About two or three years ago, my husband and I decided to move to central Missouri when the time came for me to retire from a long teaching career. This was that year.
Back in late March and early April, we made a road trip to jumpstart the moving process by finding a rental house in which to live. That was the start of the entire planning process for the move: getting our house sold, how to get our household goods and vehicles to the new area, and more. As soon as we arrived back in Southern California, the research online began, and phone calls made. We talked to our realtor, interviewed commercial movers and got quotes from them, got quotes from U-Haul, talked to specialty item movers (i.e. piano movers) and got quotes. Fortunately, I had a student teacher this past semester who was quite capable, and my students got used to hearing my phone ring in the middle of lessons.
Our house sold before it officially went on the market, in an "off market" sale. It was a 30-day escrow and we got a rent-back to allow us to stay in the house until we could get moved. We hired movers for piano, household goods, and decided how to get us from Point A to Point B. Here's what we came up with:
Household goods - commercial moving company, affiliate of North American Van Lines. Top notch ratings.
Piano - Modern Piano Movers. After hiring them, we find out that they are based down near St Louis.
Vehicles - our pickup would tow our older sedan, 4 wheels up, on a U-Haul auto transport. Hubby would drive said pickup. I would drive the newer sedan. We would take 4 days to get us from Point A to Point B.
We also had one thing we hadn't planned on: the need to have our house "termite tented". This means that you bag all of your food (in cabinets, refrigerator and freezer) and move out of the house for 2-3 nights, so that Vikane gas can be blown into your house to kill all the termites (and lots of other bugs). We moved across the road to a local Best Western. It was challenging to pack a lunch to-go from a hotel room, but I managed to go to work through that.
As we have said on this forum many, many times, a moving trip is NOT the time to go sightseeing. This is especially true if you are towing anything like another auto, U-Haul trailer, or just driving a U-Haul truck (with or without an auto transport or trailer behind it). After deciding how to move and reserving/hiring needed trucks and people, we had to start planning our own trip. Having any type of longer vehicle combination means you should look for lodging that says "Bus/Truck parking" and easy off/easy on to the highway you are traveling along. It means not planning excessively long days. (As I share my road trip report here, you will see exactly why.) So we definitely went with reservations for hotels!
This thread will be continued with more details.
Donna