Can you recommend a moving company to take me from NJ to Durham, NC?

September 4, 2016 1:17 PM

My husband and I are moving from northeast NJ to Durham next month. We are moving from a house to a house. Did you make a similar move, and if so would you recommend your moving company?

This will be our first time moving a whole house, and we're trying to figure out what moving companies to call for estimates. Of course when I look at reviews online, I see all sorts of horror stories. We are less concerned about getting the lowest price than we are about ending up with a bunch of damaged or lost things or getting scammed some other way. We have a small 1-story house, so not a ton of stuff, but it is probably more stuff than the average NYC apartment move.

If you've made a move like this, aside from moving company recommendations, any other details about your move, like the amount of time it took for your stuff to arrive, would be appreciated.

posted by bananana to Travel & Transportation (4 answers total)

I moved from Chapel Hill, NC to Central NJ a year ago and I used Whalen's Moving & Storage, a women-owned moving company. They were pretty professional, although I did have some trouble with scheduling it at a time that worked well for me (see below). Arranging the dates early would have helped, but I had other constraints that made that difficult.

I think it took about five days to arrive, but honestly - I defended my dissertation in NC on the same day that the movers arrived in NJ (I was lucky enough to have people able to wait for my stuff in NJ) - so it may have been a little shorter or longer. It wasn't more than a week, though.

Nothing got lost, nothing was broken - they packed it up themselves - and it worked out pretty well.
posted by k8lin at 3:55 PM on September 4, 2016

I moved from Newark to Tennessee in 2012. Since I have cats, I needed to drive anyway. I (*ahem* my dad, actually) rented a u-Haul and I hired a few guys in Newark to load the truck. I hired a few more folks in Tennessee to unload the truck. It was a relatively cheap move - the truck was the most expensive part and I had control over all my stuff the whole time. Nothing got broken, though, due to space issues, I did lose a few things... namely the cats' favorite toys. Bad planning on my part as far as truck size.

I had a two bedroom, fourth floor walk-up in Newark and moved to the same size apartment in TN. The whole move took two days for the driving part; the moving guys in TN came on the third day. It was one of the easiest moves I've ever done.
posted by LOLAttorney2009 at 5:27 PM on September 4, 2016

Back when I last moved (late 2011), I used the company Shea Moving, based out of NYC (Queens, I think). They were really great, but I'm not sure they'll do quite so long distance (they moved us up to SW Vermont and I had the sense that was a little far for them). It can't hurt to call them, though. I really can't say enough nice things about them. They weren't the absolute cheapest quote we got, but they were really reasonable.

Just generally, I would read the boards at Movingscam and see what they have to say. The site usually used to be totally independent. These days, I think they do take some ad money from some of the companies, but I think it's still mostly good advice.
posted by Betelgeuse at 7:34 PM on September 4, 2016

Response by poster: I ended up using Optimum Moving out of Elmwood Park, NJ. They did a great job - we didn't lose a thing. We packed just about everything ourselves, and they took care of everything else.

Betelgeuse, I've also used Shea Moving for moves in and around NYC. I really liked them, but I too got the impression our move would've been a bit much for them this time, both in terms of the amount of stuff we had and the distance. I would highly recommend them for local moves, though.
posted by bananana at 2:18 PM on October 23, 2016