First Name in Moving

When people need to blow their nose, they don't ask for facial tissue, they ask for a Kleenex. Kleenex is one of those products that has come to define its category, kind of like Chapstick. U-haul is another example of this. When people learned that we were moving, they would often ask, "Are you going to rent a U-haul?" I'd answer yes, even though we actually rented a Penske truck. When I was truck-shopping, along with checking price, I did some internet searching to get the perspectives of previous customers. In general, I found that Penske trucks are newer, and thus get better gas mileage and are less likely to break down. A downside was that U-haul lets you tow a car behind a 10-foot truck, while with Penske you need to get at least a 16-footer to tow a car. I was a little nervous about driving such a long setup, but it went OK.

With my AAA discount, and the online booking discount, the price of these two truck sizes was about equal. I thought the 16-footer would be excessive, but we actually filled most of it up. Had it been necessary, we could have stacked stuff higher, but we only used about 3/5 of the vertical height of the storage space. Mileage wise, the predicted range offered by Penske was 6-13 mpg, I believe, and we got 9-10 mpg during our move.

Out on the road, I saw a lot of moving trucks during our 3-day journey. I would say that Penske equipment outnumbered U-haul equipment 10:1, and there were almost as many Budget trucks as there were U-hauls. All told, it seems like U-haul should no longer be the first name in moving. I'll stick with Kleenex, however.

P.S. Scroll down and read MacKenzie's post "Don't judge a game by its lame name" if you missed it. Blogger was being screwy, so I don't know when it actually got posted. It may have escaped your notice.