Costs differ widely between a full-service move and a do-it-yourself move. Find out what costs are involved in the different moving scenarios.
When planning your overall "moving" strategy, one of the key items that you'll need to focus on is the actual move itself. Do you hire a full-service moving company or a truck rental company where you simply rent the truck for a do-it-yourself move? One way to make that decision is to do a cost comparison between the two methods of moving.
Full-service move
With a full-service move, you'll pay handsomely for the convenience of this type of move. If you want the Cadillac of services, you'll pay the moving company to load, unload and drive the truck and also for the packing and unpacking of your belongings. The cost of this service is usually computed per hour times the number of workers that are employed. You can also choose to have the moving company only load, unload and drive the vehicle, thereby saving you money on the time it takes to pack and unpack your items (a substantial savings).
In both scenarios, the price of the truck rental, as well as the gas and the insurance is covered under the full-service move. But you will have to pay for packing supplies such as boxes, bubble-wrap, packing paper and moving pads.
Do-it-yourself move
With a do-it-yourself move, you'll save a huge chunk of money when compared with a full-service move. Here, you'll only have to pay for the truck rental since you'll be taking care of the packing, loading, unloading, unpacking and driving of the truck rental. Just remember that you'll have to add any additional fees to the daily rental fee such as insurance costs and a possible return trip fee charge on a one-way rental. And when comparing costs of different truck rental companies, keep in mind that some companies charge a flat fee regardless of mileage while others charge an extra fee per mileage if you go over a certain amount of miles.
One of the biggest expenses for a truck rental is the price of gas that you'll pay, as most trucks average 10 miles per gallon. With a short-distance move, the cost won't be that great, but a cross-country move will be a different matter. And just like the full-service move, you'll also need to pay for packing supplies.
