We have been University Van Lines since 1975, and student moves are close to where the name came from. Small loads, fixed dates, and buildings that let everybody in on the same morning.
Very little of it is about the furniture. It is about the window. Move-in and move-out days are set by the school, everybody arrives inside the same few hours, and the lift and the loading area are shared with several hundred other people having the same day.
The load itself is usually small — a bed, a desk, a few boxes, a bike, more clothes than anyone admits to. The skill is getting in and out inside the slot the building gives you.
Off-campus is often the harder job. Three or four people leaving one house on different days, half the furniture staying, deposits riding on the condition of the walls. We can move one room out of a shared house without touching anybody else's, as long as it is clear on the day what is going.
Label by person, not by room. It is the single thing that makes a house-share move go smoothly at the other end.
If you are going home for the summer and coming back to a different room in September, we can pick up, store and redeliver. It saves a round trip and it is usually cheaper than paying for an empty room through the summer. We hold it in our own warehouse, not a third party's.
On local moves in New Jersey, these are part of the job and not billed separately:
By the hour. This is how most local moves are priced. You pay for the hours the job actually takes: if it runs long you pay more, and if it goes quickly you pay less. Our written estimate tells you the crew we would send and the hours we expect the job to take, so you know what you are planning around.
At a flat rate. If you would rather not think about the clock at all, ask us to lock in the price. On local moves in New Jersey we can quote a flat rate for the job as scoped, agreed in writing before move day. A flat rate is fixed in both directions: it does not go up if the day runs long, and it does not come down if we finish early. We carry the risk on the hours, and that certainty is what you are paying for.
One or the other, not both. Tell us which you would prefer when you ask for your estimate and we will price it that way.
We work across the state and into New York, including Newark, Princeton, Elizabeth, Edison, Montclair, Hoboken, Jersey City and Rahway.
Related: small moves, studio and one-bedroom moves, and storage.