Moving Cross-Country: Need Advice

[XXX-er]

I've done a few corporate moves which were awesume and some I paid for

I duno about the excited states but up here the moving expenses to move closer to your job are tax deductable eh?

I paid for the very last move which wasn't that far but I saved about 1 K by just packing everything that would fit into 2 astro van loads insted of renting a moving van

I purging/chucked everything else out figuring I would have the 1K to replace what i needed on the other end AND 10 yrs later i'm still $$$ ahead

[warthog]

All I got are vibes. My big moves have been 15 minutes north, and then 2 streets over, with an in-laws house available both times to stay in while we got it prettied up and done just right. Luckily, the in-laws house is huge, and we just stayed in our own section.

Again, vibes. It will be awesome when it is all done though, and you can sit on your porch with a Lone Star (TX right?), and think about how bad it sucked.

[nest]

Pack everything, hire a moving company, send the family to new town via plane, take the dogs and vehicle to AK and create a new life. Would be just as hard as what you want to do.

Haha. Best advice in this thread.


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[Nobody Famous]

U-Haul sells and rents a lot of useful stuff for moving, but their cardboard boxes are a notable exception, their boxes suck ass. They'll rip and tear almost immediately the first time you pick then up or stack them. Printed on every box is something about good for ten years or three uses (3 moves). No way.

Go to Home Depot or Lowes, their moving boxes are stronger than U-Haul. Any moving company will sell you boxes and moving supplies also, IME stronger than HD and Lowes. I learned this the hard way.

In any college or military town there's a thriving secondary market on Craigslist of people re-selling their used moving supplies, mostly boxes.

[dtown]

I've done a few corporate moves which were awesume and some I paid for

I duno about the excited states but up here the moving expenses to move closer to your job are tax deductable eh?

I paid for the very last move which wasn't that far but I saved about 1 K by just packing everything that would fit into 2 astro van loads insted of renting a moving van

I purging/chucked everything else out figuring I would have the 1K to replace what i needed on the other end AND 10 yrs later i'm still $$$ ahead

Check into tax breaks...having moved cross country a few times, one in my own dime, we wrote almost all of it off. While it’s a big hit initially, you’ll got most of it back down to the cost of fuel and hotel rooms.

Maybe get a frequent flyer credit card, use it for all expenses then pay it off and you have a few free flights to boot.

Moving companies are worth every dime in my experience

https://www.google.com/amp/s/turbota.../amp/L5podfG5I




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[Harry]

No real input, but...

A) I am your friend. Hate seeing you move away from here, but I understand your situation.

B) call or text if you need help packing shit.

C) I laughed at the idea of those two retards you call dogs being brought on a plane as service animals. That German shorthair is ok, but still a complete spaz. that Wiemeriener of yours has got to be the dumbest fucking dog I have ever met.

Vibes bro, you have your work cut for you. Let me know what I can do to help.

[neufox47]

I moved from the NE to Cali, used abf for the stuff and a car hauler for the car. Cost $4,400 including labor to move a full 3 bedroom apartment and 1 car. Was pretty easy frankly. Your plan sounds super hard.

What about sending 1 person to do the house shopping and leave the other 3 home?


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[cmcrawfo]

Burn it down, claim insurance.

Easy peasy.

[wooley12]

That's a great idea! I'll look into that since everything will already be at the storage unit. Renting a moving truck for a one-way haul isn't cheap, so maybe it won't be a huge difference. I'll post what I find out.

I only had to move the wife and myself out of 3000 sq ft house we sold and 2500mi into 1000sqft. rental place. Well, we flew our 15 y o dog ahead to my daughter who had asked if we could keep it a few weeks, 10 years earlier.

FWIW.

Advice I got, and followed, from a Epic skier who managed corp. moves. "Use a national name and work with the local office." We called 2 companies who sent an agent out to give a quote. Picked the slightly higher quote from the agent my wife liked. I'm no fool. We packed ourselves. Turned out the driver of the United truck that moved us said he would have made the haul no matter which local company we chose. We had folks on the other end be there for the unloading while we took our time crossing.

i.e Hot markets - We should have bought a place the year before we got here.

