we used the same company to move from Michigan to Portland, OR but at a much higher cost! Our move was just over $2,000, I'm feeling like we got a little hosed. I'm sure if we had haggled on the price we could have got it down some but this was still the most affordable option for us. I agree not the least stressful, it was not easy playing that game of tetris with that tiny cube and selling alot of furniture and stuff before we left. Best of luck to you.

We almost used this company for our upcoming Boston-San Francisco move, but the online reviews turned me off. We opted for selling all of our furniture and only sending essentials. Our plan works really well for us because we are getting rid of our sad grad school furniture that wasn't really worth paying to send anyway - if our stuff were more valuable/worth keeping, we would have researched more options!!

In less than a year now, we'll be moving from Phoenix to Seattle so I've been stocking ideas in the back of my mind. Fortunately, we'll have a temporary holding place in Sedona and plenty of time. I've been wondering whether it would be easier to U-Haul all of it or use POD/ABF. Thanks for sharing your experience! I will keep it in mind :)

Thanks for this post. I'm thinking about getting a POD or something similar for my next move. I have enough space at both places to store it for a while, so I think that could work a lot better than a U-Haul.

I would say to ensure your cushioned furniture doesn't get gross to wrap it in saran wrap. I would have never thought of this but we had some furniture delivered to our house a long time ago and all the furniture came wrapped.

We had a great experience with ABF as well. The only thing I would recommend is to really make sure things are padded well. The pad/blanket that we had on our leather couch must have slipped in some places because there were a few rubs from the vibration of the truck. My dad drives a moving truck for United and one of the reasons why ABF is so cheap is that they primarily ship freight, and their trucks are not as smooth riding as a moving company. Other than some worn marks on a few pieces, our move from VA to TX went swimmingly.

We used ABF for our Boston to Kansas City move. Loading was a hassle - they give you a tiny window of time to get everything in - and the truck was hours late in getting there so we could load it. The moving, delivery and unloading went smoothly and I'd use them again.

So glad to read that your move went well. ABF service was excellent, courteous, punctual & knowledgeable both times when our family moved precious inherited furniture & other home goods across 300 & 800 miles.

ABF delivered & picked up the trailer on time at both ends on time with no damage to our contents or driveway/yard. We didn't need an entire trailer of space. ABF has removable walls that separate their customer's contents within the trailer.

As you've mentioned, packing skills are key. ABF staff & site are great sources of information & moving supplies. But, typically big box stores like Costco & Sam's Club have lower prices on tape, boxes, etc. than moving companies & storage places. Walmart & Trader Joe's were great resources for free boxes when I moved across town. Craigslist's free section often has moving box curb alerts posted by people that just moved.

I used a hybrid of PODS and moving things myself for my move from NC to NH, and it worked out well. My house in NC was within their service area, so the POD was delivered right to my house. But my house in NH is out in the boonies, so the POD was delivered to their closest storage facility, about an hour away from where I live. For the rest of my move, I enlisted the help of my family (and their SUV) to help me move my stuff from my POD in the warehouse to my new house.

Even though I still had to do part of the moving myself, it sure beat driving a U-haul on icy New England roads in January!

I also liked that I could take my time with both the packing and the unpacking. I think I took about a week and a half to load up the POD when it was sitting in my yard, and on the other end I moved things over to my new house over the course of a couple of weekends.

My daughter helped her best friend move via U-Haul truck from New Haven, CT to SF and he determined that it cost about as much to do that as it would have to have the items moved by someone else. You need to factor in gas, food, lodging and the value of your time when you do the comparison.

Thanks for the post and tips! I found this very helpful. We are getting ready to move from Raleigh to Montreal in about 10 months and we've been trying to figure out what to do with our stuff. I think we'll be selling a lot of things, but we do have a few large pieces that we need to bring with us. I will check out ABF, that might be the way to go!

Thankfully, I haven't had to make a long distance move. Well, I suppose San Diego to San Francisco is no quick trip, but it's certainly not 1200 miles or cross country.

Anyway, I wanted to add that your having opted to bring your belongs to the ABF facility versus having them drop off a Relo-Cube was probably the best idea in the end. I realize your Brooklyn neighborhood couldn't accommodate a drop off, but that's a good thing because you want your items to only have to travel from point A to point B, rather than A to B to C. Granted, a drop off makes the work of moving less physical because you're not having to pack twice (home to U-Haul to Relo-Cube), but the less jostling and disturbance (at the hands of complete strangers combined with road conditions), the better.

I used ABF to move from Phoenix to Seattle back in April. I think the cost was around ~1400, which included dropping it off in an open parking space in my townhome complex in Phoenix (they have a trick 3-wheel forklift that worked well in the narrow alleys inside the gate) and dropping it off on the street outside of my new apartment tower.

One thing to remember is to make sure you have a place for them to drop off the cube in both locations. In Seattle, I was moving in on a Friday morning and they wanted to drop off the cube at 8am, but the leasing office staff wasn't in until after 9. Since street parking was completely filled that early in the morning, they had to drop off the cube in a 30 minute loading zone space. Luckily it didn't get towed (good luck with that) while it was there for a few hours.

What impressed me the most about ABF is that it only took 3 days to get from Phoenix to Seattle. The cube was there almost a week before I got there, so I had to pay for a month of storage, which was something like $125. Meanwhile, it took over two weeks for my car to get shipped, and that shipped at a much higher cost.

I'll never do a long distance move any other way. When I moved to Phoenix from CT, I had just graduated college and had very little money to finance it, so I drove cross-country with my roommate, our hatchbacks filled to the brim with all our belongings worth bringing. It took 7 days, and only the first day or two were in any way enjoyable. I didn't get to experience the country like I thought I would.

