{"id":190542,"date":"2025-09-03T11:31:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T16:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=190542"},"modified":"2025-09-03T11:31:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T16:31:22","slug":"7-mistakes-to-avoid-to-keep-your-cross-country-move-from-turning-into-a-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/skills\/homeownership\/7-mistakes-to-avoid-to-keep-your-cross-country-move-from-turning-into-a-nightmare\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Mistakes to Avoid to Keep Your Long-Distance Move From Turning Into a Nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/p>\n

Several months ago, friends of ours hired movers for their family\u2019s cross-country relocation.<\/p>\n

They got bids from three companies and chose the cheapest \u2014 International Van Lines \u2014 both because of the price and because the delivery date best matched their schedule. The company had negative reviews online, but ChatGPT and Forbes<\/em> recommended it, and the bargain seemed like a risk worth taking.<\/p>\n

When the movers arrived, my friend was concerned to see that the name on the truck and boxes was not International Van Lines but that of a different company. And the crew seemed to be packing things up haphazardly \u2014 throwing onions from the kitchen counter into boxes along with toothbrushes from the bathroom.<\/p>\n

The movers said they\u2019d drive directly from Oklahoma to the family\u2019s new home in Idaho and get there in a couple of days.<\/p>\n

The family headed out to ID themselves and took up residence in their empty house, awaiting the arrival of their possessions. When a few days went by without hearing from the movers, my friend reached out to ask when they might be expected. She couldn\u2019t reach the person she\u2019d booked with and was passed to a succession of new contacts, who said they\u2019d keep her posted as to an updated delivery date.  <\/p>\n

A week went by. Then another. The family was sleeping on air mattresses and living with the few possessions they\u2019d brought with them; they had no beds, no furniture, no cookware. When my increasingly frustrated friend would text and call asking for updates, the company wouldn\u2019t respond for long stretches. When they did, they only offered vague assurances that delivery was coming as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

Finally, a month after the movers had driven away with their belongings, my friend got word that the shipment was on its way. However, when the truck \u2014 much larger than the one loaded in Tulsa \u2014 got close, the driver found it couldn\u2019t fit down the street to our friends\u2019 new house. He decided to park the truck in another location, stay the night, and then rent a U-Haul (which the family had to pay for) to ferry the boxes to their house the next day.<\/p>\n

The original crew, unwilling to stick around, disappeared, and the driver hastily assembled an impromptu team of sketchy, surly local laborers to unload the truck and finish the job.<\/p>\n

After a month of limbo and living out of suitcases, the family finally had their belongings back \u2014 although even then, not all of them were intact.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, our friends\u2019 experience isn\u2019t unique. Cross-country moves are fertile ground for scams, stress, and screw-ups.<\/p>\n

To understand how to avoid a moving nightmare, I talked with Finn Murphy, a former professional trucker and the author of The Long Haul<\/a><\/em>. Finn\u2019s seen it all, from well-run moves to catastrophic ones. Here are seven mistakes he recommends avoiding to make sure your stuff gets where it\u2019s supposed to, safely and on time.<\/p>\n

Mistake #1: Hiring Movers Off the Internet<\/h2>\n

One of Finn\u2019s fundamental rules is to get off the internet when hiring a mover.<\/p>\n

When most people need to move, the first thing they do is Google \u201cOklahoma City to San Francisco movers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Problem is the top result isn\u2019t necessarily a moving company at all. It\u2019s probably a broker<\/em>: a middleman with no trucks and no crews.<\/p>\n

Brokers take your booking, then farm it out to different moving companies. The broker pockets a commission, and you end up with a moving company you\u2019ve never spoken to or vetted. When your stuff is missing, you call the broker, who shrugs: \u201cTalk to the movers.\u201d When you call the movers, they shrug: \u201cTalk to the broker.\u201d<\/p>\n

When people\u2019s stuff gets lost or held up for weeks, it\u2019s usually because they hired through a broker. That\u2019s what happened to our friends.<\/p>\n

Finn explained what goes on:<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say your shipment is picked up in Oklahoma for delivery to San Francisco. To be efficient and cost effective, the moving company doesn\u2019t want to take just your stuff West; it wants to pick up another load of someone else\u2019s stuff along the way. If that additional load hasn\u2019t materialized yet, your goods get unloaded into a warehouse to wait for one, potentially leaving your stuff sitting there for weeks.<\/p>\n

Our friends\u2019 stuff was originally taken not to Idaho, but to a warehouse in Houston, awaiting another westbound delivery to piggyback on. At one point, the company told the family they could expedite a more direct delivery if they paid more money \u2014 essentially a shakedown.<\/p>\n

A brokered move doesn\u2019t just risk delays. If your things are damaged or lost, liability is murky: the broker claims no responsibility, and the carrier may not even have valid cargo insurance.<\/p>\n

The hard part about all this is that it\u2019s difficult to identify when the \u201cmoving company\u201d you\u2019ve reached out to is actually a broker. When my friend talked to the agent at International Van Lines initially, she asked him directly if the company acted as a broker, and he said that they did not, that \u201cIt\u2019s just us.\u201d He was warm, responsive, and said all the right things, even insisting, \u201cWe\u2019re the good guys in the industry.\u201d Lots of other people have had experiences where companies straight-up lied about whether or not they farm the job out.<\/p>\n

So what should you do?<\/p>\n

Before you sign a contract, consider these things:<\/p>\n