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Back in the 70s, I had a friend whose family moved from Kentucky to Texas. My friend wasn't old enough to drive so it was his parents and his sister who would be driving the big truck. The dad took the two extra drivers out to the highway and let them both drive on the highway. Once they got used to the truck on the road, he had them drive to their house, in town. Not a big town but there were enough turns and stop lights and signs. They did pretty good once they got used to it.
I would never do it to be honest. But I have zero experience with anything bigger than an SUV, and driving around my own belongings long distance would be a heck of a first time for that sort of thing. Honestly, I've already accepted that for a big move I will need to ship stuff. For a local move, I'd just drive said SUV back and forth several times.
So is it common for people to drive a u-haul when they move several states away instead of having stuff shipped? I mean, most of the time when people drive large vehicles they generally have to have a CDL but anybody can drive a uhaul and it is not the easiest thing to drive, IMO. I had a bad experience driving one across town one time so i can't even imagine trying to do a long distance move with one, plus it is super expensive.
U-hauls come in a spectrum of sizes, with those on the low end being comparable to a large pickup truck and those on the upper end leave me scratching my head wondering why you don't need a CDL to drive one.
I say just find something you are comfortable with, and if you aren't fine with a larger truck, just take that as motivation to do a big declutter in your life and keep only what you really value while discarding all the useless junk you haven't touched in 7 years.
I drove a 26' Budget truck from Boise to Portland a couple years ago. I've found that Budget is way cheaper than U-Haul, but haven't priced Penske before. Anyway, I was pretty nervous at first, never drove anything that big before, but after awhile got used to it and had no problems at all. The hardest part was the in town driving with the sharp corners, changing lanes in traffic and judging whether I could get in and out of different parking lots. The long distances on the freeways were the easiest parts, especially since most places I needed to stop along the freeway were all designed to accomodate larger vehicles.
For our latest move we considered it, but it was February, and there were stretches of mountains, and I didn't want to be doing that, in the winter, in a vehicle where I'm not 100% sure of the brakes, tires, power, etc. Summer might have been a different story. FWIW, I've had plenty of experience driving, parking, and maneuvering trucks in and out of spaces. There's also the time factor - each day we spend on the road is costing us income in our case. So we would have had to factor lost wages in there as well.
However PODs was actually cheaper, and they made it pretty slick. Also, the pod was much easier to load than a truck, and we didn't miss a single day of work. Was really happy with them and would absolutely do that again.
Budget Truck is cheaper than Uhaul too. I've moved myself in multi-state moves several times over the years. Not the last 2 big moves, though. It was cheaper to replace the furniture than move it, TBH.
If you do a search on this topic you will find quite a few posts where people have contributed a lot of great advice.
I have done coast to coast a few times helping friends and honestly the most intimidating was pulling a car trailer with a 23 foot UHaul.
I learned very quickly that the huge truck stops and hotels with big parking lots were your best friends. I was always worried I would pull into somewhere where I could not back out and get trapped. Other than that if you take your time and pre plan it is a piece of cake!
Recently drove a 16' Penske box-van, towing a car-trailer. The box-van by itself was ungainly, but not outlandishly so. The trailer made things considerably worse, both in terms of general maneuverability and having adequate power. These vehicles are based on a Ford Econoline chassis... essentially an old-school 15-passenger van, but with the van-body replaced by a 16'-long box... wheelbase is probably lengthened too. The engine - a 6.2 liter gasoline V8 - was barely adequate without the trailer, and downright unacceptable with the trailer.
The next size-up vehicle is a substantial increase in vehicle class: a tall diesel truck, just shy of a tractor-trailer. This was the vehicle that we initially rented, having overestimated the size of our cargo and even further overestimated out capacity to grapple with such a staggeringly large machine. Oh, and it got stuck in the snow... requiring an 18-wheeler-wrecker to extricate it.
In sum, I'd aver that the "average" driver will be OK with an Econoline-class truck, without a trailer. Adding a trailer, or "upgrading" to the larger class of truck, is not recommended.
Anyone know the statistics on them? Are they over-represented in serious accidents? (beyond low-hanging tree branches, as Bruceski, said - mind your overhead clearance). Also pay attention to how they are loaded and weight distribution, it matters.
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