I'm about to move from Singapore to San diego.

Can anyone recommend a good but cheap moving company?

Good and cheap don't really co-exist that much when you're talking international moves. Crown moved me from YYZ to DUD a few years back, and I found them pretty good. Of course, the company I work for paid the bill, but I remember them saying the final cost was reasonable. Crown comes in, packs, boxes, ships and unpacks at the other end.

Overseas moves are ridiculously expensive, so I'd be interested to see what they thought was "reasonable". Is DUD in New Zealand?

SIN1K .. you have to consider that you may be better off selling off most of your stuff and buying it when you get to your destination. For the few odds and ends you want to keep, you can ship them in boxes via mail or common carrier like DHL, FedEx, UPS, etc.

Anyway, the way its worked for me to and from Hawaii, is that I use a local company on the originating side, and they become my move coordinator and track the shipment from one end to the other, including in the container (in your case, I imagine to Long Beach/LA) and then on the truck to the final destination. In all cases, unless you have a full container, they will pack your stuff in crates and aggregate your crates with other crates to fill a container, then when it arrives in LA, transfer your crates to a truck and aggregate those crates with other crates going to San Diego.

When we moved to Kauai, we had a completely full 44' container. For the upcoming move to Florida, we sold the furniture and all my A/V equipment to the buyer and only had 2 1/4 crates going from Kauai to Florida. They've already been picked up and we're not leaving here till mid-July. (They have to fill a container on Kauai, barge it over to HNL, put it on a ship to OAK or Long Beach, and then get it transferred to a truck to Florida, aggregated with other stuff going in that direction.) It's probably much faster if you can fill a single container, and the containers (at least here) come in different sizes, ranging from 24' to 44' long.

-David


[This message has been edited by LIH Prem (edited 07-02-2003).]

Ask friends or family in multinational companies to ask their Relocations or Expatriation person (he/she would work in Human Resources, and have a good handle on local companies). With a list in hand, call around and check on prices (you are not likely to get corporate rates). But you will probably get an idea of who is reputable, which is often worth more.