So I moved...

[pendell]

Yes, as you can see from the location , I am now just outside Raleigh, NC, as opposed to Washington DC, where I have lived for the past twenty years. Susan is delighted. I'm waiting and seeing.


Last Wednesday I picked up the truck at 7:52 AM. It was a 26-foot (7.9248 m) vehicle grossing 13000 pounds (5900 kg).

I got this vehicle because I had originally asked for a 22-foot (6.7 meter) vehicle , but they offered me this one for the same price. Since I was terrified of leaving anything behind, I took them on their offer. Susan complained "It's too big." she said. "It'll never fit in the parking space", she said. I heard this for several days. But I stuck to my guns because i was dead sure that a 26 foot vehicle, rated for a 3-5 bedroom house, would be more than enough. Right?

HA.

It turns out that there's a lot of irregularly shaped stuff which doesn't fit easily into the container -- plants and such -- with the result that after 8 hours of loading -- 6 PM -- we had completely filled the truck. All of it. And we still had a lot of stuff in the apartment!

Nothing for it -- for the past month I had been taking unused furniture and books down to the local Goodwill equivalent as donations, but we were simply out of time. So pretty much all the surplus stuff -- food, surplus furniture, you name it -- went into the nearest dumpster. It broke my heart, especially when I had to throw out some Guinness, but when push came to shove there was simply no room.

I tried to donate the beer to my downstairs neighbor, but he turned me down. He only drinks hard liquor he said.

So you're TOO GOOD FOR GUINNESS?

We are no longer friends.

We spent the next four hours just grabbing stuff and moving it ouf ot the apartment. From 8 -6 PM we had hired two men from Magic Movers (at $60 an hour) to load the truck.

http://magicmoversllc.com/

Calvin and Levi -- for those were their names -- did an excellent job. We were also ably assisted by a friend from church, who pitched in for free for the better part of two hours.

But from 6-10PM that night we were on our own, and spent it throwing out all kinds of stuff.
Finally, at 9:55 PM, we were done and ready for our drive down to North Carolina.

I had a GPS with me in the truck, and just told Susan to "Follow the big yellow truck". That should be easy enough, right?

HA.

I had not reckoned with it being dark, rainy, and we were also quite fatigued. We drove through the night and I arrived at the house at 0430. Susan, unfortunately, had got separated. It took some time for her to get in touch with me and figure out where to go, but she eventually got in at 0830, having driven for about 10.5 consecutive hours on top of the 12 hours we'd spent loading the truck.

I graciously allowed her two hours to sleep, then we got on the business of unloading the truck!

Once again, we had hired help -- Jerry's moving , also a fine outfit, and our helpers were Jerome and Mark -- and we cleared off the truck in 3 hours.

Since then we've been taking it fairly slow , unpacking boxes and organizing, assembling the lawn mower, starting up the kitchen. We can now eat, sleep, and change clothes here, so we are definitely making slow progress.

Tomorrow my office equipment will arrive and there will be one more big push, and after that it should get easier.

Incidentally, the truck was... interesting. When I rented it, I asked the rental agent if there was anything special I needed to know about driving it. "Nah," he says. "It's just like driving a big car".

HAH.

Everything about it is just slower than an SUV. You've got to really stomp on the gas to get it to move, and you've got to give it a few seconds to shift from reverse to forward and vice versa. Three times I went forward when I wanted to go backward because I'd shifted and hadn't allowed the vehicle's gears time to catch up.

All those road signs and habits that I could more or less ignore in a small car I had to do in spades with a truck. Following distance. Care when turning.

The most difficult challenge came when I arrived at a gas station, pulled up to the diesel pump -- to see an "out of order" sign hanging off the pump. The only operable diesel pump was on the exact other side of the island.

Ever tried to U-turn an 8-meter vehicle?

It didn't work as well as I would like. I came around the island and found myself facing a cute little Highlander. I couldn't go any further forward without hitting it. As I discussed, the vehicle isn't made for slow, subtle movements -- you have to really mash the accelerator to get it to move, so it's very easy to just smash into something. And likewise, it doesn't stop easily either.

