I like to move it, move it.

Just kidding… moving sucks.

Or it can suck. A lot. Unless you get people to move your stuff for you. And by people I mean all your current/former football player friends. But if most of your friends are petite, burnt-out graduate students that don’t work out much, you’d instead probably have to pay the professionals to help you. And that’s supposed to be a lot more expensive, right?

I just moved from LA to SF, and hiring movers from NorthStar cost me about the same as what I would have spent to rent a U-Haul truck and move all my crap myself. Yeah.

The specs:

*My rate was based on the “intrastate move” pricing, which means moving more than 100 miles. They also have “local” rates for less than 100 miles. They don’t move to or out of California.

*Intrastate move pricing is a flat rate of $695 for up to 1000 lbs; $1,145 for 2000 lbs, $1595 for 3,000 lbs, etc. Coming from a living situation with two roommates and moving into a smaller place, I was pretty sure beforehand, and turned out to be right, that all the furniture/stuff from my old room that I wanted to move was under 1000 lbs. If not, each additional pound up to 2000 would be 45 cents/lb.

*After booking my reservation with Northstar, I put all my crap in boxes. They came, took a $500 cash deposit from me, took all my boxes, shrink-wrapped all my furniture and took that too, and put it all in a huge-ass truck bound for San Francisco within the next week. I didn’t lift a finger (or box) past my old apartment threshold. 

*Less than one week later, they delivered everything up to the Bay Area. The balance–the original quote minus deposit, plus $0.45/lb if exceeding 1000 lbs (I did not)–was due at this point. Aka $195.

*However, we bought a Yelp Deal from the San Francisco Yelp listing–$60 for $150. This saved  us $90, meaning we owed the movers $105 at the end of the service. THAT means, with Northstar, I moved 1000 pounds of my junk 300+ miles for just $605!  (not including tipping the movers of course… PLEASE tip your movers!)

*Compare that to renting a U-Haul truck: ~$500 for two days, plus gas (~$50-$75), plus physical pain/labor and optimal annoyance to you and your friends, plus taking your friends out to dinner for helping you. 

Rest assured, you can trust this moving company. The only thing that I think could have been better is that, although they say they will provide 24 hours notice to confirm exact date/times of pickup and dropoff (they initially give you a two-day window for pickup, and week-long window for dropoff), my notice was more like the night before.

Also, if you are moving in or out of a place with flights of stairs, which I know many places in both SF and LA do have, you might be charged extra. This fortunately did not apply to me. I’d check on it when booking your reservation.

In sum: for an intrastate move with up to or around 1000 pounds of stuff, I’ll take NorthStar over moving my own s*** any day.

And the moral of the story: I like to move it, move it.