DO IT YOURSELF  TRUCK LOADING

So if U-Haul ends up being short on available trucks at your requested U-Haul store location when your moving date arrives, it's whoever made their reservation a shorter time ago that they make go to a farther away U-Haul store location to get an available one-way truck, possibly sending you to a town up to an hour's drive away to get your truck, or more likely to one of those "Neighborhood" store locations that often don't clean the trucks or that take forever to check you out.  

That's why they don't guarantee a pick up location, and they tell you they'll call you the day before to tell you where you'll be picking up the truck. No need to take that chance if you reserve early enough.   That also means you should request to pick up your truck at the full-time main dealership U-Haul location that's closest to you, not a "neighborhood" location (a place that's also a different type of business, like a lumber or grocery store).

ADVICE #2:  

ADD OTHER STUFF ONTO YOUR RESERVATION

If you're towing your car, make sure to rent the car-tow-carrier also.  When you make your one-way reservation, ask for some extra free miles, saying you need to go a bit outside of the towns you're coming from and going to.  They will usually just give them to you for free.  Just in case.  If you go past your allotted miles they charge you over your quoted price.  Also make sure you reserve plenty of moving blankets, usually at least two dozen blankets per bedroom of the house you're moving (3 bdrm house = 6 doz.), if you're trying to do a top-notch job.   They're $10 per dozen to rent ($5 per six pack).  

Also get the U-Haul insurance.  There's two types; either "Safemove" or "Savemove Plus".  Safemove doesn't cover damage to the top several inches of the truck roof, and doesn't do personal injury to the occupants, where Safemove Plus does.  Either way, you should get one or the other.

ADVICE #3: 

DO YOUR OWN BOXING UP OF YOUR ITEMS.  see our page on doing your own packing, PACKING TIPS.

ADVICE #4.

WHEN YOU PICK UP YOUR TRUCK, SHOW UP FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE THE HOUR.

   Most everyone else renting a truck shows up near a whole hour mark, so rather than stand behind five other people in line, waiting twenty minutes just to get to the counter, just show up fifteen minutes before the hour when you can walk right up to the counter and get going.

ADVICE #5  

WHEN YOU'RE CHECKING OUT YOUR TRUCK, IF THE GAS GAGUE DOEN'T MATCH THE CONTRACT PICTURE, OR IF YOUR TRUCK FLOOR ISNT CLEAN, HAVE THEM FIX THAT, IT'S THEIR RESPONSIBILITY. 

ADVICE #6

GET THE EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES YOU NEED WHILE YOU'RE THERE AT THE UHAUL PLACE PICKING UP YOUR TRUCK.

If you don't already have them, get ratchet straps, rope, tape, plastic wrap, moving blankets, a hand-truck (usually not an appliance dolly), maybe a lock for the back door (if your truck doesn't already have one), mattress bags, TV boxes, and extra cardboard. 

Moving blankets are $5 per bag of 6 blankets.  Usually a top-notch well done job needs about two dozen blankets per bedroom of the house (i.e. a three bedroom house gets 6 dozen blankets).

If you're aiming at doing a top-notch job, for your plastic wrap, get one of U-Haul's biggest sizes, and one of their smallest sizes.   

ADVICE #7

If your truck floor isn't clean and they didn't fix that when you picked up the truck, you should consider sweeping, leaf-blowing, or spraying off your truck floor yourself to help prevent as much dirt as possible from being transferred onto your feet, blankets, boxes, & furniture leg bottoms, which then gets transferred onto the carpets & floors of your house.   Sometimes the ramp is filthy, and if so, spray if off with a hose, or a lot of dirt can be tracked into your house.

ADVICE #8

USE BACKING SPOTTERS

When you get near your house, call ahead to have someone come out and help be a warning spotter to help you back up the truck. 

Make sure you have someone behind the truck watching when you back up, and have either your window down or have them remain on the phone with you so you can definitely hear them warn you if you're approaching a collision hazard.   This is a common thing to go wrong.

Also instruct them to watch out for overhangs and what the tires are running over, and the front passenger side of the truck if the front of the truck is going to swing wide when backing up.  It's not just the obvious back bumper to be watching.  Two backing spotters are better than one.

ADVICE #9

PARK YOUR TRUCK CLOSE AND LEVEL

Park your truck with the ramp ending up as near as possible to your house entryway. If your truck isn't fairly level, add some planks of wood under the lower tires to improve the level of the truck.

Make sure your lights are off so you don't come out to find a dead battery.

ADVICE #10

TRUCK & HOUSE PREP

prep the house and the truck before starting to load the truck.

It's a good idea to use a leaf-blower or broom to clean off the path from the truck to the house, to further reduce the amount of dirt that's tracked in.   If you can, put some extra rugs down to help protect your floors.  

Clear the isle-ways and cluttered areas in the house first so you have lots of room to carry things.