I tried to convince the owner to move forward. Nothing doing. I'm stuck.

Then I notice there are actually TWO islands at the station -- and a gap between the islands big enough for a truck.

You can guess what happened next.

I backed up, And pulled into a uturn *between* the fuel islands.

And promptly got stuck. Turning tightly enough I was threatening to hit a pillar with the rear, but I couldn't move forward without hitting a gas pump!

It took about 15 minutes plus some able direction from Susan in front of the vehicle, waving her arms like a windmill to guide me, but we eventually got the vehicle turned around, fueled, and did NOT end our trip in a ball of fire.

Flashforward to the present -- the truck is returned intact, our kitchen and so forth are operable, and we are bit by bit returning to normal life. Thank God, I *think* the worst is over.

*Wipes forehead* The fun I had with the new printer can wait for another day.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Peelee]

Oh my.

Moving is that wonderful time when, hours after you initially thought you'd have everything packed and ready to go, you wonder just how much of your stuff you can get rid of, and how the hell you got so much to begin with.

Cheers on being done! Some of my wife's friends live right outside Raleigh. I hear it's delightful.

[factotum]

Wow, a 300-odd mile move using a hired truck? You're a braver man than I. Mind you, reminds me of when my parents moved 200 miles--they hired a removals firm to take the furniture up, and said removals van somehow got lost and didn't arrive until 24 hours later than they should have. Was a bit of an anxious time, especially since this was before the era of mobile phones (1986) and there was no way to communicate with the missing lorry!

[pendell]

We-ell, a moving company would have charged us $5000 for this move ($3000 moving + $2000 packing) . It was cheaper to simply rent a truck ($890) and hire on-the-spot labor ($60/hour) for help loading and unloading.

After all, when I first moved to Washington DC from Modesto, California, I'd also rented a truck and done it myself and that was a three *thousand* mile move, not a three hundred mile one.

Of course, I'd also had an accident when I backed the truck up into the kitchen of a Shoney's restaurant on that trip. I was young and foolish then. Now I'm middle-aged and foolish but much, much more careful :).

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Chen]

We-ell, a moving company would have charged us $5000 for this move ($3000 moving + $2000 packing) . It was cheaper to simply rent a truck ($890) and hire on-the-spot labor ($60/hour) for help loading and unloading.

Uh that's a crazy cost. Does that $2000 include putting things in boxes or something? Cause otherwise I can't fathom how that's a reasonable price for moving. The $3000 for the actual moving seems insanely high too.

[pendell]

Uh that's a crazy cost. Does that $2000 include putting things in boxes or something? Cause otherwise I can't fathom how that's a reasonable price for moving. The $3000 for the actual moving seems insanely high too.

Believe it. Here's a cost estimator (http://g.moving.com/movers/full-service.asp?medium=tsa). Mayflower et al wanted to send out an estimator to look at the apartment and give me a more precise number, but all the estimates I saw were in that ball park.

For $5000, you just hand them a check and walk out of your house, then walk into the new one with all the furniture in place -- they packed it, moved it, and unpacked it on the other side.

If you do your own packing, they'll load it, drive the truck, and unload it for $3000.

Considering the truck rental goes for $1000 on up it doesn't surprise me that full service movers are about three times that. So what we did was rent the truck and use U-haul's moving help (https://www.movinghelp.com/) to hire local labor (at $60/hour) to assist with the loading and unloading -- we would do the packing, unpacking, and driving ourselves.

Penske has a similar service called simple moving help (http://www.simplemovinglabor.com/penske/), and you get a discount when using a Penske truck as well. It's more expensive, but my understanding is that they guarantee their service -- with u-haul there is a chance that either labor or the truck will be overbooked (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overselling) .