[hawkgt]

No real input, but...

A) I am your friend. Hate seeing you move away from here, but I understand your situation.

B) call or text if you need help packing shit.

C) I laughed at the idea of those two retards you call dogs being brought on a plane as service animals. That German shorthair is ok, but still a complete spaz. that Wiemeriener of yours has got to be the dumbest fucking dog I have ever met.

Vibes bro, you have your work cut for you. Let me know what I can do to help.

Dont know either of you in real life but this is good shit here... real life

Pack your shit
Lose it, damage it
Don’t matter,

Family, friends , life

[jerlane]

This may seem obvious, but be sure to label all your boxes well and in multiple places. It takes a long time to get fully unpacked and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to dig through the same boxes looking for stuff because we didn’t label things well.

[MontuckyFried]

Driving cross country with two dogs, (you said big active dogs?) takes some advance thought.

Not all hotels/motels allow big dogs, and in big urban areas if an animal lover sees dogs left in a vehicle overnight it'll be the animal control swat team and headline news with you as the bad guy. Pushing the drive an extra hour to get to a motel that allows big pets can be hit or miss, call ahead to avoid surprises late at night after a long drive. You get one surly desk guy saying "our website is wrong, sorry..." and you're screwed.

Good point. I might end up having to do what I did when I moved from there to here to begin with...do it in one straight shot. No stops. It sucked in a moving truck, but it can be done. Did it in 26 hours last time. Have done it under 24 with a car.

Oh-yeah, purge! Get rid of half your shit. When we sold our house last year we did a major declutter so the house would show well and we didn’t miss any of it.

Definitely been working on that! We sold our house partially furnished, so there's half of it. We're letting them have all our patio furniture, all bedroom furniture, a couch, and more. That should help a LOT! Recently sold our big sectional, so there's another huge chunk. We're actually just keeping a few key heirloom pieces. Super heavy, antique oak so sucky to move, but not as bulky as beds and couches. One of the biggest chunks of what we have to move is big tools of mine (not selling) and office stuff. Now that I think about it, as a whole, the family stuff really isn't that bad. It's mostly MY stuff that's probably half of it.

[MontuckyFried]

Moving 1700 miles *away* from Montana?

My only advice: don't do it.

Probably not helpful.

I know. If makes my heart hurt. I love it here and will hopefully return some day. In the meanwhile, I'll definitely be making the annual pilgrimage for some of the best skiing on the planet. My wife and I always laugh when we talking about bringing our kids here when they're older and showing them our house and old neighborhood. We can hear it now. "WHAT?! We lived HERE and we left?!"

All I got are vibes. My big moves have been 15 minutes north, and then 2 streets over, with an in-laws house available both times to stay in while we got it prettied up and done just right. Luckily, the in-laws house is huge, and we just stayed in our own section.

Again, vibes. It will be awesome when it is all done though, and you can sit on your porch with a Lone Star (TX right?), and think about how bad it sucked.

Thanks. As sad as it is, we are seriously looking forward to the lower stress associated with a low cost of living and our spawn getting to spend some precious time with the grandparents while they're still on this Earth.

I moved from the NE to Cali, used abf for the stuff and a car hauler for the car. Cost $4,400 including labor to move a full 3 bedroom apartment and 1 car. Was pretty easy frankly. Your plan sounds super hard.

Man, that is cheap. I put more thought into it, and one of my biggest concerns with using any moving company aside from cost alone is with my cargo. Everybody has stories of moving companies destroying stuff, and with this load in particular I have a lot of very sensitive stuff that I'd feel better handling from A to B. Hadn't really thought of that until now.

What about sending 1 person to do the house shopping and leave the other 3 home?

