Broadway Express move

[MusicMom]

I got that gift pack, too. Some completely random things, too. A water bottle huggy, a birdfeeder that screws to a soda bottle, a thermometer, nail clippers , a pop-open Frisbee with holder bag, and I think a couple other things, all with the BE logo. Several things have already been used with great acclaim. The thermometer is stuck to my kitchen window, and we've played wih the Frisbee several times. Just waiting for the snow to set up the birdfeeder. I don't know about the clippers, though.

[Diane]

Thanks, lindi, for posting this detailed review here and also on Epinions. It really helps.

I guess the goody bag varies. Mine - given to me as a sample a couple of years ago - contained the following: child-size sunglasses , assorted golf tees, a mini-Frisbee, a leather coaster embossed with the BE logo (nice!), a purse-sized windup measuring tape, a clip for a potato chip bag, and a holder to attach a cell phone to a car dashboard.

[MusicMom]

Yeah, I also got the magnet clip and the tape measure. Are you going to use your golf tees?

[Diane]

If I can locate them I'll forward them to you. I think they may have discontinued them because they couldn't fit the logo on. They were green, as I recall.

[MusicMom]

I don't play golf, either.

I bet one of the pros plays. Michael? Lee?

[Rock]

In September I used Broadway Express to move my daughter from Michigan to Arizona. They did a good job and the driver, Bob Ostrowski, helped load and unload. He didn't even ask for money but we tipped him at both ends.

We got several quotes and BE was the lowest. CAUTION: If you get a quote from Movex, do NOT tell BE. The BE rep told me that Movex was a broker for them and they could not work directly with anyone who had received a quote from Movex. I had gotten a quote from Movex (a higher price). But, fortunately, I kept my mouth shut.

When I started asking for quotes, I didn't know who was a real mover and who was just a broker. As I did more research online, I learned that BE and ABF are movers. Just about everyone else I found was a broker. From what I've read online, brokers just add cost and often provide poor customer service if things go wrong.

We also considered renting a truck. Our best quote was from Ryder. But when we figured in the cost of gas for a truck at 10 mpg, the total cost would have been higher than BE.

My only complaint was the minimum size. My daughter could have moved in 5 linear feet. But it was still considered summer and and the BE minimum during this high season is 10 feet. We were told that the minimum drops to 5 feet in the winter months.

[Gary]

I am writing to say what a great experience we had with Broadway Express and our recent move from Cheektowaga, New York to Leesburg, Florida.

I researched a number of moving companies prior to deciding on Broadway Express. The information that is on their website and flyer explains everything that they have to offer. What I really liked was the fact that the rate included furniture pads and the dolly. There were no additional fees.

The reservation was made without any problem. The driver, Bob Ostrowski, was great to work with. He called when I was told he would, he arrived on time, his expertise allowed us to load quickly and use only the space that we reserved. Our belongings arrived on the day as promised. And I was able to hire Bob to help unload the truck.

It was a pleasure using Broadway Express and I certainly would recommend this company in the future.

[evanssd]

I'd recommend Broadway Express as an decent alternative to the other high-priced options. Our cross-border move this past summer from Nashville, Tennessee to Waterloo, Ontario CANADA was not without difficulties, but for the most part it was positive.

We were moving a 3 bedroom house and had quotes from several of the full-service companies. We decided to look for options that would be closer to the moving allowance provided by my new employer. The quote that resulted from the online moving cost estimate on the BE website suggested we could save quite a bit with BE. This estimate turned out to be off the mark, which leads to my one major complaint with BE.

Using the online estimator, we ended up severely underestimating our space needs. I'll admit that I was partly to blame for not erring on the high end, but no matter how I plugged our household goods into the calculator, it led me to believe that 18 ft would do it. Not until we were packing the truck, did we realize that we were not going to make it. Luckily, there was some more space available and our helpful driver, Woody, was willing to help us make it work. He opened up some extra space and even helped us load stuff on to the outer deck. It was also fortunate that I had hired a loader who really knew how to pack it in. In the end, we got it all on the truck and our goods made it to our destination with no trouble. The bad news is, it cost us nearly three thousand dollars MORE than our original estimate due to the miscalculation of space needs. The actual cost was not too different that it would have been with a full service company after accounting for packing supplies and the cost of loaders and unloaders. It also caused my family a great deal of stress as we considered having to rent an additional truck to get our goods to Canada.