In my case, the first labor company I called down here in NC never got back to me -- I just got a voice mail and no response for days on end. So I cancelled quickly and moved on to the next group, which did just fine.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Murk]

This is interesting. I'm from the Netherlands - moving 300 miles would be immigration.
Even if you move from one outer edge of the country to the other outer edge, you can at least fit three laps in a day. If stuff doesn't fit in the truck, you say "Damn, now we have to drive all the way back!" not "Damn, now we have to leave stuff behind!"

I guess I just never realised - no matter how logical - that in most other countries, moving can be such an enormous undertaking. Figure me impressed.

[Winter_Wolf]

Moving in the US is absolutely expensive. But I can't help but be glad I'm in the Midwest. Moving cost us 500 for the U-Haul and a couple of guys to load the truck and unload it. Then again, it was only a 60 mile move. Then also again, we have to repeat the process in about a month. :sigh:

Moving was much more fun when I was single and everything that didn't fit in the car with one trip didn't go with. Kind of ambivalent about the area, too. It's not bad at all, but the home prices are screwed up and we're getting a lot less for our money. Limited by work, time on road, and proper schools.

[pendell]

This is interesting. I'm from the Netherlands - moving 300 miles would be immigration.
Even if you move from one outer edge of the country to the other outer edge, you can at least fit three laps in a day. If stuff doesn't fit in the truck, you say "Damn, now we have to drive all the way back!" not "Damn, now we have to leave stuff behind!"

I guess I just never realised - no matter how logical - that in most other countries, moving can be such an enormous undertaking. Figure me impressed.

Well, here's the issue.

A second round would be 6 hours back to Virginia and another 6 hours here -- a 12-hour round trip.
That doesn't count the time to actually load and unload the truck on both ends. And don't forget that you either have to shell out for labor ($60/hour, CASH) or do it yourself when you're already dropping dead from fatigue.

How many days do you want to space this out over?

Bear in mind, the truck rental I got is about $400 a day, so every additional day adds $400 to the bill, not counting meals and gas.

With those kinds of numbers, unless you've left some really expensive furniture behind (and why WOULDN'T all the expensive stuff be on the first truck), it's actually cheaper to start over and buy stuff like food fresh then it is to go back for it. We paid thousands of dollars house down payment, thousands of dollars in closing costs (lawyer fee, title fee, inspection fees, prepaid property tax, etc. etc. etc. ), we're counting every dollar for the next few months. Paying hundreds of extra dollars just to move that stuff just isn't in the cards.

There's another factor as well: Every 12 hour trucking days adds to your fatigue. Remember that I've never driven a vehicle this size before. Every day spent driving that way adds to the risk fatigue and inexperience will catch up with me in a nasty traffic accident. Hopefully that'd only mess up my insurance and not get someone killed, but it's never wise to take chances with multiton vehicles hurtling along at 100+ kilometers per hour.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Bulldog Psion]

This is interesting. I'm from the Netherlands - moving 300 miles would be immigration.
Even if you move from one outer edge of the country to the other outer edge, you can at least fit three laps in a day. If stuff doesn't fit in the truck, you say "Damn, now we have to drive all the way back!" not "Damn, now we have to leave stuff behind!"

I guess I just never realised - no matter how logical - that in most other countries, moving can be such an enormous undertaking. Figure me impressed.

The one move I was involved in at age 15 incorporated a 1,324 mile road trip (yes, that's the exact distance) with a truck full of furniture and belongings. Due to that not being a straight line (though it was the shortest available route), that encompassed about 1/3 of the width of the United States.

(That trip took about 4 days -- since 2 of the participants were deathly ill at the time -- and involved driving through a massive storm system that very nearly generated tornadoes.)

So, you can probably imagine how tiny most European countries seem to me, from the opposite perspective. :smallwink:

[Peelee]

age 15.... 1,324 mile road trip.... truck full of furniture and belongings.... not being a straight line.... 2 of the participants were deathly ill at the time.... massive storm system that very nearly generated tornadoes

.....are you sure you're not just describing the Oregon Trail game?

[factotum]

.....are you sure you're not just describing the Oregon Trail game?

