Moving from MA to NH: Best practices and recommendations

June 10, 2022 7:11 AM

I'm going to be moving from the Boston area to Portsmouth NH. I'm interested in hearing recommendations for specific moving companies in the Boston area (or in Southern NH), and also I have a few other questions/concerns.

I've moved a lot within the Boston area over the past 10+ years, but I always did the moves myself. However, I now have mobility problems that mean I can't lift anything, and also, I've acquired actual furniture. I'll pack up everything myself, but I do plan to hire movers to move everything.

This isn't quite a local move, but it's also not really a long distance move. It's about 1 hr to 1 1/4 hours away. It is across state lines, if that matters. Do I just hire a mover local to the Boston area, and then they drive up to NH to move the stuff and then they drive back? I assume this is going to be more costly, since I'll have to pay them for their time driving up and back.

I understand the more cost effective option is probably to rent a Uhaul, pay someone in Boston to load up the Uhaul, and then pay someone else in NH to unload it, but I'm not really comfortable driving a Uhaul myself, especially since I'll be driving on highway for most of this drive + Massachusetts drivers are...whatever. It's not like money isn't an issue, but right now, I'm willing to pay more to make this less stressful.

So my specific questions:

- Is this something that movers will be willing to do? Is 1hr+ too far for most movers to bother with? Or do they not care since they're getting paid for their time?
- How far out do I need to book this? I'm planning to move the week of August 8. Have I already waited too late?
- Any personal recommendations for movers in the Boston area? (I'm in the Belmont/Watertown area specifically.)
- Any more general recommendations for how to find movers? Do I just look at Yelp? Is this something people use taskrabbit for?
- Any ideas how much a move like this might cost? Just like really rough ballpark estimate? $500? $2000? I truly have no idea what to expect. If it matters: I have a small loveseat, small reclining chair, and desk/office chair as far as furniture (no mattress/bed/dressers to move), plus clothes/books/etc. like maybe a studio apartment worth of stuff?
- Do you tip movers? If so, what's sort of the standard amount?

This is basically an ELI5 kind of situation. Especially b/c I'm already overwhelmed and in a week I'll be going back to in person work for the first time in 2+ years, and it's my first time moving since I had these health problems flare up so it's... a lot. And I'm moving b/c I'm starting grad school in the fall. So any advice/help is very much appreciated.

posted by litera scripta manet to Travel & Transportation (16 answers total)

I think your first step is probably calling a few different moving companies in Boston and in Portsmouth. You can look at Yelp, or see what an internet search yields.

The companies can answer your questions the best, tell you about their services (many moving companies do indeed offer load/unload service - they will load or unload a truck even if it's not their truck), and give you an estimate. Often, that estimate is by number of rooms in your house/apartment - it translates pretty reliably to a person-hour estimate.

Do tip your movers. I don't know how much.
posted by entropone at 7:16 AM on June 10, 2022

This is a local move. 1 hour is unlikely to be "too far" for movers, although remember you are paying for their/their truck's time, so that's like an additional 4 person-hours and 2 truck-hours you're paying for. If you want, like, actual professional insured movers, I think $2000 is probably your floor, based on what I remember paying for a Brookline-to-Easthampton (Western MA) move 10 years ago.

You can probably find a "guy with a truck" kind of situation for a lot less than that, though - if it were me I'd ask around on my local facebook group, but taskrabbit is also a good bet.

Are you planning to pack up your own stuff, or have movers do the packing?

It sounds like the amount of stuff you have would probably fit in a cargo van - would you be more comfortable driving something like that yourself? (The highway part will be easy - it's the getting to/from the highway that will be stressful.)
posted by mskyle at 7:25 AM on June 10, 2022

Can I just say that serious professionals movers are one of the great gifts you can give yourself in life? So worth it. And yeah expect to spend closer to $4k than $2k on this move. Labor is short, diesel is dear, insurance premiums are dire.