ABF is fantastic. They were prompt, courteous, supportive and most of all, stress-free to work with.

If we ever move across country again (see 'worst moving nightmares' post from the other day), I would definitely go with ABF again.

Since my folks got out of the military, we have always moved ourselves. Most of the time, it was just from one rental house to another, but we made a Montana-to-south-Colorado haul, then (a month later) Colorado to middle Tennessee (a story all of its own), then Tennessee to Alabama. The MOST IMPORTANT THING is getting the truck packed. You can screw up with dishes and lamps and everything else in their individual boxes, but if the truck/unit is packed soundly, it won't matter.

@seawhitney - Can I ask what moving company you decided to go with and your cost estimate? I'm planning to move next fall from Boston to the west coast as well and I'm trying to figure out what my best options are.

I'll probably end up going with moving cube...which I think will be more cost effective and less stressful than driving both my car and a Uhaul.

I used ABF U-Pack last summer for a move from Los Angeles to Madison, WI, with 1 month of storage in Madison. ABF was great. My tips for a successful move: 1. Buy new, good-quality boxes (the ones from U-Haul fared much better than the free grocery store ones). 2. If you hire movers to load your truck, make sure they know what they're doing. Otherwise your furniture will be damaged. Lesson learned.

I had an awful experience with ABF, but I seem to be the only one here. They clearly dropped my entire "pod" of belongings from what must've been a significant height. The pallet under the pod/box was completely shattered. As were my bookshelves and vintage plates. Speakers were also dented, bike broken, etc. And I packed WELL. My engineer father helped me, making sure everything was as well situated and padded as possible. Because it's a "you pack" scenario, though, ABF takes no responsibility whatsoever if your stuff breaks.

I'll never use them again.

For all the hassle of having to move your items to and from the pod/box locations, it's not much of a financial savings either.

My ABF experience sucked as well. We chose them because they gave the cheapest quote for our Tucson to Seattle move, but when our stuff arrived all the boxes on top were soaked as if the container had seriously leaked. Unfortunately for us, while some of the boxes contained dishes and such, most of the soaked boxes were full of (ruined) books and photos and such. If I were to make that kind of move again, I would definitely not risk my stuff with ABF.

We're using ABF for our upcoming move to NYC, although it's costing us a LOT more than you paid! Still a good deal compared to the other moving options, though, and we can keep our cube in storage in NY for what I think is a bargain rate of only $125/month while we search for a place to live. It's reassuring to hear that you did, indeed, get your stuff to fit; I think we're doing okay for space (have interior dimensions marked off on my walls and am stacking boxes there), but will be nervous right up until we load it up. We have in the past used Broadway Express's trailer service (not a do-it-yourself pod, but still more do-it-yourself than many options) and had a great experience, so given our small quantity of "stuff" and the weight (we have a lot of books, and so many movers charge by pounds, not space used) services like ABF and Broadway made sense for us. Oh, and I agree about the comments regarding hiring movers who know what they're doing (at least in the loading stages); the only time we've had damaged goods was while using a long-distance moving company, and where some more inexperienced movers didn't pack our furniture correctly. We're packing our stuff ourselves this time (most of it is boxes), but those new to it or with oddly-shaped items might find it worth it to hire someone to help who knows how to do it right (and can fit stuff in to the space, tetris-style).

It's always amusing to me to see how many Arizonans move to Seattle. There are three in this post alone, myself included, plus the many friends and acquaintances who have made the move. It must be the harsh Arizona climate of fire and hot air that inspires the more gentle, cloudy and misty environment of Seattle. Can't wait until I can join the colony :)

I loved ABF for our cross country move (Bay Area to NYC). Because of our location in Brooklyn, we were able to leave the cube for 3 hours, which was plenty of time to unload. Pricing is based on the demand for cubes where you'll be moving to, so if everyone is moving from Arizona to Seattle, moving a cube from Seattle to Arizona will probably be cheap.

They also offer storage of the entire cube for as long as you need it, so we were able to have all of our stuff stored while we were in a sublet waiting for our apartment to close. This saved the trouble of unpacking the cube into storage and moving from storage back to the house.

Mass exodus from Phoenix to Seattle! It's just so much better here. You guys are late though, April is the best time to make the move. Right when it's starting to get painfully hot in PHX, you step into cool, a bit rainy, somewhat cloudy weather.

We used a pod-type system for our move from Calgary to Toronto four years ago, and were very pleased with the experience!

The only thing we were stressed about was that our 50" plasma TV would make the trip. We still had the original box (essential!) and the box itself got sandwiched between two mattresses strapped into the walls. It made it.

Actually, the only breakage we had was one wine glass.

Our biggest lifesaver for our soft furniture was mattress bags from U-Haul. We bought them for our mattresses, but also for our sofas and chairs, to keep them safe from friction and dirt. Worked great!

We also always keep the original packaging for other electronics. Our X-Box, iMac and sound system were all packaged in their original boxes. We were lucky enough to have the luxury of a huge unfinished basement to store boxes in!

We would definitely move with a pod again, if we were doing a long-distance move.

We looked at using a container system when we moved from Oakland, CA to Florida, but due to our neighborhood, we didn't feel our stuff would be safe waiting overnight to be picked up. We also has some weird time crunches that effected what service we used. One thing though to consider in any long distance move is what kind of tax write off you can get on it. Our move was career related which allowed us to write off a big chunk of the expense.

I considered using ABF but they told me they'd need 3 car spaces worth of room to leave the container there. They didn't have smaller containers in my area and I didn't have enough room outside to leave something that large for 2 days so I decided it was too much hassle.