Category: Blog

What are the benefits of in transit tracking with GPS for your residential move? Here’s what you need to know.

Get the faster routes, lower drive times and more money in your pocket when you GPS your residential move with in-transit tracking. Advances in technology in recent years have made the moving process easier than ever. Being able to take advantage of a moving service that utilizes GPS and in-transit tracking will provide you with peace of mind and an extra layer of security while your items are going from Point A to Point B. Keep reading to learn more about the process and benefits of in transit tracking.

GPS Your Move for the Fastest, Safest Routes

The saying goes, “time is money,” and that absolutely applies to the moving process. The longer it takes for your moving company to transport your items, the more you will be paying. Choosing a company that utilizes GPS and in transit tracking means you will know they are seeking the best, safest, fastest routes for your move. Plus, you’ll be able to know where the moving truck is at all times.

At Nilson Van and Storage, we are proud to offer in transit tracking for all of our clients. We have mastered the use of GPS technology to streamline moves for both residential and commercial clients. Because of this, you can trust the trucks containing your items will be on the ideal route at all times to avoid traffic problems and keep your possessions safe and secure.

Choose Nilson Van for Expert In-Transit Tracking

As you prepare for your next residential move, be sure to consider the benefits of in transit tracking. Get in touch with our team at Nilson Van and Storage today to learn more about the cost-saving benefits this service provides.

Is it time to learn more about the benefits of full packing services?

Full packing services can be a major time-saver (not to mention sanity-protector) for homeowners who are preparing for a residential move. Just the physical packing itself is time-consuming, but add to that the decisions about which items to pack first, what kinds of packing supplies you should use and how you should label boxes—and you have a full-time job on your hands.

Trusting your move to the professionals relieves a lot of the stress and hassle involved in the moving process. There’s really no reason to spend hours upon hours figuring out the right organization system and the puzzle of packing appropriately. Instead, go straight to the pros for a proven full packing system that they have fine-tuned and perfected over the years.

Let’s take a closer look at the time-saving benefits of full packing services:

• Expert opinions on what to take with you, what to leave behind or give-away, and what to place in storage.
• Skilled packing for your items that keeps everything safe and secure during the moving process.
• A complete inventory of all items, so you know exactly where everything is at all times.
• Unpacking services to make move-in a breeze.

Customize Full Packing Services to Meet Your Needs

You may find that you need packing services for your entire home or just one room—either way, our team at Nilson Van and Storage provides the expert help you need. Connect with us online now for your free quote for full packing services to save time and hassle during your upcoming move.

Are you trying to determine if short term storage is the right solution for your unique moving situation? Find out now.

Could short term storage be the solution you need for your unexpected moving issues? Let’s face it, sometimes a move just doesn’t go as you had hoped or planned. Unexpected moving hiccups are so common; it’s almost smart to expect them! Having a short term storage option in place is the ideal back-up plan for scenarios such as:

• Having time between when you have to be out of one home and can be in another
• Discovering your new home construction isn’t going to be ready when you had planned

Short term storage prevents the issue of having to pack, unpack, pack, unpack just because there was a change in moving plans. Instead, you can store your items in a safe, climate-controlled storage facility where you will have a team of experts devoted to monitoring your items and ensuring they stay secure and protected.

Expert Packing and Storing Makes All the Difference

Residential moves can be stressful, but knowing you have an expert moving team helping you through the process provides tremendous peace of mind. At Nilson Van and Storage, our short term storage solutions come with friendly, attentive customer service and any packing services you may need. Whether you want us to come in prior to moving day to help you properly pack and label boxes for the most streamlined move possible, or you just need help with a few extra-large items, we will be there.

Connect with our team at Nilson Van for a free quote for short term storage today by connecting with us online or calling 800-845-2682.

What do you need to master your next residential move? A solid plan in place. Here are 3 ways to stay ahead of the game.

When it comes to your residential move, you are likely always thinking about ways to simplify the process. After all, a move can be all you think about for weeks and even months. But just thinking about it isn’t really enough! The best way to stay ahead of the game and fight the feeling of overwhelm is to have a solid moving plan in place.

Our professional movers at Nilson Van and Storage are happy to share these tips with you for 3 ways to stay ahead of the residential moving game:

#1: Schedule for Professional Moving Services in Advance

Of course, some people want to attempt the moving process on their own, but if you are looking for a way to get through your move without losing your mind, your best bet is to hire an expert moving team. Be sure to call the service as much in advance as possible to ensure they have your moving dates available and can accommodate your needs and budget.

#2: Determine the Details of the Residential Move

You will need to figure out which vehicles to use for your move as well as what types of boxes and packing supplies will be necessary. The good news is if you hire the right moving company, they will help you to determine the appropriate truck size for your move as well as the best moving supplies and services to meet your unique needs and budget. Be sure to inquire about their qualifications, mover training, and years of experience before hiring them. This isn’t a job for amateurs!

