picking it up? We'd like to make a trip of it, stopping to camp, visit friends along the way, etc.
3. Anything else I should be considering that I'm not thinking of.

Sorry this is not very focused. I'm thrilled to be moving back to Canada, but I'm feeling overwhelmed by the logistics (and the expense!) of moving, so any advice to get me started would be much appreciated.

posted by number9dream to Travel & Transportation (9 answers total)

When we did this the opposite way (Montreal to Santa Cruz) the cheapest thing we found for cross border moving was a U-Haul pod (you might need more than one; we threw most of our stuff out because that was seriously way cheaper). You fill it and trailer it to a uhaul station and then they put it on a truck and eventually it finds its way to you. I don’t know about storage on the other end.
You need to fill out a manifest and there are some restricted items. The UHaul people went through that with us and it was fairly straightforward.
posted by andreapandrea at 3:24 PM on February 25, 2020

We had professional movers doing this in the opposite direction. Yes, it's a lot of money but you get what you pay for. When we did it there was moving time and storage included in the cost so we took 3-ish weeks to do the drive, caping along the way and then we had our house closing get hung up for a couple weeks. So it's definitely possible to arrange for the moving company to hold the stuff for a while for you.

Also, the easiest way to move stuff is to not move stuff so you can start getting rid of stuff anytime.
posted by GuyZero at 3:52 PM on February 25, 2020

I moved back to Canada. I used professional movers, had them pack and unpack (so insurance would cover any damage) and paid for storage when our stuff made it to Canada before we had a place to move in to. I had to complete an inventory of the stuff I was moving back and had to make a visit to customs to sign for my goods. I needed to advise the Canada Revenue Agency that I was no longer a non-resident. I had to go through a lot of rigamarole to get my husband (to whom I had been married for 10 years) permanent resident status. And I had to start over building a credit rating in Canada because I’d been gone such a long time it was as if I had never even had a credit card before.
posted by strasbourg at 4:05 PM on February 25, 2020 [3 favorites]

If you're paying for the move yourself, there is honestly very little that you own that it would not be cheaper and less hassle to sell where you are now and re-purchase once you've settled in Canada. Long distance cross-border moves are extremely expensive, even more so if you opt for white glove (they pack/unpack). It also sounds like you'll have a lot less space when you land in Canada -- going from 3br to (a subset?) of your parents house? Honestly I'd only take the clothes (and a subset of those), personal mementos / irreplaceables, and high value/lightweight items like electronics. Crate it all up and send it by UPS or whatever.

If you can move to another country without hiring a moving company or renting a truck, you win at life. There will be so much else shit to deal with that logistics for STUFF should be something you can just forget about.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:57 PM on February 25, 2020 [3 favorites]

I moved to Montreal (and back to the US) once. Granted, I was a single person, but I loaded everything up on a U-Haul truck and drove it across the border. They stopped me and searched the truck both ways, but it was no big deal. (Obviously, if you go this way, be sure to follow all laws/procedures!)

So, if it were me, I think I'd hire movers on either end to load/unload the U-Haul. It will probably end up costing you on the low end of the estimates ($3-5K, depending on stairs, amount of stuff, etc. The U-Haul truck itself will be kinda pricey...haven't done a pod, but that sounds promising if timing isn't a big issue.)

But if you do go with professional movers, which would definitely be easier, my experience says do NOT skimp and go with the cheapest estimate. Use movers with ONLY impeccable reviews, and preferably talk to someone who has actually used them. Moving companies vary DRASTICALLY in their quality, the way they deal with tallying up the final bill, etc.
posted by nosila at 6:48 AM on February 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I appreciate that not moving stuff is easier and cheaper than moving stuff. That is not the question that I'm asking here, though. There is stuff that needs to be moved: handmade furniture, family heirlooms, wedding gifts, etc. We are paring down as much as possible, but we will be moving some things. I am asking for help about logistics of moving the things that have to be moved, not advice about not moving things. Thanks, folks.
posted by number9dream at 8:52 AM on February 26, 2020

Your situation is pretty unique and therefore the shipping options are going to be custom to your situation as well.

