Affordable Moving Companies

Moving from Texas to Washington we used smart move, and friends who moved at the same time used ABF. Both of us would use them again.

Not super cheap, nor hugely expensive. Though we both had more stuff than you and also had to put it in storage for a few months.

Another option is to rent a UHaul truck and hire local movers to load and unload for you much like you would with PODS/SmartMove/ABF only you have to do the driving.

Thanks, I will check out SmartMove.  We were avoiding renting a UHaul for the sheer fact that it's actually more expensive to drive it across the country than it is to have someone else do it for us, with gas prices right now!  

I dealt with this last year.  The U-haul was more expensive than paying someone to drive a truck!!

I used U-pack (ABF) and it was a fairly positive experience.  It would've been better, but I wasn't on the other end to load the truck so I paid them to load it.  I didn't want any packing - I had almost everything in plastic containers.  Well I paid for 2 or 4 hours (the minimum) and they loaded it in like 30 minutes...because they took no care for putting the heavy containers on bottom, etc.  So I had a lot of plastic containers broken on the other end.  Not a lot of the contents got damaged (I can't really remember anything) but that's because I packed it pretty good.  I think a lamp got bent and that was about it...besides all the broken plastic containers.

Oh...and I just remembered.  When we unloaded it - the ramp was SUPER steep.  I couldn't really carry much down...

So I guess maybe it wasn't great...but it was pretty reasonable comparing other prices....

I have my doubts about that. Nobody gets that kind of crazy discount on gas. You still pay for fuel either way.  I'd be suspicious that the 'cheaper' option is before 'fuel surcharges'.

It is not impossible for a hired company to be cheaper than doing it yourself, but I'd dig a little deeper to make absolutely sure you are comparing apples to apples.

U-hauls aren't the best deals anyway.  I often pay the same or less for a 26 footer (with liftgate) from Penske or Ryder than I do for U-hauls. Downside is that the lift trucks have to be rented as local and returned to the same place. Sometimes even with the return fuel they are still a better deal.

You could also try to find a trucker deadheading in that direction with time to kill too.

I've been doing a ton of research, trust me, and for us to rent a 10' truck from UHaul and pay for gas out there, it would cost more than us renting one U-Box and having them drive it out there.  About $1760 for the U-Box and then about $1650 to rent the truck, plus the cost of gas.  These have been our two cheapest options so far.  The big difference in those two are the size, obviously, but we're only moving a few large items, so there's no need for us to have a lot of space.

Driving a moving truck from Wisconsin to Oregon, and then back to Wisconsin, is really not a good option for us.  It would also require us to pay for flights to get back to Oregon.

If you know of other options that are cheaper that I'm not aware of, I'm all ears!  This has not been an easy search.

I don't know what kind of vehicle you have, but have you thought about a trailer?  I towed a 4x8' trailer behind my pickup truck and was able to move 2500lbs in one trip.  The 4x8' trailer can hold a queen size mattress.  And there is another trailer one size up from that.  If you don't have a vehicle that can tow a trailer you could also look into renting one.  Rental Trailers are a lot cheaper one-way than trucks.

Of course, the other 6000 lbs of my stuff went with the movers. :-)  Geez I have a lot of stuff!

I can't see any option but the rented truck or trailer being the most cost effective.  If you hire someone to just move your stuff but you pack it all yourself they won't pay you for anything in boxes that breaks.  If you've never seen a professional moving crew load a truck then that might not mean much to you, but trust me...I've moved six times now.  I don't care how well you think you packed.  Movers are VERY creative at breaking things.  At least if you did the trailer or truck thing then you have no one to blame but yourself if anything breaks!  And if you used a full-service company to pack everything for you (so that it doesn't break) then it's going to end up costing WAY more. 

Budget is usually substantially cheaper than U-Haul.

From West Allis, WI to Portland, a 16' truck from Budget would be $1100 (plus gas), a 17' U-Haul would be ~$1400 (plus gas).