Moving House and Finding the Best Interstate Freight Quote

Moving interstate was an exciting, yet highly stressful operation for our family, once we finally bit the bullet and decided to take up a job offer 1200 kilometres from where we lived.  Even with our careful planning, there were still so many variables right up to the last minute which meant we couldn’t really relax until it was all over and we’d settled in to our new home.

One of the many challenges we encountered was the issue of interstate freight and deadlines.  We had a deadline for vacating the residence once we’d notified our landlord of our planned move interstate, which also put the heat on finding an available rental property interstate which would be ready for us to move in to over the weekend we had scheduled for our big interstate move.

We also had the pressure of having given notice to my current employer, as well as our planned start date with the new job interstate which we had negotiated at the interview.  Although both bosses were very understanding of the challenges involved in moving interstate, we still couldn’t take too much time between jobs as each additional day was income we couldn’t afford to lose.

For us the second challenge of our interstate move was how to freight our belongings to the new place.  After getting an online shipping quote and talking to a freight quote company, we realised that due to the remote location we were moving to, it pretty much came down to two freight options:  Hiring a rental truck and freighting it all ourselves or organising a shipping container through a freight company. Initially we planned to go with a shipping container to allow us to pack it over a number of days. This would have given us plenty of time to decide which items to keep and which items to throw away.

Packing over a number of days would definitely have made the move less stressful but we ended up ditching this option in the end, as the council wouldn’t let us park a shipping container in front of our house due to it protruding onto the footpath.  We only realized afterwards that there is actually a shipping container application form you can submit online for a fee, that would have allowed us to have a container out the front for a few days. The person at the council just hadn’t wanted to give us free approval for a container over the phone, but had neglected to tell us about the paid online alternative.

So, in the end we went with a rental truck which we hired for 4 days.  This allowed for 2 days of loading/unloading, as well as 2 travel days.  We saved money by returning it to the same location, even with the added cost of my cheap interstate flight to our new home, once I’d completed the 2400km round trip with the rental truck.

Despite being a pretty exhausting operation with two toddlers in tow, it all worked out in the end.  When we got to our new house we were actually relieved that we hadn’t gone for the shipping container freight option. The driveway was so steep the shipping container would have had to stay on the street at the bottom of the driveway while we unloaded it.

A positive aspect of the rental truck was that we were able to back it right up to the house, even though it was still no small task to unload it on that gradient. We also had complete oversight of our freight for the entire trip and were able to open up the back doors at rest stops along the way to ensure that none of our precious freight was getting damaged in transit.