Sounds good in theory, but we'll have to do this one together. Wish I could leave the kids but nobody we can really leave them with for an extended period of time. Wife doesn't know the area like I do, and I don't have the visions for homes like she does. We really do make an awesome team when it comes to real estate, so we'll definitely be tag-teaming the effort. Too bad it has to be so complicated, though.

Dont know either of you in real life but this is good shit here... real life

Pack your shit
Lose it, damage it
Don’t matter,

Family, friends , life

Fo sho. Harry's proven to be an awesome friend IRL. I've actually met some really awesome folks from TGR and they've all been great. We may give each other a lot of crap online, but in the real world, you mags have been better friends than most of the fakey fakey people we thought were our friends...especially in this town.

This may seem obvious, but be sure to label all your boxes well and in multiple places. It takes a long time to get fully unpacked and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to dig through the same boxes looking for stuff because we didn’t label things well.

Oh, man. You're right. I'll have to try and not be in too much of a rush to not simply label the boxes properly. Good tip.

[MontuckyFried]

No real input, but...

A) I am your friend. Hate seeing you move away from here, but I understand your situation.

B) call or text if you need help packing shit.

C) I laughed at the idea of those two retards you call dogs being brought on a plane as service animals. That German shorthair is ok, but still a complete spaz. that Wiemeriener of yours has got to be the dumbest fucking dog I have ever met.

Vibes bro, you have your work cut for you. Let me know what I can do to help.

Thanks, Harry! You're an awesome friend. You're one of the few who is actually there for us and understands the weight of the situation. I'll definitely hit you up when I need a hand. I probably will when it comes to getting it out of the house and into the van. We're packing everything this weekend and pre-staging it all for easy loading. And yeah, my dogs are maniacs. Can't believe they haven't slowed down yet at their advanced ages. Ridiculous. The ironic thing is that the Weim is actually the smarter of the two, but she's such a friggin spaz you wouldn't know it. The GSP/Lab however is dumber than a box of rocks. Some seriously inbred lab genes in there somewhere. At least she has that lab sweetness though, so she's great with the kids when she's not mowing them over. I've already told my wife that after these dogs kick the bucket, I get to pick the next dog. I want a chill one next time. I couldn't deal with dogs like these ever again. At least not with our stage in life. They weren't so bad when I had time to run them daily in the wilderness. Those morons need like 20 miles/day of running full speed up and down steep mountains to be content. They have some SERIOUS endurance, I'll give them that.

BTW, Harry. I'll be coming into town this weekend. Working on getting a couple friends together at the RH, so I'll let you know when. Maybe early Friday evening. Hope you can join if it doesn't conflict with the local BBI!

[GeezerSteve]

Our move 1-1/2 years ago was much simpler but stressful nonetheless, thus I've got no relevant advice to share.

Posting to wish you the best with hope that this new chapter in your life is a good one. Onward and upward!

[Micol]

Try Uship

This site links shippers and those that need things shipped. You can have people/companies bid all or just parts of your needs. I have used this service and there is room for negotiation and you field multiple offers not just one.

https://www.uship.com

[Marshall Tucker]

Like warthog I got nothin, but this is a great read for a plain biscut having lived in a grand total of three houses in thier lifetime; one move from rual ass town to big major city 4 hours away righ after college. Vibes and good luck!

[oldblue]

Having done a move like this twice, yeah twice with very young kids this is what we did:

Tried to buy house prior to moving to new location both times but it never worked out. Ended up doing short term rental in both places so we could be there while doing the house search. Rentals were shit both times but turned out to be the only way to actually deal with house hunt.

Packed stuff ourselves, paid large corporate movers to haul most stuff. Used Uhaul trailer for some items didn't want movers touching/stuff they wouldn't move for a reasonable price (tools, etc.) Put most stuff in storage at new location.

Oh, and drove whole fam all at once both times.

