COST OF CROSS COUNTRY MOVE

[SandyinMonterey]

We're moving from California to Georgia. We have a 1500 square foot house, three bedrooms, 2 baths, very small dining area, living room and laundry room. Had moving company to the house today for a quote. It's $10,200 (not including any insurance). We're covered thru home owners insurance but not if something gets lost or broken so we'd have to pay more for that. Does this sound about right/average?

 

[HopperFan]

Could be. I was shocked it cost us $5000 to move from NJ to GA - 25 years ago. My DD just moved from GA to KY - 6 hour drive. We had it priced by movers .... she has a small 700 sq ft 1 bedroom apt, no room even for to take her kitchen table and chairs. They wanted $2000. Shocked. We rented a truck for $450 and moved her ourselves.

 

[DreamIsaWish]

Nearly ten years ago moved Virginia to Illinois. About $8K. Bigger house than what you're talking, but the distance was less and it was 10 years ago. Sounds plausible, at least.

 

[PlutoPony]

Does that include packing? If it does, it's a good deal imho. If it doesn't then I don't have any idea (sorry). How many miles it the move? Beware if the price seems TOO good, unscrupulous movers have been known to quote one price then increase it upon delivery, holding your items hostage on the truck in your driveway until you pay the additional $$.

For a move of that distance, think carefully about what you want to take with you vs buy at your new location. Understand what the charge is based on - per box, weight, etc. And especially think about heavy items that aren't in great shape or you really don't like. Also, older appliances don't necessarily travel well - and they're expensive to transport because of their weight. Washers especially, and if you do take one make sure you understand if the tub needs to be blocked (and how to do it). Also, are your items the mover's whole load or will they be on a truck with another person's stuff? If it's the latter, make sure you understand when it will be delivered .....

Good luck!

 

[havaneselover]

Sounds high to me. I would get at least three quotes.

 

[Gr8t Fan]

It sounds high to me, but we've always moved ourselves, the last time being over 20 years ago. For that price, couldn't you simply replace most or all of the things that need to be moved? That's how I would do it -- replace almost everything and not worry about moving and/or packing, but you may have some things you don't want to part with.

 

[SandyinMonterey]

We went thru the contract with a fine tooth comb and there does seem to be some errors. For examples, movers listed 6 flat screen TV's when we have only 3. But it also appears it may be another $5000 on top of the $10,000. Not sure if they're adding it all together because we also need a storage pod. We actually don't have a lot of stuff. Going from a small 1500 square foot home to over 4000 square foot home that we will need to furnish. We do have an extra fridge/freezer but not taking that and the one in the kitchen we're not taking either.

 

[lanejudy]

We moved almost 9 years ago from a similar sized home. No large appliances or high-end electronics, though we did bring a piano (which I think was an extra $500). I did most of the packing but we had the movers pack up the china closet contents. We needed storage for a few months since we stayed with relatives for a bit until we could get into the new place. Total cost, long distance move plus storage and minimal packing assistance was something over $10K. I think the original quotes excluding storage had been in the $7K or $8K range.

Check over the list to make sure it's accurate, like they don't have appliances listed that are staying put. The bulk of the cost isn't going to be impacted by a couple of items incorrectly listed on the inventory, though, unless something big/heavy (like a piano!). And I also recommend getting a few quotes just to compare. Good luck!

 

[Bianca and Bernard]

We moved from Vegas to FL and spent about $4000 on 2 pods.
Decided that pods were best, because they couldn't add on costs at the end, like weight or extra fuel cost or anything like that.

 

[MommaoffherRocker]

We used upack with ABF for 3 cross country moves. Similar to pods, like pp said no extra costs. It was much cheaper, if you don't mind packing yourself.

 

[angierae]

We used upack with ABF for 3 cross country moves. Similar to pods, like pp said no extra costs. It was much cheaper, if you don't mind packing yourself.

THis is what I did when I moved from Nashville to Detroit. I used ABF upack, and hired movers on both ends to load and unload (did all my own packing). Cost me less than $1000.