After the truck and house are prepped, the first part to load in a U-Haul truck is the cubby hole over the cab, also called the "Mom's Attic" by U-Haul.   This is a good area for getting rid of things that are too heavy to go on a tall stack of boxes, and aren't good for stacking on, such as air conditioners,  tool boxes, buckets of tools, heavy open top boxes, a generator, expensive heavy speakers, or a big fat old style TV.  It's also a good area for things that you want to have a little extra protection around them.

If there's not much that fits that category, dining chairs or a bunch of big wall hanging pictures could go in the mom's attic.   

It's also an option for the lower half of the Mom's attic to be square more-stackable heavy things,  with a layer above it of less stackable things on top of it.  Keep an eye on trying to choose things that will fill up to the edge of the Mom's attic but not beyond that edge.  It makes it much easier to have a short step ladder on hand.

After the mom's attic, you would then build a series of "walls" like the cut slices of a loaf of bread.   Each wall reaches across the truck and up to the ceiling (like a wall), trying to keep the front edge of the wall as flat and even with the rest of the wall as possible.  Most walls will have a depth similar to the depth of a dresser or desk, or a medium sized moving box, but some walls may be the depth of a sofa or refrigerator.   

These pictures are what most of your load-walls should look like.

Most walls should, where possible, be composed of four height layers; 1) "base", weight bearing furniture (like  a dresser and a night stand) across the bottom (all pad-wrapped in blankets); 2) a layer of "heavier boxes" across the top of the base; 3) "lighter boxes" on top of the heavier box row; and 4) "top loader", on the very top , meaning not-very-stackable things like open top boxes, baskets, guitars, big kids toys, a vacuum cleaner, and dining chairs.  

Note that this advice is saying to load in these 4 layer types when possible, not stacking boxes from the floor to the ceiling in a stack seven boxes tall.  That's because tall stacks of boxes tend to crush the bottom boxes, where if there's a stack only two or three boxes tall they are far more crush resistant.  You'll also likely need regular boxes to fill in properly later in the load, so you don't want to just get rid of them all to early. 

Pick pieces that will fill in all the spaces and make the wall tight laterally, so that there's no slop (or empty gap) side to side.  Even a few inches of empty space of a gap can allow the wall to bang around and crush down more easily.  Tight means snug, so things can't move, with no empty space.  See the previous and following pictures.  

 Your load-walls should be looking something like these pictures.

 When your items are well pad wrapped they are far easier and safer to load in a sufficient way, and the few extra minutes it takes to do the padding is well worth the benefit of avoiding all the damage and soiled fabric that there is a big risk of happening otherwise.  

ADVICE #15

CONTINUE YOUR LOAD-WALLS TILL YOU RUN OUT OF STUFF TO BUILD A FULL LOADWALL

Sometimes, two things can be put in front of each other to add up to the desired depth of the wall, or an occasional thing can have it's front placed even with the front of the wall without the back of it being the full depth of the wall (but only with a few things here and there).  Save some of your extra narrow boxes to use as "tools" to fill in small gaps and make your load tight.  Don't just load and get rid of all the extra narrow boxes because a good loader saves some of them to use to tighten up gaps later.

Boxes are better to go on the top of base items, rather than putting tubs or anything else on base items, because cardboard is not as hard as most other things and is a better protection for the tops of the base pieces of furniture.  Most of your load-walls should be looking like these last several examples.

The washer and dryer should have lighter items put on top of them all the way up to the ceiling, to reduce the weight on the washer & dryer.  Directly on the top of the washer and dryer should preferably be a large cardboard box that covers the entire top of each unit, from edge to edge, or over both units all the way to the outside edges, so that the edges take the weight, not the middle of the units which can bend down.  Also note in this last picture that there's no blanket protection around and between the washer & dryer, and there should be, unless you don't care about scratches & rubs.

ADVICE #16

USE A TV BOX FOR TVS

I advise that you load TV's in a TV box, unless you're OK with a definite increased risk of TV problems.  The effect of the TV box is not that there's a box around the TV, but that the foam spacers create an air gap in front of the TV screen so that no pressure from the box even reaches the TV screen.  The foam spacers also act as a cushion to help absorb vibrations.  

Fabric cushion chairs should ideally be plastic wrapped or blanket wrapped, and usually loaded front end down, legs to wall, back to the ceiling, up high as top-loader like this last picture, where the back end is protected by the ceiling and can't be stretched out.  Make sure the front ends that are facing down are on a flat surface that can't deform the material (nothing poky).  Sometimes they can be set on their feet up high, but only if only light fluffy flat things go on the seat, and they are still put up on top near the ceiling.

Most recliners can have their backs removed.  These are best put up on top of everything with only light things on them at most.  This is because fabric is easily stretched out and deformed if there's things pressing into the fabric.

Rolling is a lot easier and safer than carrying.

