In today’s world there isn’t just one kind of household moving company. There are big, well known interstate moving companies, there are local storage and moving companies, there are self service movers and the similar discount movers. They all offer different benefits. Knowing which to use can be an important factor in saving money on a move.
The big companies, those that advertise nationally, have excellent reputations but in many ways they are specialists. They are really cross country moving companies. You see, in order to transport household property across state lines a cross country moving company must be registered with the US Department of Transportation. The reasons for this may not be evident until you think about it. No doubt sometime in the past unscrupulous people loaded up a family’s goods, took them someplac and sold them, never to be seen again. In addition, because different states have different rules for driving, vehicle safety limits and so on, a mover wants to have a blanket permission to travel through them all. The DOT registration provides that.
On a regional level the household moving company is the most common. Both these types basically offer complete moving services. They estimate the volume and weight of your goods, supply the materials and labor to pack them up, transport them, unload and unpack them. Even with discounts like moving coupons a full service mover will be expensive.
The third major category is the discount or self service mover. This type of mover is half the homeowner and half the moving company. The discount mover provides one or more portable storage containers to the customer’s home or apartment. The person packs all their goods inside and the mover picks up the unit and delivers it to the new location. The customer unloads it and then the company retrieves the empty container.