Nah, he didn't mention somehow dying of a broken leg somewhere along the route, it can't be Oregon Trail. :smallwink:

[Bulldog Psion]

.....are you sure you're not just describing the Oregon Trail game?

Never heard of the game before (though I've read about the Oregon Trail), but if that resembles it, then it must be a case of life imitating art... or something like that. :smallwink:

I do remember that we stopped in Elkhart, Indiana on the eve of some air show, and it was almost impossible to get a motel room. There was almost an "air show" that evening in the form of a tornado warning with menacing cloud accompaniment; the system generated tornadoes, but nowhere within sight or sound of that location.

[Winter_Wolf]

.....are you sure you're not just describing the Oregon Trail game?

Having recently more or less driven the Oregon trail and then some, if anything his trip was significantly more pleasant. The Great Plains states are, well let me say it takes a certain kind of person to appreciate it, and not one person in my family appreciated it.

[cobaltstarfire]

Packing up a 26 foot truck, being mislead into believing it'll drive like a big car, and doing it all in the same day/night? That sounds like madness.


I dunno who you rented from, but even Uhauls smaller trucks (10-15 footers) don't drive "like a big car", they're heavier because they're loaded, taller, wider, longer, and have more blind spots, that guy did you wrong by telling you a 26 foot truck would drive like a car.


But now you're all done moving, now you get to unpack everything...yaaay.

It probably would have been much easier had you given yourself an extra day just for packing and stuff. Easier and less stressful, and you might have been able to make arrangements to store the stuff you didn't want to trash. It really sounds like you might have gotten better value had you gone with professional movers. (if you move again and use professional movers, remember to photodocument your belongings, and keep important records and such with you)

[Peelee]

Never heard of the game before

It was rather famous for striking members of your party with deadly diseases. Dysentery being the most common.

[pendell]

Here's a let's play of the Original version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhKjQzE5Vvk), in all it's '80s 16-bit glory. They updated it a bit in the 1990s to 5th edition, which is much prettier (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kNBMBCHkHo), but still pretty lethal.

There were plenty of random events and "play balance" wasn't a word back then, so you could easily die of dysentery less then a mile down the trail. You did the best you could and hoped the luck of the draw didn't murder you. All too often, it did.

Eta: So help me, someone wrote an article on the Oregon Trail Generation (http://www.popsugar.com/tech/How-Technology-Influenced-Generation-X-37522155?campaign=sugar_social_button_m). Guess what the cover picture is? :smallamused:



Packing up a 26 foot truck, being mislead into believing it'll drive like a big car, and doing it all in the same day/night? That sounds like madness.


I dunno who you rented from, but even Uhauls smaller trucks (10-15 footers) don't drive "like a big car", they're heavier because they're loaded, taller, wider, longer, and have more blind spots, that guy did you wrong by telling you a 26 foot truck would drive like a car.




That would be Penske. They have a better reputation than u-haul because they guarantee availability, which U-haul doesn't. It's not unheard of for people to find that the truck they reserved from U-haul isn't available and they're either going to have to wait a day, or get another truck.

To be fair, from a certain point of view a 26 foot truck does behave at least somewhat like a car, or I would need a CDL to drive one. The fact that I could rent one with a standard driver's license at all implies it's more like a car than a truck -- from a certain point of view. :smallamused:

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Flickerdart]

I moved in February by packing all my things in about 6 boxes, then getting free pick-up from a storage company, and making a withdrawal of the items to the new place.

Moving when you have no furniture is great.

[Peelee]

Moving when you have no furniture is great.

I'd argue that really amazing furniture is more great. Got my wife a massive recliner for our anniversary a bit ago. This is big enough to sit two people side by side, reclines almost all the way down, has massively overstuffed armrests, is super soft and comfy, and she can curl up in it without even reclining and nap (something she is fond of doing in couches, and the recliner is perfect for it). The thing is delightful.

I'll deal with having to move it on rare occasion if the payoff is I get to sit in it however long I want, whenever I want. Pending that my wife isn't already in it or doesn't kick me out of it.