#3: Create an Organized System for Packing

This is extremely important in protecting your sanity! A streamlined system for packing and labeling your boxes will make the entire process so much more effective. Once you arrive at your new home you will be happy you took the time to pack items correctly. The right moving company will have a perfected system you can use to make packing as hassle free as possible.

Feeling overwhelmed about your upcoming residential move? Let our team at Nilson Van and Storage help. Contact us today to learn more about our solutions and services designed to take the guesswork and stress out of the moving process.

If you need to buy boxes for a residential move, how can you tell how many you need?

Cardboard boxes are a staple of any residential move. But how can you tell how many you really need? They don’t come cheap, as you can expect to pay several dollars or more for each, depending on the size and features of the box. Therefore, you might want to buy as few as possible.

On the other hand, you can probably imagine the frustration if you are just a few boxes short of packing up all the contents left in your home. To avoid this frustrating scenario, you’ll want to carefully calculate how many boxes you need. Keep reading for four factors to consider when determining how many boxes your move requires.

Rough Guidelines

A very, very rough rule of thumb is that you’ll need about 30 boxes for every bedroom your home has. But this is subject to adjustment depending on several variables.

Variable #1: Type of Home

A detached home will generally need more boxes than an apartment or condominium, even if the number of bedrooms is the same. This is because detached homes often have larger rooms and may even have an additional building, such as a garage. This will add to the number of items that need packing.

Variable #2: Lifestyle

Are you someone who likes to collect things? Or maybe you consider yourself a pack rat? If so, you’ll need more boxes than someone who lives a minimalist lifestyle.

Variable #3: Number of People Living in Your Home

Just because your home has a lot of bedrooms or square footage, that doesn’t automatically mean you need more boxes. If you’re the only person living in a five bedroom, 5,000 square foot home, you will probably need fewer boxes than a family of four living in a 3,500 square foot home with four bedrooms.

Variable #4: Size of Boxes

The bigger the box, the more stuff you can put inside. So, if you have one box that has twice the volume as a smaller box, you’ll need two smaller boxes for every large box. But this ratio is subject to change, depending on what you put in the box. For instance, you cannot completely fill a large box – one that is roughly 20 inches on each side – with textbooks. If you did, it would be almost impossible for one person to move and you would likely tear the box during transport.

If you want extra guidance for figuring out how many cardboard boxes you’ll need for your residential move, think about giving our moving professionals at Nilson Van and Storage a call today.

Moving takes money, but there are some associated moving costs that many people seem to miss.

Some associated moving costs are clear, such as the price of boxes, the cost of hiring a moving company or the fee for renting a moving truck. Other costs aren’t as obvious but equally necessary. To learn about some of these less obvious moving costs that you might have missed, continue reading!

1.Fuel

If you’re doing the moving yourself, fuel will be a notable cost. How big this cost is will depend on how far the move is and what needs moving. But even transporting the contents of a typical family move in a rental truck across only a few states away can easily result in several hundred dollars in fuel costs for that one trip.

2.Lost Time

A major hidden moving cost is the time the move will take you away from your job. For example, if you have to take a day off from work to drive a moving truck yourself, you’re not only paying for the cost of the truck rental, but for one day’s worth of lost income. Sure, you might use a paid vacation or sick day, but that’s one less paid day off you could use for something else or less money in your final paycheck when you eventually leave your job.

3.Insurance

Whether you complete the move yourself or hire a company to handle it for you, you’ll need to consider having insurance to protect the items in the move and the rental truck moving those items. Without insurance, if something goes wrong that’s not your fault in any way, you may still have to pay the price of repair or replacement. And adding extra insurance for the move can easily amount to several hundred dollars.

If you want advice on how to handle the move and what sort of associated moving costs you may need to consider, please contact our team at Nilson Van and Storage.

Before you move internationally, be sure you take care of the necessary requirements.

If you’re moving internationally, then you will complete one of the most complicated types of moves. To make sure it goes as uneventfully as possible, you’ll want to comply with the following four basic requirements:

#1: Possess Current Passports

This sounds like a no-brainer, but in the mad rush and craziness to plan an international move, people tend to forget all about having a current passport. Not only should your passport be current, but you should be careful to ensure it won’t expire until well after you finish the move.

Some visa or immigration documents are only available to those with a passport that is not only current, but won’t expire for a set period, such as six months. Also, even if such government bureaucracy isn’t an issue for you, you’ll want enough time and flexibility to take an extra trip or two across the border or in case there is a delay in your moving date. Finally, getting a new passport in your adopted country should be much easier with a current passport from your previous home country.

#2: Have All Necessary Legal Documentation

When you move internationally, you’ll need to have all your basic legal documentation handy, such as birth certificates, marriage licenses, professional licenses, diplomas/degrees, wills and a power of attorney. Make extra copies of these important documents, too.

#3: Make New Financial Arrangements

You’ll want to set up a new bank account and, if necessary, new retirement accounts and insurance policies.

#4: Get Rid of Anything Not Allowed In Your New Country

Before the move, you’ll need to make sure you don’t bring anything you’re not allowed to possess or use in your new country. Some things will be obvious, like firearms, but others less so, like certain toys (some radio-controlled toys use radio frequencies that civilians may not use) or medications.