[XXX-er]

I had corporate moves where they do every thing and you get resettlement $$$$, to sell the house get 3 market appraisals and they will buy your house or you got 2 months to sell it your self, they pay all the fees ... it was great. I used containerized moving so my stuff wasn't touched too many times and they just took the cube off the truck on the other end

My manager told me about being offered THE job somewhere and he had to be there tomorrow so call the wife tell her what you did, pack some clothes and get on the plane, buy whatever you need on the other end. The corporate mover comes in and packs everything, they pack the fire wood they will even dump the contents of an ash tray into newsprint wrapping paper ... might be something important in there right?

[MontuckyFried]

Our move 1-1/2 years ago was much simpler but stressful nonetheless, thus I've got no relevant advice to share.

Posting to wish you the best with hope that this new chapter in your life is a good one. Onward and upward!

Thanks, Steve. Even a move across town can be stressful. Nobody ever said moving was fun! Haha. Wife and I were talking about it this morning, and it seems that no matter what we end up doing, it may be best to just rip it off like a band-aid. Going to get totally packed up this weekend. Seems ambitious, but might even trailer it all to our storage unit Sunday to consolidate and have ready for the big move. That way, we're at least totally cleared out of the house and ready to close next week! Then it's game time to go shopping.

[GeezerSteve]

might even trailer it all to our storage unit Sunday to consolidate and have ready for the big move.

That's how we did it, except for two big pieces of machinery that were a total PITA to move. More specifically, we gave away or threw away roughly half of our stuff, moved the rest to 3 storage units, then waited until our new house was finished and rented a big ass truck for the final move-in. In the interim, we lived in our camper and out of our backpacks -- doable for a couple with no kids, but not an option for you. Honey was in between jobs and I worked my 1/4-time law practice from wifi spots and cell phone. I was tapering into semi-retirement and cleared a gap in my work load, allowing me to treat the move as a 3/4-time job for a couple months. Very different circumstances than yours, of course. Stepping back and looking at the big picture, once the move was substantially complete, it became clear that moving was the right decision. It had been years since we got to push the life reset button.

Good luck re finding a new homestead. I hope you have a setup and time to look around. Rushing to buy a new place can have some fucked up ripple effects.

[alfajores]

Don’t use Uhaul’s cube solution. Long story short, they paid me (a random person) to tow a Uhaul cube on a tiny trailer across the country with no internal record of it, and I signed nothing. I showed up, they had no record I was supposed to take it, and the receiving end had no information that the cube was even coming. Don’t forget that I may have taken the whole box van and trailer off roading a number of times through Wyoming and Montana, or I may not have. Sorry if you had your grandma’s China in there!!!

[MontuckyFried]

^^
Geez. That's nuts. Thanks for the inside intel! Haha.

[MontuckyFried]

So here's a quick update. Got the fam down here to Tejas. We just blasted straight down without stopping. No hotel stays. Wife and I just took shifts sleeping and driving. That was crazy, but the kids were total champs and passed out through much of it. We did it in a bit over 24 hours! All is well so far. We left the dogs at a long term boarding place in Bozeman where they can run free so they're happy til I go back for them. We already found a new house and are already under contract. Woohoo!

I just booked a one way plane ticket and a big trailer with a car dolly. I plan on leaving the fam here at our temporary quarters (my parents' house) while I go back and retrieve the dogs and our belongings. Just gonna make the long slog back myself, but that's easy compared to dragging the family around. Dogs will probably just ride shotgun with me in the moving van.

Everything's going about as smooth as I could have ever expected. Not sure how, but it is.

BTW, I am REALLY glad I chose not to use a moving company. Talked to a buddy in Big Sky who said he used a professional moving company to move his household from Denver to Big Sky. Their house is smaller than our old one was and it still cost him about 20 Gs. His company ended up footing the bill, but I was shocked. I knew it would be crazy expensive to serve us out in the sticks, but I didn't know it would be THAT bad. Going from a major city to a major city is much cheaper apparently. I understand why since the logistics can't be cheap on that, but still, no way ol' boy here could swing that kind of loot.

Thanks for the advice so far everyone! I'll post an update after we make it further down this crazy road.

[Peruvian]

^^^glad it’s working out.

Your friend got ass raped.