PODS vs. U-Boxes vs. Zippy Shell
What to pick for a cross-country US move
After close to 20 hours of vetting storage container services, including being on the phone with countless representatives for multiple hours to book, change, and cancel multiple services, I can confidently conclude that there is only one reasonable option for a 2+ bedroom cross-country move: PODS. (Sub 2B, U-Boxes could be competitive.)
Here’s the summary:
Don’t bother with Mayflower / United Van Lines. They quoted me approximately $12,000-14,000 for moving a 3-bedroom apartment. No, this doesn’t even include packing. This is shipping only. 🤮
U-Pack was also a non-starter at $5,973 for a 17’ container.
Zippy Shell has a lot of reviews for broken furniture and excessive difficulty retrieving your belongings. After hidden costs in the fine print, they come out more expensive than they seem at first glance. Worse service at higher prices ($4,132)?👎
U-Boxes looked affordable (~$3,500) until we realized that (a) because they’re smaller, you need more units than combined volume would suggest, and (b) because our city regulations only allow one container to be sited at a time, Uhaul said we would have to pay a separate delivery charge per U-Box. That’s over $6,000 after delivery charges and the extra 2 U-Boxes Uhaul recommended— this doesn’t even include insurance coverage. Started to make the U-Pack look pretty good.
PODS ended up being both the cheapest and highest quality option. ($3,539 including insurance)
Prices quoted here for a coast to coast move, so about the furthest you can move in the continental US. Here’s a more specific breakdown:
Zippy Shell
We were convinced for a good while that the answer was Zippy Shell, because their all-inclusive service was attractive. They promised movers to help you load and unload, and they price-match, so they were willing to beat PODS’ shipping rate. But what changed our minds was how uniformly bad their online reviews were.
Likelihood of damaged goods
Further investigation revealed that their “shell” is a wire-mesh cage, not the enclosed container I had imagined. They make it sound like you’re getting an enclosed container, because they load the mesh cage into an enclosed Pack Rat container during transport, but they’re stored like you see below:
(This video is also amusing because the CEO of Zippy Shell talks bad about Pack Rat. The irony, since they’re now the same company.) You can imagine all sorts of problems with these containers: what if the neighboring container has pests? What if the storage facility has pests? What if you have a piece of furniture that pokes out the mesh when the container is jostled during transit? A rep on the phone assured me that they plastic wrap the shells before storage. Plastic wrap doesn’t sound as durable as an actual metal container.
Here’s a sampling of the bad reviews that made us reconsider (Source: consumeraffairs.com):
We judged that there would be an unacceptable risk that our belongings would be damaged, based on the container design and multiple reviews describing damaged items. Their full-service moving offer suddenly meant a lot less — there didn’t seem to be a lot of quality control on who they hire to help you.
Extra charges
The other sneaky thing is that there are surcharges in the fine print. Not everyone reads the terms and conditions before signing contracts, but I’m really glad I did here, because the fine print included almost $600 of extra charges. If you book loading or unloading services, they charge $75 extra per flight of stairs (they’ll still charge you for one flight even if you have an elevator!). There’s also a diesel surcharge. They charge $0.01/mi for every $0.05 that current diesel prices exceed $3.50. I called to confirm that this surcharge was still applicable, given that diesel hasn’t fallen under $3.50 for two years. Diesel is currently about $4.24, which means I’d be charged $0.15 extra per mile… for all 3000+ miles of my move. They confirmed that they are “not responsible for the cost of diesel.” This amounted to at least an extra $430 for us.
In short, expect broken furniture, hidden additional fees, and possible non-delivery of your container. Not worth the risk for us, no matter how cheap. And it turns out that PODS could beat them on price.
PODS
PODS also has their share of hate on consumeraffairs.com, but their distribution of 5-star vs. 1-star reviews was more favorable than Zippy Shell.
The type of hate also matters: the 1-star people mostly complained about being on the phone for hours not being able to reach an agent and erroneous charges. A major decision factor for us was that this risk seemed way less bad than permanently damaged belongings. PODS reports on their website that under 2% of shipments file insurance claims, which suggests that they honor insurance claims (whereas unhappy reviews seem to suggest that Zippy Shell does not). PODS also responded to every single complaint on consumeraffairs.com, suggesting there is some recourse in the event of an issue.
Here’s a sampling of reviews:
How bad is it to call them?
I can see being on the phone for hours being a problem with PODS — I was on phone with them four times, totaling about two hours, just to get my quote, ask clarifying questions, and make my reservation. My calls got dropped twice. A “7-minute” hold turned into 30 minutes. (Note: I recommend calling in the morning; hold times seem to get longer in the afternoon.)
The fact I had to call at all annoyed me initially because U-Haul helpfully provides instant quotes on their website, whereas calling PODS just for a quote is a minimum 20-minute affair (it was the same with Zippy Shell). Worse, I got disconnected twice mid-quote and had to just sit there hoping the PODS rep would call me back, since I had no direct line for her. She called back once but apparently gave up after the second disconnect.
