All this to say, when we decided to use a moving company to relocate my in-laws from Florida to California, we figured it had to be a piece of cake compared to the days of U-Hauls and hernias. What I didn't realize was that my back isn't the only thing that has progressively weakened over the years; my mind isn't capable of much heavy lifting either. So I encountered new challenges when we decided to pay and point instead of grunt and groan.
First we had to pick a coast-to-coast mover. I'm afraid the only names I was familiar with were Bekins and Mayflower. I had seen moving trucks with the logo for "Starving Students", but the name itself discouraged me from looking them up. Who wants ravenous college types handling moving chores? Who knows how much pizza they'd require on moving day, or how long it would take them to go cross country if they're stopping at every fast-food joint along the way? So I went to the websites of the first two, but it was plain that for our offload destination (Santa Clarita), they were strictly brokers, so I figured I might as well eliminate the middle-man and make the hiring mistakes myself.
The first thing I found out was that it's very hard to get even a rough idea of what the service will cost. Every consumer's guide I could find online would only say that the price would be determined by the distance traveled and the weight of the load, something that I vaguely recall being taught in my high school physics class. But I just wanted a ballpark idea of the current market price to transport a one-bedroom apartment across the country, at which point I could feel I had gathered the absolute minimum of information that would make me dangerous. No luck. Apparently the Teamsters had sworn everyone to secrecy. I skipped to the next step: trying to find a reputable mover.
Consumers Reports didn't have any guidance. I used Google to come up with a list of websites that review moving companies, and quickly found out that every moving company in America has committed some atrocity that has resulted in disgruntled customers posting reviews with headings like "DON'T EVER USE THESE PEOPLE!" or "THESE GUYS ARE RIP-OFF ARTISTS!" or "JUST WAIT TILL I FIND OUT WHERE THEY PACKED MY GUN!" I finally settled on a company that seemed to have the fewest poison-pen reviews, and one glowing recommendation from the owner's mother. I gave them a call and they emailed me some paperwork to fill out in order to come up with an estimate.
It was a lot of paperwork... even by email, there was postage due. Most of it consisted of a pre-populated inventory list of every conceivable item that any household could possibly contain that wasn't nailed down, then multiplied by three to allow for small, medium, and large variations. The idea was to read the entire list and check off the items that were applicable, so an accurate estimate could be delivered. It was a daunting project, but it was worth my effort just for the realization that I could now safely answer "yes" when the emails come in asking if there could be anything less riveting than my website.
I had to make a decision about my in-laws' car. Our original plan was to arrange the movers, fly out to Lakeland a few days before the moving date, prepare and oversee the move, put Sue's mom and dad on a plane back to California (where they would stay with her brother until the new apartment was ready), shut down the old apartment, and drive their car back to California. Whenever I outlined this plan to someone else, they would nod their heads in approval... until I got to the last step, at which point I immediately received a knock upside of my head, followed by an inquiry into the soundness of said noggin. Sue and I thought that driving the car from Florida to California ourselves, while not a vacation, might be enjoyable and bring us closer together as a couple in a way that only a 2006 Toyota Corolla can. But we're only human, and we started to reconsider the strength of our relationship after hearing the phrase "Are you nuts?" every time we mentioned the possibility. Besides, when we factored in food, lodging, gas, time, wear-and-tear, and insufficiently-sized cupholders, we decided it was best to spring for a car-transport company also.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton