Pods, UBox, others?

[dirk martin]

I need to move a lot of veneer and lumber, about 300 miles.
From my rented storage unit, to my father's free storage shed....so I can quit renting storage.
I have a F-150.

I'm thinking about using one of those UHaul UBoxes.
My neighbor boy, whom I know very well, and is very responsible, will be doing all the loading/hauling/unloading.
I'm just needing a way to transport more than what can fit in the bed of my pickup each trip.

Looks like UHaul will drop off a UBox for me, at my storage unit. I pay $65 and can use it for a month.
After we hand load it with lumber and veneer, we rent a UBox Trailer from UHaul, and for $5/day (trailer rental), my neighbor drives it to my father's and unloads it, brings it all back, returns the trailer to UHaul, and goes back to loading the UBox again.

Using that UBox over and over, for one $65 fee, seems very reasonable.
Hauling from 60002 to 54436, not that that matters.

The only issue I see is that the UBOX is only 8 feet deep, so any lumber long than that, I'll have to chop....not that that's a big deal. Longer lumber I didn't want to chop, I could just put in the bed of the F150.

Any feedback on this?

[Jim Becker]

Dirk, be sure that your storage facility will allow you to have the UBox or similar actually dropped at their place and even more so, near your unit. And if yes, be sure that "multiple times" is fine. It may be good to compare renting a larger trailer or a truck to do the haul in one shot, too.

[dirk martin]

I'm not so sure I could haul it all in one shot....too much weight....if I go with a trailer.
A truck could do it, but as soon as you rent something with an engine, the cost goes way up...but if it allows me to get rid of renting storage, that's certainly a consideration.
As long as I don't block others, my storage owner is fine with me using one of them.

[Nike Nihiser]

How many trips are you going to make? and how much will you pay the neighbor? My f-150 got about 15mpg unloaded, at $2.25 a gallon, gas will cost you $90 round trip plus labor costs. One trip in a Uhaul box truck may be cheaper.

[Jerome Stanek]

when you say a lot how much is that? some people think a lot would be around 3 tons and others would think 15 tons

[Brian Elfert]

I would look into a Upack trailer. They provide a semi sized trailer that you load and then they move it to the destination where you unload. By the time you pay the neighbor kid for multiple 600 mile round trips, gas, wear and tear, trailer rental it might be just as cheap to do a Upack trailer. You only get charged for the space you actually use in their trailer. The rest of the trailer is filled with commercial shipments going to a nearby city.

[John K Jordan]

One question - does your father's place have the space to park a shipping container for good? That would give you an extra building.

I've bought two for the farm here, one for general storage and one for hay. They were about $1500 each. This one is actually a semi trailer with the wheels removed, 8'x45'x9' high, all aluminum except for a steel frame below a wooden floor. (The floors are strong enough for my loaded bobcat or a big fork lift.)

semi_trailer.jpg

The other one is an actual shipping container, 8'x40'x8' high, also all aluminum. For ventilation I mounted rotating vents on the top and rectangular vents (the type used for crawl spaces in houses) around the bottom, made some small hoods to keep blowing rain out. If storing lumber, I'd vent it.

They can move these full or empty.

JKJ