As it turns out, the driver with World Wide Van Lines–the moving company I had contracted to empty my apartment–did NOT contact me yesterday or today to schedule a pickup for this weekend, which was what was promised!

I was freaking out a bit, didn’t know what I was going to do… and then I started to look at self-move options, such as renting a truck. Problem is, of course, that I’m already on a shoe-string budget until I start working, and I don’t have the cash to rent a truck + liability + fuel + increased tolls… so I called Penske to speak with an agent to see if there was anything I could do.

I had a short conversation with Amelia (I’m pretty sure that was her name), who said that she couldn’t help me directly, but that renting a local storage unit was another option.

Thank you so so much (if you ever read this) because now I feel so good about this move again!

This whole thing with the movers was really wearing me down. Now that I have that all settled in my head, I can move my stuff from my apartment into storage, and then when I get a few more ducats, I can arrange a storage-to-storage move.

To top off the evening, a rep from another moving company gave me a call (I had left a message on their voicemail) and, in the conversation with him, I discovered that if I give a moving company a flexible moving window, I can save massive amounts of money on the rate.

[Edited to add] – World Wide Van Lines: Follow-up