 

[jedijill]

Full service move from KC to Denver 7 years ago was $5000 with packing via Graebel. That was for a 2 bedroom 1200 SF house.

Jill in CO

 

[usnuzuloose]

I don't know if it were me moving that far, I would have to really like the furniture enough to move it. Have you looked into the pods that you load yourself? That could be an option.

 

[book_junkie]

We're moving from California to Georgia. We have a 1500 square foot house, three bedrooms, 2 baths, very small dining area, living room and laundry room. Had moving company to the house today for a quote. It's $10,200 (not including any insurance). We're covered thru home owners insurance but not if something gets lost or broken so we'd have to pay more for that. Does this sound about right/average?

We went thru the contract with a fine tooth comb and there does seem to be some errors. For examples, movers listed 6 flat screen TV's when we have only 3. But it also appears it may be another $5000 on top of the $10,000. Not sure if they're adding it all together because we also need a storage pod. We actually don't have a lot of stuff. Going from a small 1500 square foot home to over 4000 square foot home that we will need to furnish. We do have an extra fridge/freezer but not taking that and the one in the kitchen we're not taking either.

The $8-10k is probably about right if they're packing on one end, and helping to assemble furniture on the other; we have a larger house space but purged a bunch before we moved from TX to FL, and got quoted in that range. Roughly 1100 miles, give or take. Then again, they packed almost all our stuff, we have a lot of books compared to most households, they moved us over holiday time, and ours was the only stuff on the truck- no one else.

We made sure that they couldn't add on charges after the quote, and our stuff was actually a little bit under what they estimated as we were still giving stuff away until the day before the packers came.

We didn't do storage, but from what I remember it was crazy amounts for the movers storage- it would have been cheaper to have the cross country movers unload things, then have local movers load things up and put it in a local rental unit.

 

[DawnM]

We moved from CA to NC ten years ago. Our move was about $8K, including the cost of 2 cars to be shipped. But we had to load the truck ourselves. They unloaded on the other end, but we had to load.

 

[UCFGrad01]

Please just be careful. I got scammed by movers years ago and it was a nightmare. I didn't see my stuff for six months.

I used space in an Old Dominion pup trailer for my last long distance move, along with hired help on both ends to load/unload. In total, it was less than $2000 and went very smoothly.

 

[potterfanatic]

We moved from Florida to Vermont in Summer 2014. Our quote from the movers was about $9,000. We decided to do U-uhaul and after all was said and done, it cost us about $7,000 (this includes uhaul, storage for a month, food, gas, 2 nights hotels, extra insurance, etc.)

 

[SandyinMonterey]

Update: The move actually will cost $15,000. $10,000 for the truck and movers and $5,000 for the pod plus storage. We think it's high because, like I said, we have a small house. We would be packing a lot of stuff by ourselves into the pod to de-clutter house to get ready to put on market. We only have 3 bedrooms, with a total of 6 pieces of bedroom furniture combined (2 beds). Other room is an office which will just about be emptied before movers got here. Our dining area is very small and the table and hutch will be placed into pod by us to make it look nicer for open houses. That leaves the living room with two couches and three tables and washer/dryer. Rest is stuff that will be boxed up by us. Thank you for all the replies. I really appreciate it. We will be trying to get more quotes. We called two other companies yesterday, but only one has called back.

 

[martikus]

We found a wide variety of prices when we quoted Florida to North Carolina. We went with the middle quote. They pack & ship & unload. We did all the assembling and unpacking. The quotes ranges from $5000-over $10,000.

We rented a storage unit when we wanted to declutter and then moved the stuff back into our garage before the move. It was way cheaper for us to do that than do the pod thing.

Are you sure your homeowner's will cover any damages during moving? Or is the coverage over as soon as the stuff leaves your house?

When we move short distances, we do all the packing/moving ourselves except for the furniture and then hire someone for just a couple of hours.