What is the best cross-country moving service?|197372

Looking for a moving company for a small apartment from West Coast to East Coast (3000 miles). Looking for quality -- safe handling of antiques and artwork, etc. Thanks for any suggestions and personal experiences!

This depends on the city you_re moving from and to. You want to check for an agent that has affiliates in both the origin and destination. I will also recommend checking to see if this agent has it_s own haulers (those that actually drive your household goods across country). Use only reputable companies and please do not let anyone try to talk you into having your estimate done by item. The best way to get a long distance (or even local) move quote is to have someone come to your home and do a visual survey of all you are moving. For long distance moves, the estimate and the final cost should be done by the weight of the shipment and not by the inventory list (the surveyor gets his box count wrong by 1 box and your move price can jump exponentially if done by the inventory/item).

A great place to check out the reputations of a moving company is movingscam.com. I would say the BBB however few people actually file greivances with them so a bad company can have lots of complaints to them but only a handful, if any, to the BBB.

Moving these days with gas where it is will be an expensive proposition so be prepared...it will cost you almost as much to move yourself in a UHaul or other self move service once you figure in gas, lodging, food, etc.

If you want quality, find 5 (I recommend more than 3) qualified companies, get binding or guaranteed not to exceed estimates and then compare services offered...not everyone offers the same services and their prices will reflect this.

Once you find a company that you like, choose at least 2 backup companies and then from that list decide which one offers you the best quality based on your budget.

Many times, the major vanlines are not the best choice...they are only as good as their origin agent, hauler and destination agent...you_re essentially dealing with sometimes as many as 3 different franchises of the same vanline and their quality on one end may not be nearly as good as the quality of the origin agent that you chose to do business with. If going with a major vanline...ask what agent will be hauling and what agent will be delivering and then check out those agents as well as the origin agent.