To Mark and anyone else thinking of moving

Basically, Dave, Most ICC control over interstate trucking was abandoned in 1994, and the agency was terminated at the end of 1995 (by the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act of 1995). Many of its remaining functions were transferred to the new National Surface Transportation Board.
Now that we've got the hurling of the words Republicans and "neocon" out of the way, let's go into an old trick that goes back a long way. If the charge depends on the weight of goods moved, they got that number from the weigh ticket that they got at the state weigh station. After all, they didn't weigh each and every item when they loaded the truck. The dishonest trick that was sometimes used was to give the official at the weigh station a bribe to "bump-up" the weight on the ticket, leading to the "we didn't realize you had so much stuff" and a larger charge.
A possible solution is to follow the truck to the weigh station and after the driver puts your truck onto the scales and goes into the office to get his ticket, be right behind him and record the weight. Hit the first weigh, and be off, the driver knows that there is no way that anybody would buy the idea that the weight of your stuff magically increased at a later weighing at state line scales, and won't even try to run that scam.

Hi, J.

Fact remains, if you had a problem moving, the ICC was an aganecy that would help resolve it, and had clout to force action (by threatening license revocation). Now there is NO Federal regulation, and states can't help with inter-state commerce. This change for the worse was one of the first wrought after the Gingrich Revolution. The Republicans hate the "Interstate Commerce Clause" of the Constitution because they say it allows over-extension of Federal power. What's ironic is that Newt was originally a history professor, and so should have known better. But even students of history know that the Articles of Confederation failed, and were replaced by our current Constitution, largely because the former had no such clause, resulting in trade wars and tarrifs between states.

-- Dave K.
Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com

The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!

J, how do you get the empty weight of the truck. Do you ask the trucker to give you a copy of a date/timed empty weight? Guess they could give you a empty weight and then after leaving add an additional 1000 lbs of weight by picking up from someone else's container at the shop/warehouse...going the same way.

As I remember, John, stencled on the outside of the truck with all the permit, etc. numbers is the empty weight of the truck, called tare weight, I think. Gross scale reading-tare= weight of the stuff onboard.

I've had recommendation here, and offline, and what I've read seems good too, about Penske trucks.

There are some bad experience recorded here and there if you look, but even some of those seem to feel overall the company was ok. Maybe they just unfortunately ran into an individual in customer service that was less helpful than normal for the company.

At the moment, they are the company I'm planning to rent a small truck from (10 foot). We were planning to rent the 15 foot and tow her car (10 foot one doesn't allow towing). But after looking at costs and my schedule, and what we had to move, I actually decided to make two trips.

I have 4 day weekends once every month with shift rotation schedule. And we wanted to sightsee some on the way from Texas to NC. So we're going to drive just the car back after the wedding, and I'm taking a week off as well as the weekend before. We'll sightsee and drive the car home. My next long weekend, we'll fly back out and drive a 10 foot truck back with stuff we had stored in a storage unit. The extra costs of our plane tickets will be less than the difference in the price of the 10 vs 15 foot trucks. So I'm going to make a nice vacation out of the first week, then use another 4 days to haul stuff here later.

Mark, hope your moving goes smoothly, just take care on the road. Getting there a day early isn't worth taking risks by driving too tired, IMO.

RogerNC

click here to email semods4@yahoo.com

well i reserved a 14 ft truck plus a trailer not a dolly for my car. its a 7 hr ride from tampa to atlanta buy car ill not make it in 7 but ill load on the 10th leave early on the 11th to get there early on the 12th

You mentioned motel/hotel and overnight during the move. You may want to take a little caution against theft of the total truck. It happens here quite often in S. Texas even while parked in lighted downtown or near downtown motel/hotel parking areas of the best.
Suggest you disable the electronics under the hood (know what I mean) while sleeping. That is what I did when I moved my daughter out of state with a rented truck years ago. They normally will not bother to easily break the rear door lock and unload stuff with a possibly of getting caught (shot) when it is much easier to just drive the truck away.