U-Haul out Ur Wallet

After doing more research, it looks like my options for moving are expensive and more expensive. My Prius is not recommended to pull a trailer, and Saori's car can only pull a small trailer, not nearly big enough for all the furniture/boxes we have. 

ABF offers a curb to curb trailer service where you fill up or partly fill up one of their big trailers, and they take drive it for you to your destination. This would run us from $1700 to $1100 depending on how much of a discount I can negotiate. (Student discounts, taking the stuff to their service center for loading, etc.) I'm not a huge fan of the price, but not having to drive a giant truck or trailer would make the move a lot easier in many many ways, including not needing a 3rd person to drive one of our cars.

The other option I've been looking at is a U Haul truck. The 10' mini mover or the 14' mover run right around a grand. What I hadn't budgeted before was the egregious gas milege these trucks get. The 10' mover gets around 15 mpg, and if gas is $2.50, (a hopeful estimate) fuel costs alone will run around $300. Add in $100 insurance and we're looking at $1350 to $1450. U Haul doesn't offer student discounts, by the way. 

Still looking into other furniture shipping services.

Move it, move it

There's an old riddle about a wolf, a goat, a cabbage and a canoe that I sometimes think about trying to figure out the logistics of the move to St.Louis. Here's my options as I see them. If you can think of alternatives, I'd love to hear them.

• Big Truck- The easiest thing is for me to rent a U-Haul truck and drive it out with Saori in her car and someone else like Tay or a friend driving the Prius. Unfortunately, this option would cost about a grand, plus gas, plus whatever a 1-way ticket for whomever was driving the Prius.
• A Tale of Two Trailers- Saori's car can pull a medium sized trailer, around $250, which would hold our bed, the dining set, and bookshelves, which are major items, but probably would not hold everything. The Prius can also haul a small trailer, which might be able to take the bulk of the boxes.
• The Ascetic- Saori and I decide we're only taking what will fit into our cars, and we sell or donate the rest. This actually is beginning to sound like a good option, except for the fact that we'd have to spend a bunch of money to buy new (or not, as ascetics), and I'm kind of attached to my stuff.
• DIY shipper- A co-worker was telling about moving out to Phoenix, where he took his stuff to a furniture shipper's warehouse and built pallets there. He shrink wrapped everything and they loaded it up and shipped it to their local warehouse in Phoenix, and all he had to do was rent a U-haul for a few hours to go pick it up. I'm trying to figure out who would off this.
• Caravan to Shangri-Louis- I know someone with a truck, who probably knows someone with a van, who knows some other people who might be more than happy to take a small load and a road trip across the US. Breaker breaker, one-niner.
• Ride-share XXXL- I was talking to mom about this issue and she immediately turned to her guanxi system to think of a classmate who knew someone who knew someone who was also moving to St. Louis. If we pooled our resources, we would be able to do a combined move and save money. We'd still have to figure out how to get both of our cars out there though.
• The Corporate package- I could find a corporate job in St. Louis to work part time at and they could offer to pay my moving expenses so I'd hire a crew to move us out and move our cars, and we'd fly first class to St. Louis with a stopover in New York. Right. 
• The Friendship Ender- I could borrow a minivan from a friend and make three or four trips to St. Louis and back again. It's only about 1,400 miles each way.