If you plan the international move carefully and well in advance, you should be fine. But to have that extra help with the move, consider using a moving company that deals with international moves, like Nilson Van and Storage. Get in touch with our team today to get the answers to your moving questions and to schedule the professional moving services you need.

A cross-country move is a major undertaking that requires planning.

Moving cross country can cost a lot of money and produce a great deal of stress. There are so many tasks you have to arrange to make sure things go smoothly. You can reduce some of the anxiety and work involved in a long distance move, but it usually results in a higher cost for the trip. Regardless of whether you try to save money and handle the move on your own or spend the extra money to hire a moving company to handle everything, here is some advice to make the trip go as well as possible.

Plan Early

The earlier you plan the move, the easier and cheaper it will be. There are several reasons for this. First, making reservations are almost always going to be cheaper when made far in advance compared to making a reservation at the last minute. If you’re flying yourself to your new home, plane tickets will be cheaper. If you book hotels rooms for a multi-day drive, the cost for the rooms will often be more affordable.

The cost of a moving truck rental or hiring a moving company may not be less expensive if booked early, but it certainly provides greater scheduling flexibility. This can indirectly result in lower costs; the flexibility allows you to shop around for the best deal for moving supplies or hiring moving professionals.

Second, knowing well in advance about a move allows you to make more efficient use of your resources. We can use an example to demonstrate. Let’s say you know where you’re moving. You don’t have a house or apartment set up yet, but you know what town or city will serve as your new home. During a drive to this new location to do a house or apartment search, you can pack extra items in your luggage that you’ll need to move when you finally switch homes.

For example, if you only need to pack three days’ worth of clothing and toiletries for the house hunting trip, go ahead and fill up the entire car with stuff you won’t need at your current home. Then, put all that stuff in a small, cheap storage unit. The rental cost of a month or two of a storage unit may be worth the cost savings of avoiding an extra car or moving truck trip later on.

Conclusion

The best way to ensure the best possible long distance move is to plan well and do so as early as possible. If you decide on using professional moving help for the cross-country move, contact Nilson Van and Storage at 1-800-845-2682 as soon as you learn of the move.

What supplies and equipment do you need for long-distance moves? Nilson Van knows.

Long-distance moves require more planning than moving to the next dorm or a few towns away. Timing has to be precise to avoid hassles and extra expenses. Then there’s the job of transporting your items across long distances in vehicles you probably don’t drive day-to-day.

Here are three reasons to hire professionals when moving across the country:

1. A box for everything and everything in a box

Except for extremely large pieces of furniture, you can expect professional packers to put all your belongings in boxes. This offers protection while in transit and helps keep things organized when moving from home to moving van and back. Floor lamps, laptops, even wine glasses have their own specific boxes, and a professional moving company has access to them all. Better yet, when hired by the company to pack and unpack, these materials are often included in the cost — and cleaned up.

2. Get a jumpstart in moving into your new place.

Professional packers will box up items and unbox them at your new destination. Simply inform them where you want items to go, and you’ll find your household quickly unpacked and situated in your new home.

3. Your items get coverage under value protection

Purchasing a moving company’s value protection plan doesn’t provide absolute coverage. If you’ve packed flammable materials in the back of the truck and caused a fire, your coverage won’t reimburse you for squat. You might wind up owing the company money. When professional packers are in charge, they take on the liability.

Long-distance moves are one of the few downsides of taking a cross-country adventure. Minimize the risks by hiring a professional packing and moving company to do your heavy lifting. At Nilson Van, we are ready to go to work for you to make your residential move as smooth and low-stress as possible.

How many years will military moves take off your life? Save the stress by hiring trusted professionals

Military moves are one of the most trying aspects of life for relatives of those in the service. Packing up, moving on and making sure nothing gets lost in the process takes a Herculean effort. Want to minimize stress and hassle? Consider shopping the job out to a reliable company like Nilson Van.

Here are three reasons you should call the professionals before your next military move:

1. They have specialty packing materials

You don’t know the meaning of specialty until you see a Nilson Van team pack up a home. They use an impressive array of boxes, packaging and equipment to pack up your property.

2. They’re puzzle masters

Not only do they have tools to get your items safely packed. They also have the skills. In just a few hours, they’ll have your property safely secured in one big block of “stuff” wrapped in cellophane. This giant puzzle makes excellent use of moving van space, but it also helps protect your items. If they can’t shift much during travel, they’re not able to bump into one another and break.

3. Packers offer more protection

Value protection will provide for the repair or replacement of items lost or damaged during a move, but it is at-fault coverage. For instance, you’ll be responsible for damage if you handled packing and didn’t use enough padding. Having professionals ready your shipment saves time. Allowable moving expenses include professional packing services because they’re so helpful. Put these benefits to use!

Military moves get complicated fast, and frankly, you’ll have enough to worry about. Take advantage of the services offered by our moving experts at Nilson Van and spend your time on all the moving responsibilities no one else can manage.