Tips on moving or shipping books

Any ideas?

In the United States, use robust medium sized boxes and ship them by the Unites States Postal Service at medium rate. It is usually cheaper, quicker, and more reliable than using a mover.

Robert

2: That's media rate

1: I use the Small U-Haul box or a Banker's box, because I can't lift the Medium box when it's full of books. The Banker's box is okay for moving but not for shipping. Pack the books flat, by size. Fill the box to the top if at all possible. This allows the boxes to be stacked without breaking book spines. If you can't get a fairly even top to the box, label it DO NOT STACK. It won't help much with the post office, but it'll at least remind you on the other end.

Also, it takes longer to pack books than anything else in the house (unless you have LP's or lots and lots of antique china and glass). So start early.

So for a large amount of books--will the P.O. pick it up for shipping? I'm used to bringing small packages physically to the P.O. but that is unfeasible with a large library as I don't have a car. And what are we talking about monetarily?

No, the USPS has weight limits on pickup. Depending on your location now and final destination, you might want to look into a regional LTL carrier such as ABF. They have a moving divison and sell room on their trucks by the linear foot. By utilizing someone like that you'd be able to get door to door service at a much lower rate.

If you're doing several hundred books, and especially if you're enlisting the aid of friends and/or family to help pack them, you might want to seriously consider setting up a packing list by carton so when you get to your new place you won't be wondering which box contains what :)

>so when you get to your new place you won't be wondering which box contains what

And where is the fun in that? :) Unpacking and finding again some books is usually fun (I moved ~4000 from one end of a city to the other a couple of years ago - unpacking was the best part of it) :)

>1 pranogajec: Good luck with moving the books.

AnnieMod, you're clearly more adventurous than I am :)

Thanks for the info. I did a quick rate quote online from ABF, and was quite astonished at how expensive it would be. My biggest concern is cost--the most cost-effective methods are what I'm looking for. I'm beginning to realize that I will have to part with quite a few more books than I originally thought, otherwise the moving costs will be far beyond my budget. Kind of depressing.

> 9

Is this a job-related move? Because, if it is, your moving costs may be deductible: http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc455.html

It certainly depends on the distance as well as the volume. And don't go by online, deal with someone directly. You'd be surprised what you can get discounted that way. If it's an in-city move, perhaps something like a PODS container would be cheaper. And check with your local library to see if they can help you with referrals, tips, etc.

>9 pranogajec:

What about storage? Leave some books behind and then move them in batches over the next months/years (or move them together when you can)? You still will pay the same money I suspect for the move (if not more) but they won't be in a huge batch)

I just moved from Bulgaria to USA. Shipping my library was not an option - I am not sure how long I will be here and the price was... astronomical. So I left it in storage (well.. a big part of it went to friends and so on but ~1000 are in boxes and stored - I had the option of using my Mom's apartment but I would have stored them somewhere even without it).

It is an added cost but will give you some time to decide which ones you really want to keep. And if you decide you want to let them go one day, you still can do it

>8 debavp:
When you need to move, you need to move :) The amusing part is that just an year later came the move to the States.... I had not even managed to unbox all books and I had to start boxing them again :)

No no no, my nerves couldn't take that :)

Once a co-worker, who's husband had moved to FL from TN while they were separated, got back together with him and decide to move to FL herself. I kid you not she shipped everything except the bed and sofa via UPS, collect, to his office. This was 25 years ago and I recall it taking her about a week of two trips a day to the UPS drop off and it was well over 200 boxes. I think it cost him about $800 and a whole lot of aggravation :)

Thank you all for the advice and tips...I'm on the job market now so there's no set move yet, but it's likely. I'm just trying to think ahead and see what the options are that will best preserve my sanity and my collection!

14.>

Rent a moving truck, and if you can, drive it yourself. If not, draft a friend, brother, etc for the driving or to share the driving. The fewer people you have to hire, the better for your budget.

