DO-IT-YOURSELF OPTIONS FOR SAVING MONEY ON YOUR NEXT MOVE

Moving your home, especially long distance, can cost you a mint if you want full-service packing and shipping. That might be your only option if you have one of the larger McMansions or your apartment is full of antique furnishings that need to be protected. For those who can rough it a little, there are more and more do-it-yourself options out there.

Rental trucks allow you to do it all yourself -- pack, drive and unpack.

Say you're moving from New York City to Danbury, Conn., deep in the suburbs 68 miles away. A 24-foot truck -- enough to pack up a three-bedroom apartment -- from U-Haul will cost you $271 for two days with 109 miles thrown in.

The same move from New York to Pasadena, Calif., would be $2,746 for 10 days with 3,400 miles included. With Penske, such a cross-country trip in a 26-foot truck costs $2,501 with 10 days and unlimited miles.

If you're up for packing but not driving, a few services will drop off containers at your home for you to load at your leisure. Then they will drive or ship your furniture to your new home. It costs more than renting but you pay nothing for gas and travel expenses and you get plenty of time to load and unload. The downside: these services aren't available everywhere and you'll have to arrange street parking yourself.

Door-To-Door (doortodoor.com) will drop off large crates made of plywood and covered with a weatherproof tarp to your home. They are big enough to hold king-size mattresses and each fits around one bedroom's worth of furniture. You have five days to load and unload on either end.

Location may be a problem. Door-To-Door serves most, but not all, metro areas. In some places, such as New York City, the company won't leave the crates on the street overnight. You'll have to pay for their moving company to load your crates for you.

That will cost you $5,400 for four containers from New York to Los Angeles, for example, or $3,000 from New York to Boston. Prices include insurance up to $1,200 per container.

If you've always wanted your own semi, ABF U-Pack Moving will deliver a 28-foot trailer to your street or driveway. You pay by the foot and you can use as much or as little of the trailer as you want. The company packs the rest with commercial freight.

Nineteen feet of trailer space, enough for a three-bedroom home, would cost $3,000 from Chicago to Los Angeles, but you may have to pack it in one day depending on parking regulations. Insurance is not included.

Compare those rates with Allied Van Lines, a full-service international mover. For the same three-bedroom, you'll pay around $7,000 for a cross-country move or $3,000 for New York to Danbury just for the transport, plus another $2,000 for full-service packing.


-- July 17, 2006

By Marshall Loeb

From Marketwatch