Moving Companies

July 17, 2004 10:58 AM

Can anyone recommend a good moving company for moving a one-bedroom apartment (let's say 400 cubic ft. of stuff to move) and a four-door car from Florida to California?
posted by grrarrgh00 to shopping (8 comments total)

My first advice is to make a general inventory of everything you can't get into your car. Assign aproximate value to your sofa, bed, etc, and make a total. You can use Craigslist.org's for-sale boards for this purpose. Commit to spending no more than that amount on moving.

If you're like me, there's a good chance that it would actually be cheaper to just give all your stuff away and buy new stuff when you get to Cali. Cross-country moving is very expensive.

Welcome to the west!
posted by squirrel at 11:44 AM on July 17, 2004

Thank you!

This is one of my problems: I have all new furniture that it would pain me to get rid of. Much of it came as graduation gifts. Really the only thing keeping me from just being able to drive my car over there with most of my stuff is my big, beautiful, expensive, redonkulous couch. I can disassemble and ship the dinette set, the etagiere, etc. I have no bedroom set; just a mattress and box-spring.

So it's basically the two things, the couch and the car, that cause me agita.
posted by grrarrgh00 at 12:09 PM on July 17, 2004

I've used a couple-few of the various "you-pack-we-drive" services out there, and would do it again in a heartbeat. I *think* I used ABF, but wouldn't bet my life on it.

Then just drive yourself in your car. Stop to see stuff on the way. If you're driving through Las Cruces, NM, stop for a meal at La Posta de Mesilla.

Moving a fairly fully-packed 2-bedroom house (with the standard academic's shitload of books), about half a truck, from NC to TX cost about $1200.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:00 PM on July 17, 2004

So it's basically the two things, the couch and the car, that cause me agita.

Okay, well I really didn't want to go there, but you raise the couch conumdrum and I must reveal my couch karma wisdom:

Leave the couch. The excellence of the couch you leave for someone is in proportion with that of the couch that will come into your life. Let value flow.
posted by squirrel at 1:35 PM on July 17, 2004

It's not cheap and it's not fast, but if you gotta keep the stuff, try Craters and Freighters. They did a perfectly lovely job packing and shipping a bedroom set, including fragile mirror, from Florida to Maine.
posted by JanetLand at 1:44 PM on July 17, 2004

As another person who's made this move, i'll point you to the "Black List" a listing of all the disreputable moving companies if they ever cross your path. On my last trip here we used Mayflower and they ended up being a good 2 weeks late with our things.

And if you thought the drivers were bad in Florida, you might want to rethink the move, it's twice as bad here in California.
posted by Derek at 1:49 AM on July 18, 2004

U-Haul and a car trailer. :-) If you need help packing, call local moving companies til you find one that has spare labor lounging around the day you have to pack.
posted by baylink at 11:06 AM on July 18, 2004

You'll almost certainly find one of the you-pack-we-drive companies to be cheaper than a u-haul and trailer once you factor in buying *lots* of gas and having to stay another night or two on the road (u-hauls do 60 if you're lucky; your car will be doing 75--80 without much fear of tickets).

If you don't have that-that much stuff apart from the couch, and there's more than one person in your household, you might also think about just outright buying an old pickup, being your own little convoy, and selling the pickup when you get where you're going.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:15 PM on July 18, 2004