Cost & Hassle of Shipping Household Goods from Houston?

Hi Revive,

Just a heads up and something to keep in mind : You won't know the actual weight until its loaded and on the truck and sent to the stoe yard. The way they do it (at least up here in Canada) is they send you a truck with the empty Tare weight, load up all your stuff and then take it back to the stoe yard where they weigh the truck again. By then its too late to take stuff off the truck without paying for loaders etc. it out of pocket (unless you strike an agreement with the movers to pack all the optional items last in specific boxes. and say that you will pick them up in your own truck if you're over weight).

Hi Revive,

The estimator should give you a rundown of the process (it may be different in the US vs Canada)

As I understand it from what the movers have said to me (we just had the initial assessment done so far) and what I read on the "contract" they asked me to sign :

1. The estimator comes in and does an assessment based on what you tell him you're taking. He's supposed to tell you the estimated weight of what you say you're taking (he makes notes as you do the walk through of your house).

2. When the move starts, the packers come in on the first day and wrap/box/crate everything up. On the second or third day (depending on how long the packing takes) the movers come and load everything onto the truck and take it away for weighing / stoe and shipping.

As far as the "contract" goes The following is what I understood.

The estimator is supposed to be within a 10 % margin. If he underestimates the actual weight during the walkthrough, the moving company is responsible for telling you and, at your option either ship the ovee (at your expense) or have the excess weight offloaded and sent back to your home at their cost. That's why they try to be as close as possible or even estimate on the high side (ie. if actual weight is 10 k lb, they may say 10.5 k lb for contingency)

If however, his estimate is within 10 % of the actual weight but you are still over , all costs are borne by you to either pay for the excess stuff to be offloaded or to have them ship it to Saudi Arabia (again at your expense and at full costs).

For example, if your allowance is 10 k lb, he estimates 10.5 k and the actual is 10.9 k, he's within his requirements but you would be on the hook for the extra 0.9 k lb over the allowance). What's worse is that he could come in with an estimate of 9.5 k and still be ok from his perspective. You would think that you're under your allowance but when its weighed you end up being over.

That's why its best to have the discretionary items at the back of the truck so they are easy to offload in case you need to (in our case the estimator said he might be ok with me doing the offloading in the truck yard myself as long as we documented what wasn't being sent as insurance becomes an issue)

I believe the above also applies to the E-boxes but if they are over, he said we could move some excess weight over to the surface shipment if weight allowed.

Since the numbers are documented on paper, I'm not sure if there's any grace allowed. Perhaps someone else can chime in there.

I hope the explanation is not too confusing but hopefully you get the jist of what to watch out for and questions to ask the estimator.

Note that from what I was told, the estimators are pretty good at estimating within the 10 % if they are experienced. Our guy has been doing this for almost 20 years and assured us we would be well below our threshold.