The small banker's boxes would be ideal for your books. You can buy them at Office Depot or, probably, any office supply store. Buy the boxes in bulk and pack as much of your collection as you can in advance, so that when moving day arrives, you are already packed and have only to load boxes on the truck... oh and this packing in advance applies to everything, not just your books.

Two years ago, my best estimates told me that moving my stuff from California to Mississippi would cost at least $5,000 if I hired professional movers. Instead, moving everything myself and hiring only my brother to drive, I got the move done for less than $2,000. Most of that was truck rental; and I could have cut costs more by renting a smaller truck... but I never did get a good handle on what size truck I really needed.

15: That's probably it. Moving the books myself will be cheapest, if more of a headache. And right now, cheap wins.

I'm reviving this thread to see if anyone has any more advice to add to the previous posts.

My partner and I will be moving cross-country, about 2900 miles, and we've got a little under 2000 books. Ye gads. We'll get rid of a few books but probably not many. I'm not sure yet whether we'll also be moving with some furniture, or just with books, clothes, and small household items (already a lot, because of the books).

Seems like the options are:

1) rent a truck and drive books and other things across ourselves (with or without packing/loading/unloading help)
2) ship some or all of the books by media mail, and move other stuff another way
3) hire a moving company to do one of the following:
3a) to pack/load and ship the stuff across; or
3b) just to drive the stuff across (we'll load/pack ourselves); or
3c) just to load and/or pack a truck, which we'd then drive ourselves.
4) put some books in storage and come back for them later; move other books by another method above. If we did this, I'd guess we'd still need to take 40-50% of our books for work.

Both cost and convenience are considerations. We'll have to cover most of the cost of the move, so keeping it cheap is good; on the other hand, moving is a huge pain, and it might be good to get some professional help with the heavy lifting and the shipping/driving. Professional movers would also be much quicker with packing and loading, which might be important.

Does anyone have any experience of using any of these methods that you'd be willing to share, either here or by private message? Any tips on what you'd do again, or do differently? If anyone has experience of using professional movers, what would you recommend about (a) packing and loading books ourselves vs. hiring some movers to load the books into a truck, and (b) having a moving company drive the books across (which probably means they charge based on an estimate of the weight) vs. driving them across ourselves (but possibly getting movers to help with the loading/unloading).

First, I'd reconsider taking all the books. Soft-cover fiction is extremely easy to replace, especially classics. People are dumping their physical books left and right. Our library now gives them away for free. The other libraries in the area have bag sales where they practically beg you to take books. I'd also recommend dumping books related to hobbies you no longer have. I'm now hauling down from the attic books I stored there 20 years ago thinking I'd get interested again, when in fact I was moving down the road in a completely different direction.

A friend used PODS for a long distance move, packing it herself, and was very happy. It offered her a lot of flexibility because she could store the POD on the departure end until she was ready to receive things on the arrival end.

I'm about to do a move myself - here's what I'm doing which may or may not apply to you

1. I'm packing my library myself. If you have someone pack the books for you make sure that they come to your
home and do a sight survey. If you try to bypass this step and just tell the packers you "have a lot of books"
their idea of a lot is about 25 books. I made this mistake - all my books were THROWN into large boxes that
were impossible for one person to lift. Not to mention hundreds of my babies with broken spines
(I cannot stay in the house with packers - I make all of us nervous wrecks by hovering). Small boxes only.

2. I will either rent a truck (which will require that I rent a storage unit at my destination as I know it will not be
living for much longer than 18 mths) or rent/use one of those PODS things. The disadvantage to the PODS is
I will then not be able to access the books at all during my residence. The advantage of the PODS is that
once it is packed the unit is moved and/or stored for you.

3. No matter which way I go on item 2, I will probably hire someone/s to pack the truck for me. I may unload
them myself.

4. I am not packing my books flat, I am packing them bookshelf upright. All the books in a box are the same size
(and trust me, by the end of this process of sorting books for size you will be cursing publishers for not
standardizing book sizes!) so the stress is distributed across all the books. If at this point the box is not full I
am putting some odd sized books flat on top. The point is to have the box so full that there is no room for
books to 'roam' and possibly cause damage by rubbing against each other. Any 'holes' are packed with
packing paper for the same reason. This is VERY time intensive.

