Packing up your house

1. We were pack up and we left 2 weeks later. The shipment is not guaranteed to ship out immediately. We received our shipment 3 months later.

2. The ebox is a large box that will ship to you by air and usually arrives in 10 days to 2 weeks time. You can put things in it you want immediately - vacuum, computer, golf clubs, microwave, small kitchen appliances, etc.

3. Yes many people arrive with excess baggage. And yes Aramco reimburses you the cost. Must have your receipts.

4. So far we have flown: BA, AA, KLM, Lufthansia, Gulf, Emirates - and all have accepted the dish barrel box as is without problem and has not been considered over sized.

5. Your little one must be in a car seat. Bring them with you as checked luggage. Your older child could probably be in a booster seat. Hopefully someone with small children can give you a better answer for the older child. I'd do what you would if you were in your home country for the safety of your children.

Thanks so much for your replies!

Almostcheerful what do you mean by who you are orientated with?

The moving company will bring the e-Box(es) to you and pack it with you standing there. I can't remember dimensions, but it's large and rectangular. (Someone else please jump in with dimensions, and weight allotment. I seem to remember 400 pounds per box, but could be incorrect on that.) You will need to itemize everything going into the e-Box on a form that your relocation team sends you, just as you'll need to itemize everything going into your surface shipment. I had underestimated the size of the e-Box and ended up pulling in some last minute household items, which was good. Utilize every last bit of space and weight on that as you can! Once you are in Kingdom and have your iqama, you will be able to receive the e-Box(es). This is part of the moving team's efforts. There are varying lengths of time for delivery of your e-Box. For us, it took quite a while, since we arrived during Ramadan, and everything was backed up for weeks. Not the most advantageous time of year to be a new arrival, but I digress...

The dish barrel box is a standard moving box you would purchase yourself at a U-Haul or similar store. They are called just that, "Dish Barrel Box." These are super heavy duty reinforced moving boxes that are sold flat, and you have to tape them very well. When we came on our relocation flight, we had 10 DBBs and only hand luggage. We shipped our big suitcases in the sea shipment. The DBBs hold a LOT of stuff, and it was the best packing advice we heard about. For business class travelers, I believe you can pack them up to 70 pounds, but only 50 pounds for coach, unless you want to pay for excess weight. They were hard to lift at 70 pounds. The biggest challenge was getting ourselves to the airport with everything. We had a passenger van for the people, and a cargo van for the boxes and hand baggage. Where we lived, that was an unusual taxi request, so we booked it well in advance and reconfirmed on the day of travel. A no-show would have been a huge problem. The airline curbside check-in staff almost fainted when we rolled up with all of that, but it was all perfectly within the rights of our tickets -- two DBBs for each person qualified as our luggage. We had cut the boxes down to airline regulation size for that initial flight, but did not do so on subsequent travel with DBBs. We brought extra packing tape in our hand baggage in case we needed to open and/or repair tape job anywhere along the way. Didn't need it for that first trip, but did on subsequent trip.

Thank you very much Hadia and Vpainter for the detailed reply.