For reference, a custom LTL trailer rental for direct pickup (no loading), transport, fuel, surcharge, driver / operator time, and finally delivery (no unloading), for us, for two days travel to-from venue, costs our company approximately 6,000-8,000 for the whole shipment.

The kilometres aren't really the issue, it's more the driver's hours, trailer/truck rental or operating costs, fuel surcharges, and mostly, finding an owner/operator who is working freelance or not tied down to a transportation broker or company.

So, that's for inter-provincial trucking of road-cased, commercial gear in a 53' truck, where we provide truck loaders and unloaders at departure/receiving.

Add in the cross-border cartage requirement and the extreme long distance, and suddenly your options evaporate at the consumer level.

It's here that you probably need to look at Allied, U-Haul, or find a private LTL (less-than-full load) cartage company that would be willing to do your move, which would probably be a lot more headache and a lot more $, for companies that are more comfortable working with business customers.

I'd plan for $15,000 CDN to move cross-border, and I wouldn't be surprised by a $5,000 swing either way...
posted by Khazk at 11:03 AM on February 26, 2020

My grandmother was a Canadian citizen who took her furniture down and resided in Maryland with her daughter on a visitor's visa that she renewed during yearly trips to her doctors Toronto. After she passed my mother wanted her furniture and I got send down in a rental truck to drive it back. We would not have been able to bring it across the border because importing "valuable" antiques, but my aunt had gotten an itemized list notarized that swore that the furniture had originally come from Canada. Otherwise there would have seized the cargo and eventually hit us with hefty duties to release it.

So if you are bringing heirlooms home that might be considered valuable you may want to do some version of what we did.

I used to work for a moving company. The insurance for damage they provided was laughable, even when you paid extra for full replacement coverage. I think the best they provided was 30c a pound. If you use a moving company look closely at what their insurance covers. Of course there is no point insuring heirlooms as they are irreplaceable.

I'm afraid my advice has probably just added more complications to your situation.

One possibility might be to get the stuff shipped to the other side of the border from where you will be living in Ontario and pay for warehouse storage there, and then drive back across yourself in a rented cube van to retrieve it from the US side of the border. This means that you wouldn't need to hire a moving company licensed to cross the border. Californian moving companies are not going to have a lot of experience shipping things to the Canada, but a company in Michigan might and they might be able to take over the shipping for you if renting cube van is not an option.
posted by Jane the Brown at 12:12 PM on February 26, 2020

We moved from Texas to Montreal about three years ago and we used North American van lines. They gave us a moving coordinator at their local affiliate that we spoke to on the phone to plan everything and it was very efficient. They picked up our stuff, took it to their storage facility where it was combined with other loads heading north, and then brought it all together once they had enough stuff to justify making the trip. We pared down to essentially a 1br apartment, with a latex queen mattress/boxspring, TV and kitchen table and chairs our only furniture, plus many boxes. (They wanted $300 to pack the TV in a special box until they learned I'd saved the original box it had come in, then they were willing to pack it in that.) The total was around $5k USD. Theirs was the mid-range quote we received, between 3K and 8K, but I don't remember the other companies we queried. They did all the packing included in that price and it was done well--nothing broke. It took about 4 weeks to get our stuff up here.

They lost one of our boxes and a part to a spinning book rack that was not given its own sticker on the packing manifest. (All the parts were supposed to be taped together but they were not.) We got the box back, shipped to us for free, after I reported it and they happened to find it on one of their trucks, but the book rack part we never got back and they wouldn't pay to replace the rack (which was useless without the missing piece) because it hadn't been marked as being in separate pieces of the manifest. Double and triple check your packing manifest and make sure that every box and everything that can't be boxed has a numbered sticker on it that's on the manifest. I was not vigilant enough about it, but despite that I'd say our move with them went as well as we'd hoped and North American was good.
posted by kittensyay at 12:16 PM on February 26, 2020 [2 favorites]