[cobaltstarfire]

To be fair, from a certain point of view a 26 foot truck does behave at least somewhat like a car, or I would need a CDL to drive one. The fact that I could rent one with a standard driver's license at all implies it's more like a car than a truck -- from a certain point of view. :smallamused:

Respectfully,

Brian P.

You do need a CDL to drive the 26 foot trucks depending on where you live/are driving though, though that technicality only applies to somewhere in Canada...

That Uhaul may not be available is really good information to have thanks for passing that on! We reserved one last week-we're not moving till the end of June. Makes me happy that we wanted to pick it up a few days before we must legally be out of these apartments....also prepares me to be slightly less pissed off if Uhaul fails to deliver. So now we get to have some contingencies in place yaaaaaay.

[Flickerdart]

I'd argue that really amazing furniture is more great.
Oh, for sure - I moved into my own place, so now I'm building up my own furniture collection. But before this point, the mobility was more important, and I made do with crappy Ikea accouterments for the tiny studenty rooms I lived in.

[pendell]

That Uhaul may not be available is really good information to have thanks for passing that on! We reserved one last week-we're not moving till the end of June. Makes me happy that we wanted to pick it up a few days before we must legally be out of these apartments....also prepares me to be slightly less pissed off if Uhaul fails to deliver. So now we get to have some contingencies in place yaaaaaay.

Yeah. I wrote to my church mailing list asking for advice and I heard many woes and stories about overbooking through U-haul.

They did say that one way to minimize the issue is to book your truck for the middle of the week. Most people move on weekends, so if you deliberately schedule for off-peak time there's much more chance a truck will be available. And who knows? Just maybe you'll get a slightly better rate off-peak as well.

The other alternative is someone like Penske Truck Rental (http://www.pensketruckrental.com/), which guarantees availability.

Me? I did both. Suspenders AND belt :).

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[factotum]

I dunno who you rented from, but even Uhauls smaller trucks (10-15 footers) don't drive "like a big car", they're heavier because they're loaded, taller, wider, longer, and have more blind spots, that guy did you wrong by telling you a 26 foot truck would drive like a car.


The guy might have just meant that it has the same controls as a car--no exotic gearboxes or weird pedal arrangement to worry about. Also, isn't heavier, taller, wider and longer just a longer-winded way of saying "bigger"? :smallwink:

[cobaltstarfire]

I think we're picking it up on a Tuesday Afternoon...though we're thinking about going to change it to a morning. It's a college town which has me worried, lots of people move in the summer, and it's worse in a college area.


Will keep Penske in mind, probably going to talk with the guy about that too.

Most of my concern comes from it being a long move, it's a 15-18 hour drive that we have to split into 3 days for logistical reasons. Getting the truck late could really mess things up.

edit:

On dimensions are bigger

It's kind of a conscientious thing (for me anyway) to point out exactly where the trucks are bigger, and how one should modify their driving to take it into account.

Like I wouldn't have initially thought that even the smaller trucks (which are basically F150's with a giant box on the back instead of a bed) can't really be driven like an F150, you have to pay closer attention to the tail when turning, and apparently enough people fail to consider that it's ill advised to try to drive one of those trucks into a drive through.

I think the main "difference" I've seen in the driving instructions is to shift the truck into a lower gear when dealing with hills, which is not something most people consider when driving an automatic vehicle even if it's an SUV, but knowing to do it can be the difference between blowing your engine out or not.

[Starwulf]

Eta: So help me, someone wrote an article on the Oregon Trail Generation (http://www.popsugar.com/tech/How-Technology-Influenced-Generation-X-37522155?campaign=sugar_social_button_m). Guess what the cover picture is? :smallamused:


Love that article, it describes me and my generation perfectly.

[Bulldog Psion]

Love that article, it describes me and my generation perfectly.

The "you have died of dysentery" thing is peculiarly appropriate for my 15 year old move, since one of the people in the car (not me) had come quite close to kicking off from a bad case of Clostridium difficile shortly beforehand. :smalleek: