[matthewowen]

Partly it’s a long distance thing, especially at the lower end of the market.

Imagine you want to move your possessions to somewhere that’s three days drive away. Generally speaking, you need a team in location a to pack, a driver, and a team in location B to unpack.

In practice that’s hard for companies to offer entirely in house, so it winds up being subcontracted out, and then you have the problems you expect.

If you’re moving a couple of hours down the road, this doesn’t apply, it’s easy to find local movers who will load, drive, unload with a single crew.

[raverbashing]

As per yesterday's front page: it's the Accountability Sink that keeps on giving

[johnisgood]

I think I agree. I mean, I have only moved between cities without issues, not states.

So, what should I do (or who to call or trust) if I want to move between states? Say, from California to Montana?

[lotyrin]

Your best bet is to very carefully pack your own containers (possibly with direct help from a local mover) and work with someone to deliver those between states and then carefully unpack the container on the other end (possibly with help from local movers). Problem is that you have to be moving from and to a place with space for the containers to be packed/unpacked, and sit empty or full for a while while they're getting picked up according to whatever schedule you can arrange.

If you're renting and can't accommodate this process, I highly recommend only owning things that you can fit in your personal vehicle or can sell on one end and replace on the other fairly easily.