Ok you guys and gals ...
Besides TMO when you were in (if you were) what is your favorite moving service?
Or do you prefer to rent a truck and tow your vehicle or go with the PODS or other storage container service when moving?
I am not putting a poll up as there could be a variety of answers. I have recently seen United Vanlines and I think Mayflower advertising to add to the group.
Personally I prefer the most expensive of the options. Have a company come pack you up, load it on a truck, deliver it, and unpack it. Found this to be the least stressful. However they don't move plants, animals, or flammables. It was amazing how many paint cans one can accumulate.
I have done the do it yourself move. Driving a big van, stopping for gas every couple of hours was wearing. Sometimes when crossing state lines you have to have declarations of what you have. Didn't find that one out till I got to a state line and ended up waiting four hours to get the inspection done. Dealing with weather...driving through tornado alley was challenging when storms are active. Oh yeah and now the big cost of gas.
I have done the POD thing where they deliver a pod and you pack it yourself at your leisure. They come and get the POD, put it on a truck and deliver it to where you want. Problem with this was the PODS weren't big enough. I ended up having to get two of their biggest and I still had stuff left over. Cost almost as much as having a moving company come.
Both the self move and the POD mean you need able bodied friends to help you move the heavy stuff. Getting to your new the new place sometime meant there was no one there to help unload the van/truck.
I am at the point now where I just perfer to rent a furnished place and not worry about moving household goods at all....lol.
This isn't my favorite method, but when I moved back to Texas from NH, we used one of the new alternatives, uship[dot]com. It is like an ebay thing where independent truckers are listed, and you can list your shipment and they bid on it, or you contact independent truckers and solicit a bid. We got two vehicles and all of our household goods shipped for less than a pack it yourself truck (using normal commercial companies that do that sort of thing). And, the driver drove straight through while we flew from NH to TX, and he was in Texas the next morning (WAY faster than it would have taken to use one of the traditional commercial companies). This was an actual trucking comany with 16 trucks and two terminals (on in NH and one in TX). And they use uship as their marketing venue. You have to do your homework, and there is a little increased risk. But I was pretty happy. It was cheap, fast, and the guy driving the truck even helped us load and unload.
A little side note is that I learned after the fact that uship (the website) is headquartered near my destination. So they actually ionterviewed me on NPT and for CNN Business (website) about my experience. True story.