apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I moved from LV to New York and rented a U Haul. Driving cross country was the easy part. Finding a place to park in front of the building and trying to coordinate unloading your truck is a pain (i.e., locking the truck each time you walk away from it). I even got a parking ticket for leaving the truck over night on the street. There are all sorts of crazy parking regulations you could get caught up in. You should find out from the building whether there is a place to put this pod and whether they think it is feasible.

Where will you park the pod, and how will you move it for street cleaning?

I did this using ABF Upack from Oakland to Brooklyn. It was fantastic! The only thing is that in NYC you only get 4 hours to unload (which ended up being more than enough for us). It worked really well for us because we needed to store our stuff while we were on our honeymoon and in a sublet. But basically, a call 3 days before we were ready to unload and the pod was delivered right on time. We sold our couch and bed, so didn't need to worry about that fitting in, but we had a ton of other junk, including a 7 ft surfboard and a bunch of SCUBA gear (I know, super useful in Brooklyn), and NOTHING broke in the move. Easy as pie, and when you consider gas, food, hotels and the nightmare of driving a Uhaul across country, it was a total bargain, under $1700. The only way I would use another service is if work paid for a full service mover to pack up our house and do all the loading/unloading.

Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment, but I've moved cross-country three times, and I've rented a Penske truck and moved myself each time. It's such an incredible cost savings and if you can relax a little bit, it's an great way to see the country too.

I moved from the Bronx to Florida 3 years ago using Door-to-Door, with one 5" x 9" cube. For the city the guy came, dropped it at my door and gave me 3 hours to pack before returning to take it away. It was cheap ($800) and pretty easy.

But when I tryed to use the same service to move back to NY from Florida, 1 year ago it was $1800 for the same service. So instead I stuck all of my belongings in 20 boxes and shipped them UPS. It was $300, no furniture was included and UPS carried them out of my apartment onto the truck. I spent the money I saved on buying replacement furniture.

I agree with Molly Margarita. I moved from Iowa to California with a Penske. It was relaxing and I actually enjoyed it. Everyone should drive across the country.

When my mother moved from NJ to AZ, she did essentially the same thing as kariefury. She sold off her big pieces of furniture (admittedly, she didn't have many of those), shipped everything else via UPS, and then bought what she needed when she got there. It worked out very well - I don't remember what the cost was, but she looked into a few things and it was her cheapest option. I should note that this was about 10 years ago and the cube movers weren't popular then, if they were around at all.

I can't imagine that it's going to be easy to find a place to put your cube in the street in NYC. And, unless you have a group of people to help, including someone to stand guard, you're going to have to lock the cube every time you walk away from it.

I don't have any personal experience, but I would caution that it is extremely important to make sure the company has all your contact information - and has it correct! If they can't "find" you, they sell the contents of your container to the highest bidder. I work in a law firm and we represented a client who had this happen. I can only imagine how stressed I would be if that were to happen!

Thank you all for your comments!!

Our company is giving us a good amount for the move, but we would like to spend the majority of it on getting set up once we get there. We will be getting a short term place for a month or so until we can dig in and find something that suits us, so a month of storage on the Manhattan end will be necessary. I like the idea that our belongings will be all together and locked - Smart Move supposedly has a GPS tracking unit on each vault. We have plenty of room for them to drop it off here in LV, but you can pay an extra $300 to have them help unload in the city.

I love the idea of driving cross country as I would have company, but I have no idea what I would do with a truck full of our stuff for a month... and I have a feeling that my partner would rather put a gun to his head.

I thought about UPS too, but I don't really have anywhere to send them to/store them yet. From what it sounds like, Smart Move contracts with UPS and ships your vault with them... so essentially it is like one big box with all of your stuff?

I will check out ABF Upack too - thanks! I get a little freaked out since I can't find any reviews of this Smart Move place, and it almost seems like such a perfect solution that there has to be something horribly wrong.

We are beyond thrilled to be getting out of Vegas - now if we could only snap our fingers and have everything done. May the moving gods be with us ... thanks again for all your help!

Barrett

We used http://www.doortodoor.com/ when we moved from San Francisco to New York and were very happy with the service. They came by and dropped of the container in front of our apartment, we loaded it up over 2 days, then they came by, we locked it, and they took it away.

Please keep in mind though that in Manhattan they won't drop off your container at your curb for you because of post 9/11 regulations, so you'll have to get a full-service move on NYC end (movers open up your container and bring in your stuff for you - more expensive but awesome for a walk-up building) or you will have to go to the storage yard with a U-Haul, unpack the container, put everything into U-Haul and then take it to your new place.

Good luck!

I moved with ABF (Brooklyn to LA), and it was terrible. The box/pod itself had clearly been dropped--with some force, so probably from high up. The bottom pallet part of the box was shattered as were, you may have been able to guess, some of my belongings. Because it's a "you-pack" system, they claim no liability whatsoever for the condition of your belongings, and apparently feel free to throw everything you own around as if it's a box of pillows.

And yes, I had packed things very securely, with the aid of my engineer father, who has a knack for structures, weight, force, etc. It would have withstood plenty of normal banging around and moving, just not being dropped from 20 feet in the air or whatever they did to it.
Be very, very wary.

I used ABF about 2 1/2 years ago to move from LA to Long Island with mixed results. At the LA end, the pod was supposed to arrive in the morning, but didn't show until about 5pm. I had originally booked it to go to Queens, but ended up finding a place on LI, where they wouldn't deliver. So be very careful about your final destination. Moreover, the ABF Brooklyn terminal was terrible. I had called to verify that they were open at 9am on Columbus day for my local movers to get the stuff. They showed up on time but it turned out that ABF did not open until noon, and ABF Brooklyn was very rude about it. They also charged me for an additional month (I picked my stuff up on the last day before they would charge). The main ABF office in Arkansas was very helpful in reversing the charges, though, and FlatRate movers in the NYC area were reasonably priced, efficient and painless for the local move.