The latter 2 calls were without incident, however, and with reps that were genuinely helpful: the first one helped me shift my reservation to day more convenient for us, and the second landed us a really big discount (30%!). So my impression of calling PODS has been shifted to net-positive, and I’d say their service reps on the whole seem well-trained and capable of helping you. I made them give me a number to call in case something goes wrong during the move or POD delivery, to hedge against some of the problems I saw in the reviews. Let’s hope I don’t have to use it.
Container durability
A POD also seems notably more durable than a Zippy Shell or a U-Box. It is a steel-framed container enclosed on all sides. A U-Box is made of plywood. A Zippy Shell isn’t even enclosed. Overall, we were happy to get what seemed like the highest quality service at a price cheaper than competitors.
U-Box (U-Haul)
Easy booking
The biggest thing U-Haul has over other services is that it’s the easiest to book. You can do it all online yourself. What annoyed me the most about Zippy and PODS’ booking processes is that they make you call for your quote, then they ask you for information you’ve already entered into their online form, like how many rooms your house has and what your address is. I am positive that all they’re doing is entering your info into a tool that spits out a quote that they then read back to you. It would be a lot faster to do it yourself, like U-Haul allows you to do.
Unknowledgeable reps
I did end up calling for info anyway because I noticed that their quotes were pre-tax, whereas Zippy Shell and PODS both gave post-tax quotes (I wanted an equal comparison, because initially, U-Boxes seemed closely competitive). The rep, however nice, was not at all knowledgeable. She gave me a tax estimate of $30, which I think must be wrong, because it’s less than 1% of the total cost of shipment. I don’t think tax is less than 1% anywhere; indeed, a blog documenting U-Haul’s fees noted ~$30 tax on a ~$500 base price. (Compare that with our $3000-5000 U-Box.) So calling was a waste of time; I could have guestimated better myself.
On net, it made me feel a little better that PODS reps are competent by comparison (at least when their phone line doesn’t fail), because it gives me a little more faith that if I needed to call PODS, someone would rise to the challenge. I do not have similar faith in U-Haul’s phone service. But it makes sense given how they each handle their business: if PODS is running their entire business off of sales by phone, their reps better be good.
When it makes sense to use a U-Box
I think if you were moving a small number of things such that you only needed one of two U-Box (e.g., a studio or 1B apartment), the U-Boxes could work pretty well. A few years back, we loaded up two U-Boxes for our move to Boston. The U-Boxes looked janky but the service was reliable, in that our stuff was delivered without incident. If you only need one or two U-Boxes, it’s worth comparing cost with PODS.
Especially if you’re sure you only need one U-Box (e.g., you have a couch, bed, and/or desk you really want to keep and not much other stuff), it’s probably cheaper than the smallest POD, because a U-Box is smaller than the smallest POD. (I couldn’t tell you for sure though, because I’m not about to spend more time on the phone with PODS.)
But if you’re starting to look at 3+ U-Boxes, you’re probably better off with a POD. Volumetrically, a 16’ POD is equivalent to about 3.6 U-Boxes. PODS says you need four to be equivalent1, and over the phone, the U-Haul rep actually suggested five. (As an aside, I think this is U-Haul’s way of upselling. Back when we moved with two U-Boxes, they had us reserve three. They say that it’s better to have too much space than too little, and you can return unused U-Boxes free of charge. While this may be true, I think they’re hoping that the presence of the extra U-Box will encourage you to use it, that you’ll either have planned poorly or be too exhausted by the end of your move to keep playing furniture tetris, at which point the extra Box starts looking very attractive.) In any case, here are the reasons I think U-Boxes stop being cost competitive when you need more than 3-4:
This is true as a matter of base cost: Moving four U-Boxes cross country right now is $4,284 compared with $3,644 with a 16’ POD2. This isn’t even an apples to apples comparison because the PODS quote is post-tax whereas U-Haul’s is pre-tax, making it even less cost competitive.
It gets worse when you add other fees: a POD has $110 fewer fees than 4 U-Boxes (not including taxes on the U-Boxes).
The reason I suspect the line is drawn at three instead of four is transport. To make U-Boxes more competitive, you could save on delivery cost by transporting yourself. But I think two is the limit for DIY, because (a) you can only load two onto a trailer at a time, and (b) it was such a struggle to parallel park that trailer on a city street that I can’t imagine trying to do it twice in a day. Mind you, this was a 4-lane city street in Virginia. Try that in Boston traffic, on its narrow one-lane roads. You’re better off forking over the $199 for delivery. (Or if your city allows only one container at a time… seems like your choice is PODS or pay up.)
That’s it! Hope this exhaustive review helps someone avoid spending 20h on the phone / scouring the internet like me. 🤞
Because a U-Box is smaller, you can’t pack multiple U-Boxes as efficiently as a single larger container. This is because of wasted buffer space: if you’re out of room, you can’t add, say, a fractional office chair. It’s all or nothing. But in a single contiguous container, you could place your chair on the imaginary line between the first 8’ and the second 8’. So even though four U-Boxes looks like more space than a 16’ POD, I don’t think it functionally is. Same with three U-Boxes vs. a 12’ POD.
This was the cost of a POD, shipping only, before our limited-offer discount (aka one of the reasons I like PODS phone reps now). Given the discount, the true disparity was even greater than I’ve captured.