Moving a Household Across the Country

Moving homestead from one state to another, sometimes even right across the country may be highly stressful, but inevitable due to either transfer due to your job or your spouse’s, better education for the grown up children or due to any number of reasons. Packing up your life’s belongings and moving to unknown territory is bad enough, but to have to entrust all your belongings to a third party in the form of a ‘moving company’ and their transport is the worst part. However, there are some essential ingredients that can to some extent alleviate the stress and reduce the risk of overspending for the services of the movers. One of the primary tasks you have is to do planning, as meticulously as possible.

Planning a Move Across the Country

One of the first decisions you need to take is what all to carry and what all to dispose off, either donating or selling or plain discarding. Once you have narrowed down what all needs to be moved, it may be prudent to make a list of your possessions to be carted off by the across country movers. This may sound preposterous, but in the long run it will help you in more ways than one, as we shall see. The next task is to decide if you need the movers only for just transporting your stuff or other peripheral services, which include packing, sale or hire of packing materials, unpacking and storage at the new location. Some companies with national coverage will have their staff cleaning up your new home before the move and even offer to rearrange the stuff there. Of course, each of such added services will have a cost component. Hence, it is wise if you have some budgetary allocation for the whole operation right in the beginning. The cost of moving will vary with the seasons and even the day matters; for instances Fridays cost more than Mondays! Some of the important items that should be deliberated while planning include:

• Select the preferred date of move in advance ( 4 weeks if possible for better concessions  from the movers)
• Do you need help in some of the additional services and if so what all?
• Do the movers offer these services or do you or worse they, have to hire a third party?
• Are there ‘valuable and fragile’ items involved in the consignment?
• Do you want to just hire a vehicle to move it yourself?
• Do you need temporary storage facilities in your present location (e.g., if your house lease terminates before your stuff can move) and also in the new location?
• What is the approximate weight and volume (in cu ft) of your stuff when packed?
• How much is the insurance cost and what all should be covered ( your list of stuff will be required here)
• What all features are offered in the insurance cover?

Picking the Best Cross Country Moving Company

Once the questions above have some satisfactory answers, we have come to the selection of the ‘best’ movers. Simply opening yellow pages in the phone book and start dialing to 2-3 companies or searching on the internet and contacting an equal number of such firms will not get you want you re hoping for. This is because both the phone book as well as search engines churn out names of companies which have paid the respective service providers and NOT because they are the best in the business. At times references from friends or colleagues who have moved in the past or by company’s reputation may be more valuable. In any case is wise to get at least 5-6 offers and examine each offer in detail. Then follow up with suitable negotiations before you decide. Keep the down payment in present location to the minimum and keep the balance payment till everything is safely delivered in destination. Check out the movers’ membership in the national association and get some inputs about them.

Plan and execute well and give sufficient time for the process lest you should regret for having picked up the wrong choice, for we are talking about moving your life’s worth in domestic goods!  Make sure you find the right movers when moving across the country.