What's the best way to move 10-15 large-ish boxes?

May 24, 2019 8:03 PM

I need to move 10-15 boxes to several states away. What's the best way?

It's mostly clothes and household goods, linens, sports stuff, only one box has books/heavy stuff ... but a few of the boxes are pretty large dimensionally. Think LG and XL boxes from U-Haul. There's no furniture, just boxes. Delivery can take a week or more, no hurry. I'm thinking my choice is either the smallest PODS or just take them all to UPS or FedEx ... would one of those be obviously cheaper? Bonus Questions: Which is cheaper, FedEx Ground or UPS? Or am I missing some other, better idea?

posted by mccxxiii to Grab Bag (11 answers total)

I did exactly this via UPS, coast to coast, albeit about 20 years ago (so can’t talk to current price comparisons). Worked fine.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 8:25 PM on May 24, 2019

P.s. at the time, I was told that the USPS has a special “book rate” which IIRC allowed more weight at a lower price, if the cargo was (a) books and (b) in a certain-sized box. I have no idea why I did not use this service, the most likely answer was being young, stupid, and unwilling to manage multiple shippers. But it sounded like a good idea at the time.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 8:28 PM on May 24, 2019

Greyhound shipping can often cost less than FeEx/UPS.
posted by SaltySalticid at 8:29 PM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

There are some useful answers on my recent thread. I'm in the middle of comparing costs right now.
posted by 8603 at 8:35 PM on May 24, 2019

Amtrak package shipping used to be great for this. not sure what its like now.
posted by twoplussix at 9:20 PM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]

If nothing is fragile and you have a destination address, Greyhound is the cheapest (but they have size/weight restrictions, you might need smaller boxes.) If you’re stuck with your box size or some stuff is relatively delicate, the Uhaul “UBox” pods are cheaper than most similar services.
posted by blnkfrnk at 9:49 PM on May 24, 2019 [1 favorite]

Might want to look into palletized freight forwarding. If you are fine with it taking a few weeks, it may be the cheapest way to go.
posted by Sophont at 12:01 AM on May 25, 2019

I did this internationally about 13 years ago. The fastest delivery we had was the UPS boxes that we'd chucked like 50¢ of insurance on. Of course that was one of the cheapest options, and we'd assumed it would be the slowest, so all our winter clothes arrived first in a record hot summer.

M-bags for media-rate book mail works great, though! They also remind me of being a kid hanging around the back offices of the main library where my parents worked.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:36 AM on May 25, 2019

Amtrak shipping. I did this 4 years ago. They measure by weight, not size, so the dimensions of the boxes don't matter.
posted by corb at 8:40 AM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]

Look into Amtrak, might not be convenient if you don't have train stations near each address. Other options like Greyhound are work looking into as well.
posted by mutagen at 11:59 AM on May 25, 2019

So far in my research, the cheapest door-to-door shipping option has been UPS Ground with an eBay discount enabled as per this comment. For me it is yielding between $0.66-$0.77 a pound depending on box size.
posted by 8603 at 1:50 PM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]