Nope, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. It’s been a bit crazy around here lately. We are absolutely thrilled with our new home, but moving is a bit of a drag. Hopfully we won’t be doing it again!
Everything was going smoothly until two days before our move date when I called UHaul to double check on our reservation and make sure that everything was looking good with our truck. Unfortunately, that was not the case. We had a 26 foot truck reserved from the morning of the 27th until the morning of the 30th. We were closing on our old house on the 26th, and then loading the truck on the 27th. Then we were going to park it at my brother’s house over the weekend, and stay with him while we waited to close on our new house on the 29th. Then we would unload our stuff at the new house, and drive to my parents’ house and load up the stuff we had stored there back when we started getting our house ready to sell. It was going to be a long day on the 29th, but we were up for it.
UHaul had other plans. Or rather, they had no plans. They didn’t have a truck for us. They said that the soonest they could get us a 26 foot truck would be the 29th. Not so good, considering that our contract stated that we would be charged $300/day if we were still in our old house past the 27th. I talked with lots of people at their regional and national offices, and nobody could do anything – there just weren’t any trucks, even for people who had reservations. I finally tracked down a 14 foot truck that they allowed us to pick up on the 26th after our closing. They gave us unlimited mileage, but said that we had to return it where we got it, by 7am the next day.
That sucked. My parents came to our house and took care of our son and helped us pack everything into the tiny truck (without their help, I don’t know how we would have made that day work with the truck and timeframe UHaul gave us). We had to make two trips, and since we hadn’t bought our new house yet, we had to stash everything in a storage unit in our new town (my brother and sister live nearby, and came to help us unload the truck at the storage unit. It took until 3 in the morning, but without their help we would likely have worked all night). It was completely disorganized and rushed, and some of our stuff is still in the storage unit, more than a week later. We bought a little trailer on Craigs List, and have been using it to haul stuff from the storage unit to our house. But compared with just unloading everything from a truck into the house, it’s been a huge pain in the butt.
Our original reservation with UHaul was going to be $350. We ended up paying $150, and they gave us a $50 credit because they didn’t have our truck (trust me UHaul, I’d much rather tha you keep your fifty bucks and just have the truck we reserved ready for us). So the truck was $100. But we had to pay $200 for the storage unit, and had to pay extra gas money to make two trips in the truck and then return it back to where we got it rather than dropping it off in our new town. So money-wise, it was a wash. Effort-wise, it was much worse the way it ended up working out, but at least we’re here.
Check back tomorrow for more details. We did get our truck returned where we picked it up, and went back to our old house to clean and tie up loose ends on the 27th. Then our weekend became a roller coaster ride. Stay tuned…
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