5. I am using LT as my packing list. All the books are tagged with box numbers so I can find things easily. Thanks
LT! Plus if I ever have to pack my books again I have a protocol to follow and don't have to sort for size again.

6. I've learned that sometimes stored books attract critters. I am putting some whole cloves in each box. NOT
touching the books as the oils from the cloves may damage them. I don't know if it will help but I'm hoping it
won't hurt. I HATE it when something tries to 'make friends' with me when I unpack my books - it's happened
more than once but I also live in the South.

This will be the most convenient and cost effect way to go for me. I've done it both ways, having it all done for me and doing it all myself. My preference of the two is neither, moving stinks and I hate it. I have had professional packers who have done an excellent job packing my books but after my most recent experience (see item 1) I will do what it takes to protect my books (plus it is REALLY expensive to have someone do it for you). Know that I literally feel your pain - good luck.

In 1997 it cost me about USD 1300 to get my books from New Orleans to NYC, using movers. I only regretted leaving most of the furniture behind; as it turns out, even 4000 books don't take much space in those giant cross-country trucks. I could have easily had EVERYTHING brought over, for the same price.

In 2002 I rented a truck to get those same books and a few bookcases into storage on Long Island; that cost about fifty or so (U-Haul). If you don't mind driving long distance, I'd expect U-Haul and similar to be the cheapest option, within the US.

In 2003 I paid again about USD 1200 to get the books from Long Island to Toronto. IMO, the movers were worth it. For thousands of books, post office won't be cheaper.

I've also sent hundreds of books overseas (from the US), using M-bags. I'm not sure USPS still has that service, it was great--about 40 cents per pound. Returning to Europe from Canada, I'm looking at slow sea freight, probably again in the neighbourhood of a thousand dollars.

whatever it is your moving, even if you hire people to actually do the moving, ALWAYS do the packing yourself. I've personally had and had friends that have chosen to let the movers pack things and that's the easiest way to get things stolen. Especially if it's a long move and you wont notice the loss right away.

Thanks for all the tips; keep them coming.

So far using online estimates for moving a small apartment cross-country, I'm seeing estimates of around 3000 for a self-packed moving container, around 2800 to rent a u-haul truck (not including gas). With other companies renting a truck is cheaper, around 1600-1900. Then there's gas to take into account: probably quite a lot given the distance, weight, and lack of fuel efficiency of these trucks.

20 - I'm surprised by the low cost of movers, for so many books. Maybe I should just get a company over to estimate the cost of moving mostly books, with a few other things. I assumed they'd base their quote on estimated weight.

I've used the M-bags to send to Europe too; very good price. I think it does still exist; I vaguely remember seeing something on the USPS website earlier when I was searching for media mail rates. Could you take yours across the border to ship from a US post office?

I've only participated in two moves where the army didn't take care of everything, but here's my advice:

Pack the books yourself. There's not much as devastating as finding the movers have destroyed your books (or placed a glass lamp at the bottom of a box they filled with books). When I moved by myself (I think I had around 1000 books at the time), I bought a few 50 gallon plastic storage boxes from Wal Mart for my books. They were heavy when filled, but it saved on making too many trips between the vehicle and home (one of my peeves). A dolly will help with any weight issues.

Vehicle rental: Whichever company you go with, remember that the ramp into the van is HEAVY. While trying to extract the ramp to load the first piece of furniture the ramp got stuck (it didn't come out completely straight), so I gave it a jiggle. Which caused it to slip from my hands, straight onto my foot where it ripped my big toe nail off. I was lucky not to have broken anything.

#22

Well, it has been ten and fifteen years since those moves, but 3000 still seems a bit high, in comparison. I would always call rather than rely on online info. Another thing; would you need your things ASAP, or can you wait? If your stuff doesn't fill an entire container, the movers may wait until other convenient orders fill it up, and such combinations are cheaper (that was the case with my NO-NYC move).

