Uhaul Pods Review

My husband and I moved 2000+ miles across the country in June 2021. We knew this would be expensive and no easy feat. We decided to use Uhaul u-boxes for a number of reasons.

     1. We didn't want to drive a U-haul van across the country. I personally don't like driving big cars. U-Haul trucks don't have cruise control and by the time you get done paying for the gas and the mileage you might as well have just shipped it. Plus we would've had to put my car on the back and I've heard that towing the car still adds wear and tear and mileage to it. 

    2. We wanted to make a vacation out of driving across the country. We hate long distance driving and wanted the ability to take breaks. It's hard to find parking with a big fan and a small car attached to the back of it. 

   3. We were ok with not having our stuff for a period of time while we were on vacation. If you need your stuff right away- shipping is not for you. 

4. We thought it would be a more "leisurely" (like that's a real thing right??) move. We could take our time and slowly unpack each u-box before it had to go back. 

4. So in reality we wanted to utilize the "pods" company because they have 16ft long containers. We figured we could just get one big container- put everything in it. We ended up not going with pods because they only had one day that they could deliver the pod to our house- literally the day that we were closing on the house. I called about 2.5 weeks ahead of time so if you decide to go with pods book ahead of time as far as possible. 

General information about U-boxes

The U boxes are95x 56 x 83.5  in size- for the record they can fit a king size mattress standing up. 

They cost $80 per box and you rent them month to month 

It took two weeks for our stuff to ship from our old city to the new city.

You must purchase your own locks for each pod that you have. 

You have to pay a fee to have the u-boxes delivered to your house, a fee to ship the boxes to your new city and then a fee to deliver them to your new house. These all get charged to your card at separate times 

They have to be parked on a smooth surface (aka driveway) and cannot be placed on the road.

They provide you with "pads" that are just blankets. You must return all the pads and I don't know how well they are washed- I swear some of them smelled like cat pee- yuck!

                                                 

The inside of one of our U-boxes

The Pros: 

-Uhaul U-boxes were technically cheaper per pods than what "Pods" quoted us- mostly because they are smaller 

-They were alot more flexible with delivery days (including weekends) 

-They allow you to make a reservation when you don't know your exact address

                                             

The Cons: 

-The u-boxes were a lot smaller than pods and therefore we had to leave somethings that didn't fit behind- like our ladder 

-The website has an estimator of how many u-boxes you will need. I put in that we live in a 3 bedroom house with average amount of stuff and it said we needed 3 boxes. I then changed it to more than average amount of stuff and it still said 3 so originally I ordered 3. My husband felt uneasy about it and right before they were delivered convinced me to change it 4. As we started loading them we realized that 4 still wasn't enough. We ended up having to pay an extra delivery fee to get two more delivered to the house. 

Now listen- I am not a hoarder- by any means. In fact I went through my whole house and got rid of plenty of things that I didn't want to haul across the country. We do have more garden accessories and tools than probably the average person but still. The website estimator is drastically wrong. Maybe if I lived in a three bedroom apartment by myself would I have only needed three u-boxes. 

Anyway- the ultimate tip from this experience is get more than you think. The local Uhaul lady told me the second time I had to call her that I could order more boxes than I thought I needed and that if they were empty they would cancel the order. We ordered 6 total and used 5 and I mean we packed 5 to the brim.. We had a 3 bedroom 1500sq ft ranch with a small shed. And I don't even have any kids- I couldn't imagine how many I would've needed then! 

The Frustrating:

U-box customer service- or should I say lack thereof. 

So we didn't have a house (and therefore address) yet when we reserved the U-boxes to move- we were told this wouldn't be an issue. We were told that it would arrive in the major city on a Monday and that it would be delivered to our new house on Tuesday. 

    I called them multiple times on the Monday that the u-boxes were arriving trying to figure an estimate time of when our stuff would arrive on Tuesday. Finally I was able to find someone. She told me I could pay a private company $2000 to drive the pods to our house or I would have to wait another month to U-haul to deliver it to our house (for their fee of course). Apparently they were so backed up with u-box deliveries. Our other option was to pay to rent a truck- unload all of our stuff into the truck and then drive it to our new house and unload it. Unfortunately this is what we did because we wanted our stuff back. Plus if we would've waited we would've had to pay to rent the u-boxes for an additional month. 

    We rented a uhaul truck- drove it to the major city (about 30min away from our house) and they put our 5 U-boxes in a parking lot. We spent all day unloading all of our stuff into the truck in a random parking lot and then driving it to our house- unloading all the stuff into our garage and then coming back and reloading it. Thankfully it only took two trips- but it was a terrible day. 

Every time I had to call u-haul it was easily a 15 minute wait time before I actually got to talk to a real person. I did learn some of the local numbers and that helped some of the wait time but it was still super time consuming. 

Unloading all of our stuff in a random parking lot. We unloaded from the pods into the van and then drove the van to our house. 

A load of our stuff from the u-boxes in the uhaul truck. 

Tips and suggestions for packing and loading u-boxes

Put as many big items in first- we put all of our furniture in except for our bed and designated a space for it. Then pack small stuff around it. 

Cover all your furniture in blankets or the pads that they give you- especially if it is real wood so that it doesn't get scratched. 

Give yourself extra time.  You don't necessarily need a lot of people to help you with this- you spend the most time playing tetris. Honestly we packed most of our pods just the two of us. 

We put as much of the stuff as we wanted to pack into the pods in our garage as possible. This gave us the ability to quickly look and assess what we needed and what would fit best where. 

Don't pack soft things like clothes, blankets, towels in boxes. Instead use them for padding. I ended up unpacking boxes of clothes to throw them into garbage bags to provide more padding for larger awkward things. 

There are hooks on the sides of the U-boxes if you want to tie things down. We tied our bikes to the u-box so that they wouldn't fall over in transit 

Pack the U-boxes as full as possible. You don't want stuff moving around freely and getting damaged. 

Best Suggestion: Take pictures of each box before you close it! That way you somewhat know what is in it. Also each box has a bar code take a picture of the bar code as well. As we were finishing a box I would take a picture of the contents, close it and then take a picture of the barcode so that when I went back through I could tell what was in each U-box. Also This is good to have all the barcode numbers because U haul didn't necessarily remember which ones were mine. 

Overall: 

God help me if I ever decide to move cross country again but I would not utilize U-boxes after my experience with them. I would recommend utilizing pods or another company instead. It was alot of stress and no money saved.