Make Moving (a little) Easier

Make moving a little easier by using storage containers and moving trucks.

Now, I figured that a moving truck would cost a lot, so I didn’t even look into it until this last leg of our multi-step move that spanned six months. My folks actually suggested I get one to make things simpler when we headed north to Cambridge to transport stuff one hour south. They told me we’d all spend more in gas to fuel our trucks. I think they were right.

We rented a 23-foot truck (the biggest they have) from Budget Truck. I found a discount code online for 20% (I love deals), so the truck was only $31.99. Then you pay for the amount of miles you put on the truck. In our case it was about 100 miles, which cost 71¢ a mile. That brought us to $100. And then we had to put gas in the hog. The Budget man told my husband the truck would get about 12 miles to a gallon, about the same as our Avalanche truck. But, after the hubby filled it he was certain it got a lot less than that.

Still, we’d definitely do it again. It was amazing how it simplified the moving process.

Conveniently, the nearest Budget location was just a few miles from our house and on our way to Cambridge. They were ready when my husband went to pick it up (and drop-off was easy, too). About 20 minutes after arriving, he was on the road again.

We didn’t have to call everyone we knew with a truck to try to convince them to drive an hour north and an hour back. I just had to line up people to load and unload.

When you have just one truck to fill, it streamlines the process. We knew that everything needed to go in that one vehicle. It was about 4 feet up to the truck bed, but they had a nifty ramp that went up and down; it worked great for the big stuff.

I recommend using Budget trucks for anyone who moves.

DART PORTABLE STORAGE CONTAINERS

We also used a storage container. Being originally located in Cambridge, our choices were pretty limited. In fact, only one of the many companies that provide containers would drive up to us: Dart Portable Storage Containers (http://www.dartportablestorage.com).

I’m a bit torn on whether or not I’d recommend them. I had both good and bad experiences with them.

I love the idea of a container that you can fill up slowly as you pack up. But I’m not sure that this company runs itself the best that it could.

Our drop off was very slick. It was easy to maneuver a big shipping container in our ample drive-way. I was a bit worried that it would damage our blacktop, but there were no marks after it was taken away. We had it dropped off two weeks before our move so that we could start loading as we packed. That worked wonderfully. Our main problem when was that it wasn’t large enough. The container fit about half the stuff in our 750-square-foot house and garage. On our major moving day when we’d asked folks over to help, the container was full in an hour. That left us with the problem of storing the rest of our stuff. Lucky for us, both our parents have pole buildings, so we split things up and then loaded boxes into our apartment. Seriously one full wall was just full of boxes during the six months we lived there. Argh.

Now, when you move like we did (transitional apartment you decide on a week before you’re supposed to be out because you don’t know where you’re going to end up), things get messy. Our address changed and then changed again. So, after a few months we got a phone call from Dart stating that our bill was past due. Now, I had been getting our mail — just a little late. And I had a current bill from them that said I owed $100 for the monthly storage fee. There was nothing that said I had missed a few months. Apparently, their billing system doesn’t do that. Huh?


After that I wrote the bill on my calendar so I’d be sure to pay it on time. I didn’t want to lose all that stuff in the container. It was being stored at their facility.

Finally, the day came when I was ready for them to drop the container back off so I could move into the newly remodeled house. I arranged for our construction dumpster to be picked up that morning so that the container could be set in its place. When the Dart driver got there, he scoped out the area off our alley and said he’d try it. Yes, conditions were challenging given the tight space and mud. But the Elite dumpster man had done it without a problem — twice. The young Dart driver gave it a half-hearted attempt and said it wouldn’t work. Then he drove around the neighborhood like a madman because he was frustrated trying to find enough space on the street. I was not impressed. He didn’t bother to ask my neighbor to move his truck while he was in the truck; instead I went up to him afterwards. He drove too fast. And he was super crabby. He left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Plus it was really difficult to move all of our garage stuff (like the heavy, HEAVY tool chest) from the front of the house to the rear garage. It would have been a cinch if it had been left where I asked them to leave it. Supposedly their trucks aren’t built for maneuvering like that (then why are they using trucks like that?) and our container was really heavy (books and tools, I suppose). Still...

And then I was stuck with another $72 bill because we needed a permit from the city. So it cost $170 for them to deliver plus $72. It was certainly not cheap.

But at least we didn’t have to move the stuff in the container twice.