FWIW, the movers I used on the US-Canada move were United Van Lines, LLC, 1 United Drive, Fenton, MO (636) 326-3100 (I spoke with someone in Long Island, though).

But if the numbers remain close to what you quote, I'd as soon pay another 500-1000 dollars as drive a couple tons across the States...

First I fully admit I know very little about American shipping - only times I did so somebody else was forking the bills. But, what I do know - I used to be in logistics - is that the real costs of using containers isn't so much in rent or transport, but in loading and unloading. You can ship a container a couple of miles, or right across the world. But it only really gets costly when real people get involved doing handling of some sort.

Anyway, please please please do your own packing. Other options may be cheaper, but otherwise you'll never know how you darling books get handled.

17:

I've moved twice with a lot of books, once state-to-state and once cross-country.

If you need to foot all or most of the costs yourselves (we didn't, my wife's employer picked up most of it. Would have been all of it if they had acknowledged my existence.), I would suggest the "pod people" approach. That means they drop off a storage container at your house, you load it up, they pick it up, drive it, and drop it off. This means you don't have to deal with renting and driving a large truck, but you do need to do the lifting. If you're moving furniture you could always just separately hire a couple guys on either end to handle the heavy stuff.

If you do hire movers to pack and load as well, check out movingscam.org, and get a BINDING NOT-TO-EXCEED ESTIMATE. They'll send someone out to look at your stuff and give you a quote, and they cannot charge you more than that. There are horror stories about people having their stuff held hostage when they didn't do this.

Binding estimates are good but the last time we used professionals the lady who did the estimate made mistakes. She didn't figure the weight anywhere right (apparently no experience with how heavy books can be) and didn't include a long carry in her figures which was needed. So we got a cheap price but poor service loading and unloading due to the driver being understandably upset at losing on the deal. Also I could tell a big difference in the condition of the books we packed and the ones they packed when we finally unpacked them. The next move we did completely ourselves.

On packing books (which I always did myself, completely), this is the best tip I have: beer boxes. One of the advantages of real urban living was being able to collect all the cardboard boxes I needed off the street, over a few weeks, on my daily home-work route. The bar next door would set out these PERFECT beer boxes, every evening. Once I realised how great they were, I asked them to let me have as many as possible--I ended up using over a hundred. The boxes shouldn't be too heavy. If you can't comfortably lift and shift them a few paces, they're too heavy. Pack firmly and use newspaper to stuff any holes. A piece of newspaper on top of books will protect them from any inadvertent taping.

A music store provided most of the boxes I used for CDs. A grocery had terrific boxes (only too few) labelled "margarine".

A tape gun is great. You'll be glad for any marking of the boxes you do, as long as you remember what the marks mean.

Last year my partner and I moved our 3000+ book library from Kentucky to Pennsylvania. I worked at a public library, so I took home countless BMI and Baker & Taylor boxes that the library just recycles after receiving books in them. If you go to your local library and ask, I'm sure they'd be happy to give you their cardboard boxes.

The key: use small boxes! Books are heavy, and big boxes full of books will do bad things to your back.

I've moved my personal library several times. My strategy is to get lots of small boxes, preferably all the same size for ease of stacking (in fact, I use the same size boxes for books, DVDs, small kitchen items, knick-knacks, etc. -- I only use larger boxes for items that won't fit in the smaller size). Pack the boxes so that they are full and solid -- fill in gaps with knick-knacks, packing paper, or even articles of clothing. (If the boxes are too heavy when packed completely full of books, pack a layer of books on the bottom, then fill in with something lighter.) I usually sort my books by size as I pack, muttering about non-standard trim sizes the whole time. Mark the boxes clearly, preferably on the sides as well as the top, so you can tell what's in a box without un-stacking other boxes.

I've never used professional movers, always going with a truck rental, a POD, or a friend/relative with a trailer and a pickup truck. My parents used a professional moving company once when I was a child, and I remember that we did have some things stolen -- but my usual reason for not going with professional movers is the expense.