In the United States, many consumers are more than happy to pay for convenience. That can mean getting a bag of chips at a gas station or picking up some candy at the checkout, and indeed some people feel that way about moving. For an expensive premium, major moving companies will pack, move and unpack your goods to take the hassle completely out of what can be a draining moving experience.
All of that convenience comes at a great expense and not all consumers are ready to plunk down that cost, even with the benefit of not having to do any labor in what is often a labor-intensive practice. For those consumers, there are some options that involve varying degrees of work done by the consumer and, accordingly, varying costs.
It is important to know your options when deciding on a moving process. There are certainly services out there that will meet you half way, splitting labor in exchange for reduced cost. These are a few moving methods you should consider when embarking upon a long-distance move.
Do It Yourself
Companies like U-Haul will let you do your business with one of their trucks and a collection of packing materials. The benefits here are that you have full control over how things are packed and really have no one to blame if things get broken in transit. You can pack on your own terms and can pick up the truck when you are ready to move full boxes. You can travel with your goods and you do not have to worry about your worldly possessions on a cross-country trip. Compared to a full moving company, U-Haul is quite inexpensive and can help you shave money off of a moving process.
Of course, the negative here is that you have to do all of the work yourself and when you are talking about a full move, that can mean a lot of packing, moving, driving and unpacking. The benefit of all of that labor is obvious in the substantial savings seen in comparison to a full-scale moving company but for many the extra work is just not worth it.
Pod-Style Systems
In a practice that has grown in popularity over the last decade, some companies will send special containers to your home that you then fill at your own convenience. The pod company will then transport those containers wherever you need them transported, taking on all of the complications of transportation but giving you the burden of packing and unpacking.
The positives of the pod system include being able to pack at your own pace and getting rid of the headache of actually transporting goods over a long distance. You can make your own travel plans to your new home and find your goods on the door step waiting for you to unpack. Again, savings can be seen on a pod-style move over a full scale mover because the burden of packing is yours.
Naturally, the burden here is that you do have to do the packing and you have to make it fit into a particular container. It is also a more expensive prospect than the U-Haul solution in most cases because insurance and transportation costs are incurred by the moving company that would otherwise by your responsibility in a U-Haul move.
This is another original article by Joe Lane, co-owner of The Lane Real Estate Team at http://www.joelane.com/. Are you looking for an experienced Tri City WA Real Estate agency? With 20 years of service based, business experience, Joe and Colleen Lane work hard to serve home buyers and sellers for the Tri Cities of Washington's Kennewick, Richland, Pasco, and surrounding areas.
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