This is the part I was looking forward to least...

[amdayen]

Okay you guys, I need your help. If anyone has moved from one state to another and didn't pack and drive yourself, can you recommend a good moving company for me? Or even recommend one for me not to use. Either works

Comments

[elehu]

How much are you moving? Furniture? Books? Clothing? Fragiles? I've moved more times than I care to count. So much so that I date my childhood by cities, not years. So... yeah.

[amdayen]

Everything, pretty much. Furniture (bedroom and livingroom), kitchen stuff, bathroom things. Several bookshelves worth of stuff. Some electronics. More or less moving my life to another state. :)

[elehu]

What I would strongly suggest is shipping the boxable stuff (especially books) and shipping them to yourself. I had the best luck with UPS, as far as service and price went. FedEx is reliable but more expensive. Don't touch the USPS. It's more expensive, and your stuff will be wrecked.

For the big stuff, a lot of times moving companies will offer deals where you just use a corner of a truck already going there. When my family moved to South Dakota, for instance, another family in Iowa used the last five feet of the moving truck just to move a cabinet, a wardrobe and their bed, which was dropped off at some point between Ames and Sioux Falls. It's so much less expensive. Worth a thought, anyway.

I take it you don't want to rent a Penske truck or some other do-it-yourself sort of thing?

[amdayen]

Originally I was just going to rent a truck and do it myself, but I'd also have to move my car. I'm used to driving around a tiny sedan and have never driven a truck before. So that was stressful to begin with, but the idea of having to haul my car behind it makes me anxious. The move is going to be a pain in the butt to tackle alone, I don't need to be giving myself a heart attack driving 2000+ miles all the while worrying about what I'm driving. I'd rather pay a little more money to have a little more peace of mind

[silentsteel]

Personal experience in moving bath/kitchen stuff - pack as snugly as you can. Put newspaper and/or paper towels (or towels!) between stacked pans. See if you can pack stuff inside pots, cram bath stuff in corners, and make sure everything that can leak fluids is in a ziploc bag or plastic wrap.

Probably all stuff you already know . . ^^;