ABF Relocube® Reviews
What they say about ordering more is better than less as they can always get picked up if they are not needed. Otherwise, it wastes time and days. I had to order another container and it cost three more days than I had anticipated at the origin. I am very happy with using the Relocubes as it was a stress-free move. In the past I reserved a U-haul truck and drove myself but thought twice about that as the gas prices are higher. As I crossed states such as Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas, there were also restrictions at various locations and I was able to avoid those by driving my own vehicle and transporting my own dog.
They delivered the empty 27' trailer on time, but the pick up didn't go smoothly. We left on our drive to our new state with it packed and waiting out in front to be picked up the following day. My U-Pack dashboard showed it was picked up, but I called just to be sure and they didn't even have a record of our trailer! No one had seen it and someone had mistakenly marked it as "picked up", making it fall totally through the cracks. After much calling, they sent a back-up driver over to get it before they closed on Friday evening at 8:00. Everyone was nice, and they did find it, but you should stay on top of it yourself.
I would have preferred to give 4.5 stars! Overall, my experience with UPack has been positive. The booking folks were available most of the time, professional, and followed a transparent price structure. There is even a discount if you book online. But ABF folks (the shipping company) seemed to be, on occasion, a bit non-cooperative and/or uncoordinated. However, I expected this and called in several times (to get different representatives) to ensure orderly completion (pickup/delivery, within the guaranteed time period). Having read many online reviews of other shipping companies and the challenges folks seemed to have faced, I would say this was, overall, a pleasant experience. They probably would have done their job well without my interference, but we had to adhere to a strict schedule and had no alternative but to keep contacting them, especially since we had paid extra for guaranteed services. I would choose them again, having come here, because of the recommendation from the Consumer Reports.
Mark and Mike et. al were completely marvelous in getting my cube set up for delivery and pick up. They were swift to troubleshoot why my loaded cube wouldn't close and it had to do with weight distribution and the angle the cube was placed (which was for the convenience of the loaders - not a problem in the least). This is my third move with ABF/Relocube and while I plan on staying in AZ for a really long time, I know who to call should those plans change. Best transportation company EVER! And I have used others that are completely subpar to ABF. When you know better, you do better! ;)
The pods worked great. The people I hired to load them loaded them very poorly and some of my stuff ended up being destroyed but this is not upacks fault. It is the fault of my movers because they didn't use ANY straps like I asked them to. I only found out after the stuff got here that they didn't. Make sure you watch the people loading your stuff like a hawk and correct them when they don't use any straps and you won't have issues. The containers were waterproof as far as I could tell. We had them loaded in Portland and it rained a lot on them but I do not see water damage on anything. We had the containers delivered to the warehouse location as they could not deliver them to exactly where we were going to move to.
Aside from some frustrations around communicating when I could ask them to pick up the pod (they won't pick it up unless you say it's full/empty, but I was filling it over the weekend and their transport companies don't answer the phones on the weekends), it went great. Easy, right on time, able to placed where I needed it at both ends of the trip.