U Pack

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We moved my mother-in-law from her home in Lakewood, CA near Los Angeles to Pittsburgh.  We looked into a variety of options including traditional moving company to a container service (PODS and competitors), to do-it-ourselves one way truck rental.  U-Pack provided a 28' empty trailer.  They dropped it off in front of her house.  We packed it over a weekend, and they picked it up on Monday.  Then they dropped it off at the new apartment, we unloaded it and they picked it up when we were done.  You pay by the linear foot of trailer (8' wide, 9' high), with a 5' minimum.  This worked really well for us because fitting what she had into the containers we found was difficult or expensive.
Setting up the move was easy.  Call the toll free number, supply the info (or use the website, which is what I did), and get a quote.  I called them to actually schedule things was also easy.
In Lakewood, we had some hassle with getting the trailer delivered when they said they would, but with a couple of phone calls it got done on the day we wanted it.  Since they don't work on the weekend, we needed it delivered on a Friday, and they did.
The trailer is delivered empty with a ramp (it's a real truck trailer with a 4' off the ground floor).  It's empty when they deliver it.  We hired experienced movers to help us load it, since packing a truck so stuff survives a few thousand mile trip isn't easy.  We got everything padded and strapped down.  One hint for anyone who does this is that U-Haul rents furniture pads one way, which is just what we needed.  U-Pack provides an 8' high wall, basically two sheets of plywood with some pipes to hold the sheets together and hook into the slots that run down the sides of the trailer.  This demises your stuff from anything else that goes in the trailer later.  They warn you that it's not designed to hold your stuff in place. 
U-Pack is a division of ABF trucking.  They haul the trailer to their terminal, load commercial freight in and send it to a terminal near you.  The wall protects your stuff from that freight.  It normally takes 4-5 days, not including the weekends to ship across the country.  It worked best for us to have the trailer delivered the following Wednesday, even though we could have had it as early as Monday.
We needed the trailer delivered and picked up on the same day.  The facility she lives in would not let us leave it overnight.  The Pittsburgh terminal was able to accommodate that on our preferred day.  They delivered it as promised, and picked it up as promised.
When we opened the trailer, it looked exactly as we had left it in Lakewood.  We took down the wall, unloaded the trailer and called the terminal to tell them it was ready to be picked up.
This worked out great for us.  It was cost effective, pretty painless, and gave us the most flexibility.