A hike in the woods in northern Maine or climbing a mountain trail in Montana are life experiences that call to many of us and become bucket list items, but for some, checking them off the list is not near enough. Less of a place to visit and more of a lifestyle decision, people are heading to the most beautiful, and sometimes the most remote, areas of the country to live out what is next in life.
While those are breathtakingly beautiful places to live, they often require inner resourcefulness to get things done. Moving there might require drawing on your inner resourcefulness. Remote communities are not in the common traffic lanes for most van lines. To move you they must factor in the round-trip cost of getting to your location because they will come back empty and incur the cost of “deadhead” miles. Truck rental companies may not have a local dealer to drop off the equipment and will not rent to those areas. Container rental companies will not rent to remote locations because they too would need to transport it empty to their nearest terminal.
Here’s where resourcefulness comes in! There are ways to get to your dream location. Van Lines –If you catch the right company with a shipment heading to where you are moving you can avoid some of the charges from minimum weight fees and additional charges. Finding that mover will require a lot of emails and phone calls, but the payoff could make that effort worthwhile.
Hybrid Movers –For more than thirty years, MiniMoves® has perfected a full-service moving process incorporating specially designed shipping containers, a very specific process for padding and handling furniture and boxes, and created a network of more than 125 moving companies that specialize in our service method. We use top-tier freight carriers to transport our containers to a MiniMoves® service provider for final delivery. Service to remote areas is available with an out-of-area fee to cover the cost of sending the crew from the local terminal to the remote service area. Our out-of-area fees are much more affordable than paying for minimum weights or deadhead miles.
Freight Forwarders –These are companies who arrange to move household goods shipments using large wood shipping crates. Forwarders will often use a directory of moving companies around the country to assign the job to an origin and destination service agent. Make sure the forwarder has experience with household goods, not machinery or bulk commodities. Transit times can be longer using a forwarder so be prepared to have your shipment in transit for up to 45 days depending on your city pairs.
Reverse Engineering –Find a mover in the area you are moving to and work with them to figure out the coordination of getting your shipment to your new address.
Just like you, movers near the most remote areas of the country are highly resourceful people who have been finding moving solutions for people who want that life experience they enjoy too.
Get Close –Sometimes the best solution is to get your shipment as close as possible to the destination. You might need to provide your own final-mile service and pick things up from a mover’s warehouse or terminal. Part full-service, part DIY, it might take a combination of services to build your moving solution. Heading to Maine or Montana might not be as easy as moving to Kansas City, but the views and the life experiences make the effort worthwhile.