Moving...Do it yourself or hire it out?

DIY Move vs. Mayflower

So we had talked bout packing and moving ourselves to save money on the whole process of the move. It sounds good right? You pack your stuff and then rent a U-haul or similar truck to get you form Point A-B and you drop it off at point B. Well in theory it is grand, but when you include an international border and a distance of 4,075 km (2,532 miles) it becomes a little more difficult.

Basically when I contact the U-Haul folks and ask about driving a vehicle to Canada the all have the same tone and inflection to their voice. They get that flat, lifeless voice that indicates that the question is beyond their ability to answer and so they begin to redirect the customer toward questions that they can answer. So I ask about getting as far as Augusta Maine, and that would be a trip that allowed 7 days to get there, and would cost $1,182 plus fuel. That means you are filling up the ever so fuel efficient U-haul truck (7 mile to the gallon average), and driving it through the mountains of Arkansas and Tennessee, not to mention negotiating any large cities in that beast. The tank is 60 gallons so roughly $240 per fill-up and an estimate of 361 gallons if all goes well (but what the heck let’s round it up to 400 for the ease of the math) which is $1,600. So at this point we are up to $2,782 for a complete do it your-self move (DIY). All of this an the added joy of have to drive every mile yourself, load and unload the packages, and we are still not to Canada, we are only to the border.

That seemed a bit much, especially when Nancy explained in no small detail to me how much she looked forward to driving each and every one of those miles herself in the Suburban while I was driving the U-haul. So, with that in mind, I decided to look into other solutions.

FINDING A MOVER

So, when you are going to move internationally, you have a little more trouble than if you are moving cross-country. I found this out when I was talking to several companies that are geared toward the DIY mover. I contacted the PODs moving system and they were glad to help me out and get me as far as Moncton until they found out it was a personal and not a business move. That was a real shame, because I really liked the idea of having a POD dropped to the house, loading over a few days, and then sealing it for the journey.

My next effort involved looking to companies that shipped/moved people internationally and I found a few via the internet and they were all located in NYC. I asked for quotes form three of them and received a quote from only one. The quote seemed reasonable enough and was based on the measurements of our furniture that we are taking, and an estimate based on the number of boxes needed for out move from Utah to Texas in 2000. I was surprised at how fair the quote seemed, but I was a little concerned that the contract stipulated that I would pay the amount of the quote as the lowest rate, and if the space requirements exceeded the quoted dimensions, the price might go up. I turned to the internet to examine the credentials of the company and found several case reports of negative interactions with this shipping company so I backpedaled form them pretty quickly.

As I pondered my next step it hit me that we live near Ft Hood (the largest US military base) and that they moved people every day all over the globe so there certainly must be a company locally that could help us out. I contacted the household moving department at Ft Hood and they put me in touch with the local Mayflower Company. When I spoke with them, they informed me they had just completed a move for someone who headed to Vancouver and that they had moved people to PEI before and would be glad to come out and give us an estimate. YEAH!!!

So, I sent them the same information that I had given to the other companies and they generated an estimate and then came out to fine tune the estimate. In short it will likely cost us twice as much to have someone carry our stuff to the Island, but they will carry it door to door and load and unload it for us. Additionally they will also provide us with free used boxes so we do not have those costs. IT sounded like a good deal and so we will sign this week.

Now all we have to do is wait on the temporary worker permit and we are home free…….Oh there is that sale of the house thing still left to complete……..