The lesson here for people moving with BE: Make very sure that you have requested enough space for your move!

Things we liked about BE:
-Woody, our driver. Just a really good guy who wanted to help as much as he could.
-Slightly lower cost

Things we did not like:
-Hard to calculate space needs. In our case, this was a big and costly problem.
-Apparently, not much experience with cross-border moves. Neither Woody nor the BE office new much about what documentation was needed. At one point, Woody told us that his truck might be too big for Canadian roads (turned out not to be true).
-Our delivery was delayed two days because of a problem delivering the other goods on the truck. Shared space saves a little money, but also creates scheduling problems.

Our suggestions to folks considering a move with BE:
-Double- and triple-check your space needs.
-Calculate all of your costs to make sure your savings are worth the extra work (packing materials, packing and loading help, driver tips, etc).
-Be flexible with your dates (true with any company)
-If you are moving to Canada, do your homework to make sure you have the required documentation and that you understand the border crossing process.

[Fred0844]

[CA to CT]

I was asked to post this review by "Diane"

In October 2006 my wife and I moved from Los Angles, CA to New Haven, CT. We chose Broadway Express to make our move based on the price (they were actually cheaper than U-Haul), the convenience (not having to drive a giant truck) and the fact that Broadway used trucks with an "air ride suspension".

On the California end, things went pretty smoothly. We used a bunch of friends and the truck was loaded very quickly. We had used a couple of different estimating tools (including getting a quote from a full-service company) and found that our stuff fit easily in the 11 linear feet we hd reserved. Our driver did a nce job directing the move and packing things in.

On the CT end, the move wasn't quite as smooth. Late on a Friday afternoon (2:30? 3:00?) The driver called to inform us that he was arriving on Saturday morning. We had planned to hire professional help (eMove.com), but given that it was Friday afternoon, I was left without much time to arrange for this. I was somewhat panicked, but the guys from eMove came through for me. I really would have appreciated a little bit more warning on the delivery end.

As we unpacked everything we were pretty amazed. A number of the boxes looked pretty beat-up, but absolutely nothing inside was damaged, except for a single, very small, and very fragile piece of glass artwork (which admittedly wasn't packed very well, and may have even been broken during the packing/unpacking process).

Overall I was satisfied with the company, but I felt that the move could have been even smoother if they had given me a bit more warning about the delivery date.

[Diane]

Thanks for this review - if you see this, could you please tell us which eMove company you used in New Haven?

[sf2brooklyn]

We moved from San Francisco, CA to Brooklyn, NY using Broadway Express. The last leg of the journey was picked up by All Star Moving in New Jersey as the large Broadway truck wouldn't fit into the local streets here. We used 10 linear feet for a 2BR apartment.

Broadway Express was AMAZING as sold. Diana was so helpful in coordinating everything and making sure to answer all of my questions via phone and/or e-mail. Our driver was Zeke who went above and beyond to make sure that our belongings arrived before we had to leave for a trip. Even though he was saddled with extra trips/loads unexpectedly, he drove all night to make sure to get us our stuff on time and helped load the stuff onto the shuttle truck from All Star in blazing summer heat. Zeke called us regularly from before he arrived in SF to a few days after the move to make sure it all went ok. Couldn't have been more pleased with Broadway.

We used a local moving company- Golden Bay Relocation in SF to load the truck and they were also fantastic as we knew they'd be, they moved for us before locally in SF, highly recommend them for local moves or loading a Broadway truck.

Broadway was cheaper than all other quotes, including ABF (by quite a bit) and seemed to be the fastest and most reliable option too.

Some things I learned:

- If you have really expensive/delicate items, there's no good way to insure them when using a freight company so that might be a deal-breaker unless you can ship those separately.

- Summertime (Peak season) means everything will be more expensive and take longer.

- Moving is painful and expensive but there are ways to minimize this, like using companies like Broadway Express and Golden Bay Relocation.