Moving from Tampa, FL to Ann Arbor, MI (packing, moving company, ABF)

[moving2Mi]

We are moving from Tampa to Ann Arbor, MI (1,165 miles) sometime in July or August, and at this point we're fairly flexible with the dates. We have a 3 bedroom home, but we're selling most of our furniture and just bringing the boxes, a few mattresses and possibly our sectional couch. (We don't want to pay an extra $1,000 to move our $500 couch, so we want to make sure we're making a wise decision.)

We've searched and searched but still have not found the best option for moving.

Moving options we've considered:

1. Renting Moving Truck (UHaul/Budget/etc) and doing it all on our own.
(Budget 24' truck is $440, but we're not sure how to calculate the actual total including gas & fees. Has anyone priced this out lately?)

2. Renting a Pod of some sort (PackRat, Upack, PODS, etc) I would have thought this would be the best option financially, but the quotes I'm getting are as much as a moving company! Has anyone done with lately?

3. Hiring a moving company. GMVanLines gave us an inhome estimate of $4000 because he predicted our load would be 8,600 lbs.

4. I know this sounds odd, but my brother recommended I try finding another person/family that is also moving from Tampa to Michigan, and split the price of the moving truck & gas. Does this interest anyone?

[mich2fla]

Did you look into ABF (upack.com)? You can price them out online and see what your costs are.

[moving2Mi]

I just called Upack.com

They were not able to give me an exact quote because I do not know exactly how much sq footage I'll be using in their truck, but their estimate was $1600-$2500 (quite a big range). I would not know how much I would pay until I actually had the truck packed, which worries me.

[chance2jump]

We used ABF's Upack from NW OH to Charlotte, NC. Our household consisted of 2 beds (queen & full w/headboard & frame), couch, clothing, BIG tv (57" rear projection - lots of space!), washer/dryer, garage items, lots of horse equipment, lots of boxes of misc "stuff," 2 small dressers. You have to think "Vertical" when you pack to cram into as small as possible. We used 14ft on the trailer. Our bill came out to about $1200.

The cost of the Upack was actually the same cost as a UHaul when gas was taken into account. ABF allowed more days with the trailer than UHaul would have given us, so we could focus on packing it tighter. Having them transport for us was the deal maker -- we could then focus on getting ourselves and animals moved and not have to focus on driving our household through the mountains.

You can determine the gas by estimating you gas mileage to be about 8-9 miles per gallon and total miles.
1165 / 8 = 145.625 gal needed. Round UP (better to be safe than sorry) = 160 gal needed x avg price of gas (we'll use 3.75/gal) = $600.00 in gas with these numbers.

You also have to determine if you need insurance (UHaul charges $14/day), toll fees, food, etc as extra expenses.

[moving2Mi]

Thank you for taking the time to point that all out, I agree with everything you wrote out and like the fact that you seemed to have come up with the same numbers I did.

Although I can't believe you were able to fit it all in 14ft!?!? Wowers, it sounds like you have 2x's the stuff we do (we're leaving a lot of our furniture) and yet, I am afraid it won't fit in 14 ft. It's taking up our whole 2 car garage as of right now, lol!

Thanks again for your input!! Very VERY helpful!

[mich2fla]

Be sure to pack it tight. When we quoted with them, they said we needed 2 full trailers from Grand Rapids to Atlanta. Last weekend we loaded up the trailers. We used one full trailer and 10' of the 2nd trailer. This is moving a household of 6.

Be sure the boxes are packed tight, no wasted space. Take your time to load things properly. Secure your load every 5-6 feet. Odd stuff like bikes takes up space.

Get rid of stuff if you needed to as you are loading. Among the big things, we got rid of the riding mower trailer, a twin mattress, garbage can, and a 14' ladder.

The inside of the trailer is like 9' high by 8'6" wide. It didn't look much but we were surprised how much stuff we can put on the trailer.

Good luck!

[JosephineBeth]

I just packed my ex's ABF UPack trailer this weekend since he has been in GA for a while with our son. We had all his stuff in a 14 ft storage place. They picked it up this morning. He has 10 ft of space going from CA to GA. $2600 was the total. He had washer/dryer, futon, lamps, big tv, 6 bookcases, all the boxes of books from those bookcases, and about 25 more personal boxes. It all fit in a little over 9 ft of space. You can REALLY pack that puppy high!! We had 4 or 5 boxes on top of the bookcases alone. I am a little worried about the TV since it's on the floor of the trailer - but we padded it as well as we could. Ah well it's a tube TV - he can pick up another off Craigs list or something if anything happens.