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Moving Trucks To and From California
The Babylon Bee has a piece up “Gavin Newsom Named U-Haul Salesperson of the Year.”
Mrs. Tabby and I recently cleaned out the house of her late parents near Sacramento. She insisted we not bring much stuff back to our house in north Texas. So we did not need to rent a truck. Everything she wanted to bring back fit into our compact SUV. But moving things got me thinking about moving truck rental.
And I know that social scientists use truck rental rates as a proxy for how many people are moving where. So I decided to check.
For a rental of a 26-foot truck (U-Haul’s largest) to start on October 4, the base rate to take the truck from our town in north Texas to the Sacramento area would be $1,638. But the base rate to rent the same truck on the same day from the Sacramento area to north Texas would be $5,746! The rate from California to Texas is 3.5 times the rate from Texas to California. That says something about the demand by people moving into versus out of California.
Though in fairness to California, when we moved from western New York to Texas in 2018, and even when our son moved from New York to Texas in 2010 to start his Air Force career, truck rental rates from New York to Texas were 2.5 to 3 times as much as rental rates from Texas to New York.
And notwithstanding the desire of many to leave California, 1) several of my Texas neighbors who have previously lived in California and who still have family there are in the process of moving back to California (most cite the desire to be near family), and 2) many people offered what I consider ridiculously high prices for Mrs. Tabby’s parents’ house, indicating many people want to stay in California. The house sold this week to a young family. I don’t understand how they can afford it, but the mortgage lender says they can. The accepted offer was one of 25 offers received within a five-day window after the house was listed.
Published in Economics
I think this has been posted about in the Conservative Migration group.
And, my move from Phoenix last August (2020) required THREE of those biggest 26-foot trucks, full up. Fortunately I didn’t have to pack, load, or unload any of it myself. That was paid for by the people who bought my Phoenix place. Which made it easy to just tell them to bring EVERYTHING.
There might be some seasonal issues too, so that comparing A to B vs B to A at the same time of year, may not be very relevant. Demand for A to B might be higher in Summer and for B to A may be higher in winter. Or vice reversa. The U-Hauls for my move out of Phoenix may have been lower than other times if people are less interested in packing and loading trucks etc, when it might get up to 115 during the days.
They may end up moving quickly back out again, once they see how prices are going up in the People’s Republic of California, and not just because of Biden Inflation although that’s getting worse too.
The lender might be singing a different tune if that family loses their income etc due to PRC issues, including but not limited to inflation, businesses leaving, wildfires… But you don’t need to worry about that since you already got your money.
Daughter and son in law and kids moved from California to Texas last March. It was cheaper for son in law to buy a truck than do the rental.
There’s a new EPA rule that kicked in Jan 2020 that made a lot of trucks not legal in Cali. He bought one on Craigslist for 10k. He made three trips and a friend (who they have talked into moving to TX) is on the way with it right now to pack up his house in Cali
edit – meant January 2021
Sounds like a smart business to get into. :-)
I work for a mortgage broker and we’re doing loans and refinances everyday. Employment is verified at the very latest minute.
But don’t even think about buying income property. You need 6-12 months reserves in cash. The rent moratorium is brutal.
Well those brokers etc pretty much can’t stop doing business because that’s their source of income. But most home mortgages seem to get bought up by the feds anyway, so even if the borrower loses their job etc, the broker already got their income too.
Sure. But the fed approves every loan before the loan is made. I have no idea what the future holds, but for now the loans are solid
Things can change a lot in 2 or 3 years, let alone the 20 or 30 years of a mortgage.
And I still think it’s a wise move to get out of California. Things could change very quickly to make getting out difficult or impossible. Just requiring U-Haul to use electric trucks might do it. If I had relatives who were dumb enough to keep living there, I’d say that’s on them. I sure wouldn’t move in/back to be closer to them. They’re far more likely to want to join ME, sooner or later.
I have wondered what arrangements they have for living quarters in California. Even if they previously owned real estate in California, real estate prices have gone up quite a bit in just the last couple of years.
As visitors in California a few weeks ago the only prices we had real visibility into were restaurants (consistently about 20% pricier than what we pay in Texas) and gasoline (but everybody knows how insane California gas prices are). But we were in the Sacramento area. There can be quite a bit of regional cost variation, so results in the Bay Area or in LA or Orange Counties may be different.
And worth every penny . . .
I knew this too. In February we spent a weekend in Tucson to get away. One of the U-Haul places was advertising a truck to California for around $200. I wondered what California was charging to go the other direction. No way it was $200. Probably close to the 3.5 times difference you saw.
Many years ago (1980s?) when I still lived in southern California rental car companies offered super cheap one way rentals to take the cars from southern California to northern California (like $9 a day with unlimited mileage). They advertised to southern California locals to take a weekend trip up to northern California, taking one of their cars up and then fly home. At the time for some reason more visitors to California started their trips in the northern part of the state and drive down the coast to the southern part of the state. So the rental car companies ended up with a surplus of cars in southern California, and were looking for a way to get the cars back to the northern part of the state. Entice with a super cheap rental rather than paying drivers or putting the cars on trucks.
Yes – getting the trucks back is a problem. I’ve known several people who have flown out of state to pick up a truck, drive it back to California, load up, then head to their destination.
I was thinking about that too. If they moved from California to Texas and wound up without a mortgage (if they were smart), and now are looking to move back into California WITH (likely by necessity) a mortgage, that seems extra-foolish and short-sighted.