Moving van: about $1660 in rental fees alone (for the minimum size truck, not including gas, hotels, food, pain and suffering, etc). Even split 3 ways, that’s $553. Fees increase by a relatively modest $200ish dollars up to 17′. And there is a large price gap between that and 24′.
About 2000 miles according to mapquest, assuming 10 miles per gallon, that’s 200 gallons, or about $400 in gas. lodging probably adds an additional $40/night for a room Assuming 65 mph on average and 12 hours/day driving, that’s 780 miles/day, and thus three days, so two nights. Add $80. Food costs might increase, but I’ll be eating no matter where I am, and so I’ll assume that any increase is comparatively negligible.
so, adding it all up, I’m looking at roughly $763 minimum as my personal portion of a threeway split of a rental plan.
Flying would run me $85, if I left the first weekend in June. (bless you Sun Country Airlines, though it’s unavoidably a redeye — Curse you, Sun Country Airlines). Given 7 boxes of books at media rate, (filing box size, something like 15x13x12) at about 50 lbs, that’s about $16/box * n boxes, where n is in the 5-7 range (I’m paring down my collections. Quite a bit). That makes $80-$112. Plus two big boxes full of clothing & stuff, which should run about $100 bucks each. Max total: $397.
Price difference: $366. I think for that quantity, I can find satisfactory replacements for my unimpressive bed, desk, chair, and shelves. In addition to being able to sell the aforementioned items. And I save myself the misery of a cross country drive in a uhaul. (though I do miss the joy of seeing lots of places I’ve never been. Win some, lose some.)
But a wonderous journey . . .
Having made a couple of long distance moves in a U-haul, I can offer the following advice: It is a pain in the ass!
Towed a car from Dallas to Sacramento via LA when I moved west for law school. Not recommended!
In 200 from Alexandria to Orange, CA. No car in tow made it much easier. And kinda sporty, too, driving a truck in the snow!
Sell the stuff and buy new stuff later.
Bah, ROAD TRIP! You know you want to. I can fly out and lead you to all the lonely attractive hitchikers. Then we’ll win a prize at some provincial county fair, then rob a bank, then learn something about ourselves.
If you go the shipping route, we’ll need to figure out a valid mailing address beforehand. Every time someone’s tried to send something larger than an envelope to my apartment, my first notification is a slip from the post office about 8 weeks after they’ve returned it to the sender.
We can do a road trip on another occassion, in some less wallet-busting way. You should still come out to the bay area and hang. And maybe fly back with me. =)
Thanks for the shipping info. I’ll talk to Seth about his experiences, add tracking info to the packages, and/or see if they can hold it at the post office for me.