What if the moving company beats you to your house!? (job, truck)
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Moving from Oregon to North Carolina. We're planning to take some time and drive it ourselves, stopping to see family at about 3 steps along the way. Once we get to St. Louis one of us will fly ahead to NC and set up the house, while the rest of the family spends a week with the grandparents.
So far sounds great. The only problem we have is we're estimating about 10 days from Oregon to St Louis. The moving company has an estimate of 7-14 days.
Anyone know, how much of a notice do you normally get to meet them at your place to unload the stuff, when it's such a big range like that?
My husband wants to see if we can just ask them to unload our stuff last, but my instinct is not to complicate things or get in the way of their normal process. That sounds like a great way to get your stuff lost/broken/etc.
Is this the perfect reason to do a PODs vs moving company move or am I missing something here?
Before Congress deregulated the household goods moving industry in 1980, the Interstate Commerce Commission required all carriers provide a minimum of 24 hours advance notice of arrival to every customer.
Congress abolished the ICC in 1995 and transferred oversight responsibly to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The FMCSA's only requirement now is that a carrier can not tender a shipment for delivery before the first agreed delivery date or period of time the customer signed for on the carrier's bill of lading.
On whatever day the driver arrives, he's required by law to wait two hours before either assessing waiting time charges or placing your goods into storage-in-transit at your expense. This is true even if he arrives after the last agreed delivery date.
I moved 1,000 miles from MO to NM. I stopped at a motel over night and beat the truck by about 2 hours -- and they made stops in San Antonio and Houston before getting to Albuquerque. I got a call about 45 minutes before they arrived. The driver lives in the truck and signs up locals for loading and unloading. It might depend on how many stops they make along the way and how far out of the way they have to go.
2 times I moved with full service movers. One time the driver got 'off'--the company could not find him and he did not respond to radio or phone calls. My stuff was loss for a little over a week. When he did appear, 3 weeks late, he called my number and said he was 30 minutes out and I had better be there or her was driving on to another place. Now, my load was almost all of his truck, a little over 18000 pounds, and he was very late, by weeks, but he did not plan to wait on me at all. so I immediately left my new job and went home to have my stuff unloaded, barely getting there before him.
The other move I had, they set a time and day, and arrived in the time frame they stated, but that was a short, hour move, which took them 2 hours so they could stop and steal the things they wanted. They paid for it in the end and just shrugged when asked where was the stuff as I just saw them take it 2 hours before, but I still lost my stuff that I too wanted.
Moving from Oregon to North Carolina. We're planning to take some time and drive it ourselves, stopping to see family at about 3 steps along the way. Once we get to St. Louis one of us will fly ahead to NC and set up the house, while the rest of the family spends a week with the grandparents.
So far sounds great. The only problem we have is we're estimating about 10 days from Oregon to St Louis. The moving company has an estimate of 7-14 days.
Anyone know, how much of a notice do you normally get to meet them at your place to unload the stuff, when it's such a big range like that?
My husband wants to see if we can just ask them to unload our stuff last, but my instinct is not to complicate things or get in the way of their normal process. That sounds like a great way to get your stuff lost/broken/etc.
Is this the perfect reason to do a PODs vs moving company move or am I missing something here?
Thanks in advance for any thoughts!
If you have a mixed load with someone else's items and your load is picked up first it will be the last load off the truck.
If you load is picked up last it will be the first load off of the truck.
You can ask the moving company but depending on their load pick up and delivery logistically it may not be a benefit for them to load yours first.
You certainly make a great case for PODs. If the moving company hits their 7 day estimate what would you have them do while you visit relatives?
I'm not suggesting they wait on us, I understand that's ridiculous. I guess I was hoping they could give us a day or two notice to narrow down the one to two week window (some companies are saying 7-20 days!). It sounds like they won't, based on other posts.
Bummer for my husband to fly there by day 7 and just sit around for a week in a hotel, because it took 14 days, but I guess a move like this is going to require some things like that!
Or maybe the PODs will give us better flexibility...
They really cannot give you a narrow window. Weather, loading/unloading conditions, road problems (scale to ice and snow), ... Can you spend a week at a resort, B&B or anything of that nature and call it staycation, get to know your new area?
We got a call when the truck was a day out but I wouldn't risk missing them. If they have to off load your stuff in a warehouse, it can be a very expensive ordeal for you. I was quoted almost $4k were this to happen....gulp. I was really stressing it because we didn't even get the keys to our new house until pretty late. I had visions of all our stuff being unpacked on our lawn, lol.
I'd go the PODS route definitely. You can hire people to help load/unload if you need it.
PODS was made for a move like yours.
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. They paid for it in the end and just shrugged when asked where was the stuff as I just saw them take it 2 hours before, but I still lost my stuff that I too wanted.
