On this date five years ago, I watched from my front lawn as an enormous 18-wheel truck turned down my street. My gaze didn’t leave this beast until it pulled right in front of my house, blocking everything in its path.
The 18-wheeler turning down our street in South Carolina.
This was the day that a moving crew gutted our home of everything inside and maneuvered it into a seemingly small space within the mammoth truck. After a few hours of hot and intense work, they told me they would see us in a couple weeks.
From the moment the crew arrived at our house, they started to cover and pack everything up.
When we moved from South Carolina to Washington, we opted not to rent our own U-Haul and forgo doing something similar to when I moved from Missoula to Myrtle Beach. Instead, we hired a crew to make the cross-country drive for us.
On March 11, 2020, this moving truck pulled up at our house in Myrtle Beach and packed up all our belongings.
Looking back on it, this was definitely the way to go. With all the stuff we had accumulated by that point in our lives combined with the hazards of driving a huge U-Haul 3,000+ miles, it was a no-brainer to use my modest WSU re-location allowance to fund this type of service.
Not to say that our choice didn’t come with some “bumps in the road.” Once the crew and our belongings left, they were tough to track. The consistent updates we had hoped for never came. The company that brokered the arrangement could never reach the drivers to provide me with their current location nor an ETA. The total balance I was supposed to receive within 24 hours of departure was never conveyed to me until shortly before they arrived in Washington (your final bill is determined by total weight of your cargo). Speaking of final arrival, the crew showed up multiple days past the two-week range they gave us.
Still, it was surreal to see the same 18-wheel truck that parked in front of my home in Myrtle Beach pull up in front of my parents’ house. The last time I saw it I was sweating from intense humidity and all was right with the world. When it came to a stop on my childhood street in Spokane, it had recently snowed and the world had shut down due to the pandemic.
It was surreal to see the same truck at my parents’ house that had been at my old house in Myrtle Beach just a few weeks prior.
The crew unloaded a shipment of our belongings in my parents’ driveway and then my dad and I jumped in his truck and followed them to Pullman. It was there that they unloaded the bulk of our stuff and moved it up a big hill into a storage unit. Once the last box was removed from the truck and packed into the storage unit I sure was happy to be done with it.
The moving truck at the storage unit complex in Pullman. I give the workers credit, they did a lot of back-and-forth up/down the hill to unload everything into our storage unit.
As I reflect on that experience a half decade later, it is still fresh in my mind. I can still see the faces of the crew, I can remember the phone calls I made to the company for status updates, and I will never forget the truck pulling up at both my old house and my parents’ house. But perhaps what I remember most is a specific sound. As I mentioned at the start of this post, the crew pretty much swarmed our house and packed things up in a hurried but efficient manner. As they did this work, the sound of ripping tape was relentless…they probably went through 30 rolls. I can still close my eyes and hear that cacophony that was only amplified by the echo generated from our high ceilings.
Another interior shot from moving day on March 11, 2020. You can see some of the rolls of tape on the counter.
Oh, I also remember all of our items that broke during the trek, too. Sigh. Moving is a challenge no matter what conveniences and/or services you have at your disposal. Don’t Blink.
. Don’t Blink.
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