I know most of the posters here are concerned with moving across the Atlantic. But I thought I would ask, in case someone has personal experience or knowledge of someone else's experience:

Is there a more economical way to move the contents of a 3-BR house from Washington State to Kimberley, BC than using a full-service mover? We'd like to find a cross-border U-Pack-It type service where they leave a container, you fill it, they move it, you unload it. Or potentially rent a truck and do the whole move ourselves.

Thanks in advance.

U-Haul ?

www.uhaul.com

or maybe not

http://dontuseuhaul.com/

Rich.

pods http://www.pods.com/ offer the service of dropping a container on your driveway, taking it away and delivering it later. They'll bring as many as you want and have reasonable rates. I can't say though that I've used the service; I got as far as booking it but they couldn't get their truck down the driveway so we had to fall back on plan B.

If you do go with a full service, or you pack/they load, arrangement I can recommend these people: http://www.exodusmoving.com/. They were able to get a whole truck load of stuff through customs using a manifest that said only "Packed by Owner".

Rich_007 and dbd33, thanks for the suggestions. Here's what I found out:

1. U-Haul DOES do one-way truck rentals from the USA to Canada. We would have to drop the truck off in one of their designated cities in Canada. For our purposes, either Kelowna BC or Lethbridge AB would probably work (Kimberley is about halfway between them). The rate would be between US$800 and $1100 which includes a mileage allowance and the use of the truck for 3-4 days. This is probably one-fifth the cost of a full service mover.

2. PODS does service cross-border moves but only to the very major metropolitan areas of Canada...Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, etc. Nowhere near our little spot in the East Kootenays.

3. ABF U-Pack Moving www.upack.com does not serve our area either.

4. We'll keep Exodus in mind if we have to fall back on a full-service mover.

We met their enormous truck at the border and they followed us home. I wondered how it was going to work as we live in an older part of town. The truck was longer than three house lots are wide and was wider than half the road. Nonetheless they managed to get it in without hitting any parked cars. Neighbours came out to gawk and one took pictures. The driver said it wasn't his most challenging delivery; he'd also taken the truck to Greenwich Village(!) After that moving stuff in without breaking it seemed trivial.