You do tip movers. Ask around but $50/person cash isn’t a bad number for 2022.
posted by MattD at 7:42 AM on June 10, 2022 [3 favorites]

We used Preferred Movers for our move within Seacoast NH about five years ago. We paid by the guy by the hour plus mileage. They'll give you an estimate based on the size of your current place; ours took about 6 hours for a 2 bedroom apartment including driving time. This included them doing a partial pack of the kitchen.
posted by damayanti at 7:46 AM on June 10, 2022

I used Mini Moves (based in Arlington) for an in-town move a few years ago, and they were fantastic - they also say they do interstate. It was absolutely worth the money for me.

(They gave me a quote based on expected time, billed per half hour, and charged me based on actual time - which was about an hour less than the quote because things went really fast. I tipped generously. Ideally, plan to tip in cash. I want to say it was about $400 with the tip for a one bedroom and not a lot of actual furniture, but that was very early 2019, and labor, gas, and other expenses have gone up a lot, and also the actual distance between the apartments was 3 blocks.)

For the move before that, I was coming from Maine to Massachusetts - I got help loading (paying some college students at the school I was working at) on the Maine end, and hired people to help me unload on the Massachusetts end (via a link from UHaul when I rented the small truck.) I was lucky and a friend thought driving the truck would be a delightful adventure. So I drove my car with things that couldn't go in a moving van (like the cat...) and she drove that. It's worth checking with people you know to see if someone would find the idea fun for the driving part.

(And then I got her back to a point she could get a bus back, etc.)
posted by jenettsilver at 7:58 AM on June 10, 2022

I don't really know much about cost or tipping, but moving from Boston to Portsmouth probably isn't out of anyone's range, especially for NH movers. People from NH spend a lot of time in Boston (it's not like there's much here for us to do), so the drive into Boston is seen as a normal drive. I know people who have commuted daily further than that.

Distance is relative up here. Most places, an hour and a half drive is a significant commitment. When I lived in Ohio, an hour and a half was enough to get from Columbus to Cincinnati, an entirely different metro area, or even Indianapolis if you drove quickly. Here, everything is at least a half hour drive, often much more. My wife drives an hour just to go to the dentist. All the towns are really small, so to incorporate everything you'd find in a single neighborhood in Watertown, you have to cast a much wider net. Nobody bats an eye at driving for hours just to go to dinner. With traffic, it can take hours to get into Boston, and nobody cares, because that's just what you do.

I do know a mover based out of Chelmsford, Mass, if you don't have any luck finding anyone in either Watertown or Portsmouth.
posted by kevinbelt at 8:01 AM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

I was a mover in Boston in the 1980s. Including owning my own small moving company. We were mostly local but routinely did moves to NH. You won't have any problem finding someone to do that.

I just had a relative move within Boston. 2BR, packed and moved for $2500. However I am fairly certain this mover stole something valuable from my relative (I was there to help, and remember I was in the trade, and it is rife with dishonesty and theft) and I'm pissed about it. So I can definitely advise you not to use a moving company that has a woman's name. I won't identify them further than that here.
posted by spitbull at 8:10 AM on June 10, 2022

Response by poster: And yeah expect to spend closer to $4k than $2k on this move.

Okay, I guess I way underestimated how expensive professional movers would be. I had a family member who moved cross country for I think like $5000 8 years ago...but I guess maybe it's different b/c the cross country moves load a bunch of people's stuff into the same van.

I'd be fine driving a cargo van - I've driven a very large SUV up the east coast for a family member, and a cargo van doesn't seem much worse than that. The drive is like 95% highway (it's 95/128 the whole way). I was originally thinking it wouldn't be big enough, but especially since I could still put some boxes in my own car, that may work.

I guess I'll start contacting some of the movers suggested in this thread and on yelp to see what kind of estimates I get. $4000 isn't necessarily out of the question, and I do like the simplicity of just having one set of movers/not having to drive back and forth an extra time, but that may be more than I can justify.

Oh, and I plan to pack everything myself, so I'm just planning to hire people to do the actual moving part.

This has all been very helpful so far and has given me a lot to ponder. I'll stop threadsitting now.
posted by litera scripta manet at 8:10 AM on June 10, 2022

Even with a one hour drive, most of the labor cost is going to come from loading and unloading the truck. For our two-bedroom situation, it was about 2-3 hours at each end.

