a tank shipping tale
I bought the Oasis that was advertised a few weeks ago here. Our first angle on shipping was to separately crate the tank, the spa pack and the 8 50 lb. bags of salt and then use Fedex. But using Fedex for delivery from Chicago to Columbus was 850.00 with a 55% new customer discount…. and that price was without the additional 400 pounds for salt. So, the ideal thing would be to have a mover who has a truck and has a more flexible way of charging. I first posted an ad a uship.com – this would’ve let one person handle the whole pack/crate, load, drive and unload job. The bids on shipping Maria’s tank from coast to coast were excellent compared to the Fedex rate – http://moving.uship.com/shipment/Floatation-Tank/505105010/ Of course, the problem is you are dealing with people you dont know. But usually the rating system will tell you how good a shipper is… which brings us to the choice I opted on. I decided to simply use https://movinghelp.emove.com/ I had to rent a 17 foot u-haul. This cost 329.00 The labor broke down into: * Gas – 280 * Tolls 6.00 * Rental car to return home: 80.00 * load help in chicago – 235.00 * driving from Chicago, IL to Columbus, OH – 410.00 * unload help in Columbus, OH. – 120. It only took 2 people to unload in Columbus, even though they recommended 4. So the labor total was 834.00 The movers I used (Good Day Movers, Harvey, IL) had 1200 5-star ratings. They have 5 years of rock solid history. I was a bit upset at the terms of delivery. I had to send money via Western Union or Moneygram to a person (not a business) for all estimated labor expenses in advance. I was upset at this and after discussing what I was doing with Moneygram they asked: why cant you handle a business transaction by paying a business? Eventually moneygram refused to send the money electronically (because the description of what I was doing sounded like fraud to them), so I had to go in-person to send it, knowing full well the risks involved. I wanted to use Paypal so that the money could be taken back if I had issues. But it would’ve taken 3-5 days to clear and they had already loaded the truck. So I crossed my fingers and took the plunge and it worked out. So basically emove.com is just a website which allows you to pick an independant shipping/packing company. So each time you use it, you will encounter different terms and different levels of professionalism. Total shipping cost – 1160.00. I think that is a pretty good price. What do you guys think? The big damage was the drive. And again, the way to reduce that cost is to find a mover who has his own truck because Uhaul will murder you with their per-mile charges… not only that, but you are also paying the moving crew per mile as well.
UPDATE
The total shipping cost was:
- 834 labor costs (couldve been more if I had paid for 2 plane tix instead of them driving back)
- 211 – unload in Columbus
- 400 driving
- 100 tip
so the total was 1500 bux for moving.