Making a Small Move

June 10th, 2009 by Matt DiChiara| Posted in Apartment Guide, Moving | 3 Comments »

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Relocation.com

If you don’t have a lot of stuff to move, that’s both good and bad.

The good: your move will probably be more straight-forward than if you had to move a lot of stuff.

The bad: many moving companies might not be interested in handling your move.

Fortunately, you do have other options if you’re making a small move, but they require a bit of elbow grease on your part.

Show Them the Money

The problem of working with full-service moving companies for smaller moves is that they often don’t make enough money on smaller moves.

To make sure they do make enough, they might want to charge you a minimum to do the move, whether you’re moving long distance (where your cost is generally figured by the weight of your move), or moving locally (where your cost is determined by the time of your move and the number of movers you need). You also might not have much choice in pickup and delivery dates.

You should always call a mover for moving quotes to see if they’re interested in a small move, but generally speaking, they’re probably not interested in a move under 2,100 pounds.

Fortunately, there are other options. Some moving companies specialize in small moves, like Apartment Movers or Mini-Moves. Check them out.

If you have only a few things to move, shipping them via a parcel service might be more economical. Price out your move this way.

Investigate mobile storage options. Companies like PODS deliver a portable storage device to your home, you pack it, then they pick it up and either store it, or deliver it to your new home.

Another company to check out is ABF U-Packing Moving. It has mobile storage containers that you pack yourself, or you can load your items onto one of their trucks, and they’ll deliver it to your new home. You do the loading and unloading of the container or truck.

Finally, do you really need to move it? You might find the cost to move something is more expensive than what it would be to buy a replacement item at your new home. So think about just selling what you have now, and buying the items at your new place.