Saturday, February 18, 2006

 

Good Bye Ol' Yeller. When we moved to Washington last summer we got two estimates from professional movers so that we could move all our “stuff”. After talking with the movers both said approximately the same thing which equated to $1.00 per pound of “stuff” plus gas for the trip. At the time we estimated the total weight to be about 16-18,000 pounds. At a dollar a pound that’s quite a chunk of change to dish out just to move a little furniture.

So, we decided to rent a truck but even with us loading and unloading the truck the charge for a one way trip was going to be about $3-4,000.00 for one way. That was still no good because we estimated that we would need to make three trips up and back again to finish the move.

We started looking around and wound up buying a used Penske Moving truck for $14,999.00. Believe it or not, Roger and I were able to load all of our furniture ourselves. He found the most amazing belts and we were able to lift furniture that we had not been able to push across the floor in the house. We unloaded two loads at this end. Patrick helped us with the third load. All in all we moved 26,500 pounds of “stuff”. This made me feel a whole lot better about putting a little of my own sweat into the move.

Well, once we got here the truck was retired to the side of the barn where it lived for 6 months. We only drove it on sunny Sundays and to take empty boxes (and we had a lot of boxes) to WSU for recycling.

Roger drove the truck to Spokane last week to help a friend move into her new home. On the way to the new home, Sunny had to pick up a TV she had purchased from a Discount Sales store. The owner of the store saw the truck and mentioned he would like to find a truck like that to haul his merchandise. Well, the move was on Thursday and the truck made its final departure from our little ranch on Monday. The store owner is now the proud owner of a used Penske Moving truck and we are $15,000.00 richer. I guess you could say we got the move done for the cost of the gasoline, a little sweat and a lot of elbow grease. Not too bad I would say.

Comments:
That was a good truck ... and actually a fun time for both of us, although that was hard to see then. We drove different routes back and forth each time, saw a lot of beautiful scenery, visited with family where possible and bouncing our buns across many miles of bumpy roads. (You never realize how REALLY, REALLY, BAD I-5 is until you drive it in an empty truck!)

On one return trip through a back road in Idaho, we were stopped by the Idaho State Highway Patrol: We think they figured they had discovered drug smugglers, but were disappointed that all that was in the truck were empty boxes.

Our first trip from CA to WA was really "something else!" We had the initial load of essentials and were driving to unload at our new house. We were excited about our new home and decided to drive the distance in two days. I was driving the truck and Jacquie was following in her Volvo.

We stopped for the night in Redding, CA, then left early the next day - with almost 800 miles to go! We chugging along I-5 to Portland, then on to Walla Walla, where we refueled. (It gobbled up a lot of $2.75/gal. gas, traveling only seven miles on a gallon!)

We arrived in Walla Walla around 9:00pm, as I recall. We were both very tired, but wanted to reach Pullman that night, so as to be at our new home the next morning, when it was "officially" ours.

We really should have stayed in Walla Wall - but didn't - and finally arrived at the Pullman Holiday Inn Express around 1:30am, as virtual zombies! We had driven for SEVENTEEN hours.

The subsequent trips we did differently!
 
Nice sale price!
So I'm curious - how did this moving option weigh against the alternatives after you include the cost of gas and insurance? It appears that it cost at most a third of the next cheapest option. That's really clever. Damn smart if I may say so.
 
I don't have the "exact" figures but the total cost of our move including insurance, gas, tax and licensing the truck, was probably under $5,000. This figure also includes a $200.00 truck repair in St. George Utah.

Through it all we did have a wonderful time.
 
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