Once you have repeated this wall building process until most all of your squareish stackable things have been used up, and you have a nice flat load wall, you follow that with a "tie off wall", which is something like a mattress and box spring placed on a row of medium boxes (or any things of the same height) on the floor, and then tied off (or ratchet strapped) to hold it firmly in place. 

The mattress should go aginst the previous wall, followed by the box-springs on the outside, with the soft side of the box-springs facing out.  This is because the mattress conforms to the irregular bumps of the load better, and the good side of the box springs makes for a much more optimal surface to protect and go against following items such as the back side of a sofa.

 You could even line up two or three sets of mats & box-springs all together, on a couple rows of boxes.

Mattress and box-springs are the best thing to make  tie-off-wall out of because they are wide and flat and much softer than a piece of hard furniture that could press into and deform the back of a sofa that's leaning against it.   It's definitely better to use ratchet straps to hold a tie off wall, because they're flatter, stronger, they don't stretch, and they don't dig into the wall item nearly as bad as rope.

For smaller mattresses and box springs, it may be needed to put down rows of boxes underneath, to raise the box spring & mattress high enough to hold back the top-loader behind it near the ceiling.  The boxes being on the floor like this is also the best place for extra heavy boxes.  You might need these boxes for this purpose, so if you do, don't use up all the boxes in the previous load walls, save some.

  Note that the previous picture of a tie-off wall has the box-springs with the under side facing out, which puts the much more damaging side (with staples & poky parts) against whatever follows such as the back side of a leather sofa, which you SHOULD NOT DO.   The soft flat top of the box-springs should face the outside, to provide the optimal protective surface against the back side of a sofa.   

Harbor Freight ratchet straps are the cheapest and have the right hook size.   The rope or ratchet strap should not go straight across to the railing, but rather should go behind the plane of the wall, pulling the load-wall towards the front of the truck, with the strap going around the rub-railing knob, and then heading to the back end of the truck as shown in this last picture.  This holds the load more solidly, and prevents the railing from being pulled straight across the truck which can break the rub railing, and instead pulls the pressure parallel to to the wall which is the direction that the railing can handle ten times as much pressure.  Remember that the amount of pressure on the railing multiplies many times when under the load of the truck jerking & going up a steep hill, and that the "strait across" tie down method CAN AND DOES BREAK RAILINGS, which U-Haul makes you pay for.

This method also puts the metal ratchet against the wall, behind and out of the way of the railing, instead of out on the load-wall where it could damage the next things put against it.  The location the hook goes around the rub-railing knob is way out in front of the load-wall being the easiest possible to reach and hook the line around.

ADVICE #22

AFTER THE TIE OFF WALL

Usually, the best place for a big sofa is on-end, leaning with it's back-side against the tie off wall (a mattress or box-springs), legs against the wall of the truck.   Sofas should be pad-wrapped, unless the condition of the sofas is a low priority compared to their priority of speed & ease.  Note that the weight of the sofa on the left (in the last picture) is put on the frame via some folded blankets, rather than on the arm of the sofa, which might deform it.

If the priority is speed & cost, with a low priority of the condition of the sofas, then you could skip the pre-pad-wrapping, and instead carry a sofa straight out to the truck.  In this case, the side of the up-ended sofa that's against the floor should be put on a moving blanket so that it never touches the floor.  

It's usually better to pad-wrap your sofas, but if you choose the right items to go around them you can probably get away with not pad wrapping your sofas, if it's not a "high end" job.  Or you can drape some blankets around them after the sofas are loaded.  We are talking "non professional" just doing the best you can with time-conservation in mind, so given the difficulty of dealing with all the blanketing you can just get the sofas loaded, and understand there is an increased risk of dirt and damage.

If you're putting planter pots down, put cardboard between them or they're likely to smack into each other and crack.

When you're all done, lock up that back door.

 ADVICE #25

REMOVED HARDWARE

As you remove hardware (bolts, nuts & screws) off items, either put them in a baggie & plastic-wrap them attached to the source item, or put them in a bag, label them, and put them in a parts box that holds all loose parts.  

ADVICE #26

GET MORE FREE ADVICE

If you find that this advice page doesn't answer your questions sufficiently, we here at A Great Moving Crew are happy to help with whatever other free advice you might need, so feel free to call anytime.  It's also free to text AGMC some pictures of your load in progress, and AGMC will reply back with compliments or warnings.

ADVICE #28

CONSIDER USING AN ALARM WHEN PARKING OVERNIGHT.

If you're going to be parking your filled U-Haul truck overnight, you might want to get a cheap alarm (like from Harbor Freight) and put it inside or around your back door (depending on which kind you get), so it goes off if anyone messes with your truck.  

And be aware that leaving valuables in the cab of the truck overnight comes with a risk of thieves breaking in specifically to get those valuables that they can see through the windows.