Last time we moved was ten years ago, but we used Intelligent Moving and I thought they did a good job. Back then it ended up costing about $1500 to move our stuff about a mile.
posted by backseatpilot at 8:46 AM on June 10, 2022

We've used Spry Moving for several moves in and around the Boston area. MA to NH wouldn't be an issue for them (nor any other reputable firm in the area, I suspect).
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 11:19 AM on June 10, 2022

Best answer: Former Bostonian who made many moves with Gentle Giant. They are **fast** and amazing. They will even pack for you; they know how stressful moving is and in over 6 moves I have never regretted using them. Nothing broken, excellent service. They moved me from Lexington to southern Vermont 3 years ago and it cost around $1800.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 11:27 AM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

I did a local move north of Boston and hired Rare movers they were excellent.

We had small children so paid for a half day of packing as well as moving and they were amazing and efficient. Tipped each worker on a 4-person crew $40 at the end. I think the total cost was $2500 or so in 2013.

Our most important factor was time, going from a fully functional family home in one place to a fully functional home in another with minimal disruption to the already cranky small humans. I suggested they send two trucks to avoid back and forth traffic and they did it, it was very fast. The crew disassembled and reassembled all furniture.

Another suggestion if you have downsizing to hire a mover and a junk hauler. We had some downsizing to do - as there was some abandoned furniture in our old place from previous owners we never dealt with while living there. We hired Bayles Removal to come the day after the move. Then we did not pay to move or store things that we didn't use. The junk hauler recycled things that could be recycled.
posted by sol at 11:30 AM on June 10, 2022

I did a similar move (an hour longer), and just hired local movers.

With a small loveseat, small reclining chair, and desk/office chair, the loading and unloading part is practically trivial and will be done in 10 min on either side. Your entire cost will be the drive. If they charge by hour, you might want to optimize timing for good traffic conditions. I have been stuck paying movers more than I anticipated because of traffic.

Aug 8 is not a bad time since Boston moves on Sep 1, but it doesn't hurt to book early.

I've moved much larger apartments several times, and I'd be very very surprised if your move costs $4k.
posted by redlines at 1:22 PM on June 10, 2022

Best answer: I did a move from Central MA to the South Coast this past year, maybe a 90-120 minute trip. We tried to go with Gentle Giant (loved them, they just couldn't make it work in our timeframe) and I'd try getting a quote from them because why not? We wound up going with John Palmer (they resell Atlas services) and other than some small scheduling issues (they were significantly later than we were expecting in the day) we were happy. We had maybe 2-3 rooms worth of stuff, like 20 boxes and ten pieces of furniture and I think it was $1500 and we tipped everyone (three guys) $50 each. And yes to what redlines says, because of the timing we wound up paying for some time they were stuck in traffic. Still better than doing it ourselves, but worth thinking about.
posted by jessamyn at 3:45 PM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]

You’ll find more mover recommendations in this post. We moved about the same distance (from Arlington) three years ago. I’d consider your move a local one, and I bet it’ll be a lot less than $4k, though some (e.g. Gentle Giant) may be that much.
posted by daisyace at 4:08 AM on June 12, 2022

Response by poster: Thanks again for all these responses! I marked a few best answers, but really, all of this was helpful info.

I ended up going with Gentle Giant. I probably should have called around to do more cost comparisons, but I was super low on bandwidth and just needed this done. It ended up costing ~$2000 (for just the move, no packing, but that included having them put together a lot of furniture for me and of course a lot of driving time). (That was the upper end of the original estimate I got, but I also way underestimated how much stuff I would be moving, so that's on me, not them, and it was still within the estimate I originally received.) They were friendly and professional and all around it was a very positive experience. I would absolutely use them again.

At the last minute, I did end up having to pay someone to help me organize and pack up my stuff, since I had a bad health flare up a couple weeks before the move. That ended up being another $1000, though honestly, it was worth it. But since that was so last minute, and since I needed help organizing/sorting, not just with packing, I ended up hiring a professional organizer rather than using the moving company.
posted by litera scripta manet at 7:44 AM on August 12, 2022 [1 favorite]