Safest affordable way to move from Toronto to Vancouver?

July 3, 2018 8:39 AM

We're moving our largish 1 bedroom apartment's worth of stuff (furniture, dishes, books, decor) at the end of August. Our first pick would be to hire a moving company. But is there any reputable moving company under the sun? Every company has a slew of horror stories: broken and lost stuff, extortionist price hikes or inflated weight claims, massive delays. Do you know of any affordable company that can be trusted, or a company that's pricier but more reliable? Or, would it be best to just do the packing, driving, and gas-buying ourselves in a UHaul?
posted by Beardman to Travel & Transportation (8 answers total)

I would look to the name-brand movers who do corporate moves. They have a reputation to protect because of the possibility of repeat moves with the same corporate client. I used Tippet-Richardson for an in-town move for precisely that reason -- they were IBM's mover of choice for corporate transfers -- and they did not charge over the estimated amounts or even attempt to reconsider the estimated amounts. It was a high estimate, but they stuck with it.

I've had many friends who did in-town moves with ATMS and speak very highly of them, as well, but I don't know how much they do long-distance moves.

FWIW, some broken stuff is almost inevitable in a major move -- it's about what they're willing to do about it that matters.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:11 AM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

+1 for T.R. ^
I’ve used them for moves between London/Toronto/Brantford, and they’ve been great.
posted by whowearsthepants at 9:53 AM on July 3, 2018

I used Tippet-Richardson to move a household from Vancouver to Tokyo, and back again a couple of years later. They were quite professional, they stuck to their budget, their budget was clearly laid out and easily understood, and we had no issues at all with them.
posted by V'Ger at 9:54 AM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Get a really good estimate. My family member paid more than $3k to move a small amount of furniture from Toronto to Vancouver...he could have purchased all new for not much more.
posted by shockpoppet at 11:57 AM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

As mentioned above, for any bulky furniture that's not rare/vintage, it'll be cheaper to toss it than to move it by a decent pro for a long haul.
posted by ovvl at 2:24 PM on July 3, 2018

Response by poster: I just got a quote from Tippet-Richardson and it was $10,000. Sadly a lot of our furniture is vintage, but we may just have to liquidate it and settle for towing a trailer of boxes.
posted by Beardman at 3:46 PM on July 3, 2018

I used Centennial Movers last summer to move my stuff from storage in Montreal to Banff AB, so a similar distance, I did a lot of research in advance and rule of thumb seemed to be to budget 2x whatever the quote is. I feel like we lost some stuff because we weren't there to audit what went on/off the truck (it was in storage for 10 years) but besides that it was fine. Purge as much as you can before hand and takes pics before and inventory of items before as well.
posted by furtive at 8:33 PM on July 3, 2018

I got a quote for $5k from Tippet-Richardson 5 years ago when I moved back to the Vancouver area from Toronto (the Annex). Which was out of the question for me at the time but might not be so for you. I ended up giving away or throwing out nearly all my furniture, but I did manage to ship home an Xserve, a 42" TV and about 40 boxes of shit via Greyhound ground delivery.

If you can wait a couple of extra weeks for most of your non-furniture, and part with the furniture itself, I highly recommend it. Saved at least $2-3k on everything this way, and had I purged more I'd saved more too. Ended up sacrificing two large HDDs however (wasn't thinking when I packed them instead of taking them with me on the plane) but all told if I had to do so again I would in a heartbeat.
posted by northtwilight at 10:18 PM on July 4, 2018