Border Crossings

You would think that, with billions of goods crossing the Canadian-US border every year, moving our humble 22 boxes of stuff would be easy. Alas, that was not the case.

Given that we didn’t know we were moving to NY until the beginning of June, and wanted to leave that month, we had little lead time. I called around a few moving companies first; if it weren’t too expensive, they’d be the easiest: they know about cross-border moves, for one thing. It turns out that the end of June is the busiest time of year for moving house. A number of places actually laughed at me when I said I wanted to move in 2 weeks. Apparently I needed to have booked months to half-a-year in advance! Too bad I didn’t have that much advance notice myself!

So courier companies it is. They know about moving stuff, and since we weren’t going with a moving company, we’d really only have the 22 boxes of clothes, books and kitchenware. Some couriers said we should go with a mover (“we’re not a moving company!”, others wouldn’t do personal shippings. Purolator said they’d do it. But every time I talked to them, they had a different set of forms they felt I needed to have ready for the shipment. Ugh.

Since we didn’t have a destination address yet, it was difficult to get the shipping stuff set up. Luckily, our friend Leah kindly offered to store our stuff for the summer and be present for the pick-up.

Fast forward to the end of August. Now that we had an address, I called Purolator again. The person I spoke to confirmed that all we needed was The Declaration of Free Entry for Unaccompanied Goods form. Okay, that was simple. It required a list of all our belongings in each box, which we had already documented (good thing we’re anal that way), and how much each was worth, also not too hard to estimate.

So I called back once the form was completed. In quintuplicate. This call, I was told I needed the Harmonized Tax Code for each item in the box. What’s that? Good question. Apparently there are books of lists of goods for border-crossing reference. At first this seemed only a minor incovenience. After all, all used clothes fit under one category, as did printed books. No problems there. Not until I got to the boxes with kitchenware did things get complicated. Was that glass mug we bought for $0.50 at the Goodwill worth $0.03 to manufacture? Did it contain less than 0.1% aluminum by weight? How much lead did this glass contain? Each of these had different Harmonized Tax Codes.

Three hours later, I was frustrated, bleary-eyed, and no closer to figuring out these stupid codes. People move across the border all the time; this can’t be the right thing! However, Purolator refused to budge on this – “We don’t want to be responsible if your stuff gets held up at the border”. Whatever.

So a week later, I’m staying with my aunt Eva in Toronto and decide just to have our stuff shipped to my aunt’s place. No borders to worry about, and Leah can have her storage area back! We’ll rent a UHaul and drive our stuff across the border.

The pick-up guy complains that there are too many boxes. Huh? The delivery guy does the same. He also tosses the boxes with abandon and complains that they’re not a moving company. He wants to leave all the boxes at the front doorstep. In the rain. And blocking entry to 6 condos, including the one I’m in. Luckily, I’d been in NYC long enough already to regain my arguing skills.

My poor aunt Eva then has to deal with all our stuff in her 2-bedroom condo. Plus she’s been storing things for my brother (who was in the midst of a move to Montreal), and for one of my cousins! It made for a crowded place!

Toby comes up the first weekend of October, taking an overnight bus from NYC, and arriving in time for sunrise. Yawn… I was heading back from visiting friends in Hanover, a small town in southern Ontario. We meet late on a Friday morning at the bus depot. We were to pick up our UHaul rental truck that afternoon. We wanted a cargo van, since we had a small load. Unfortunately for us, their vans aren’t allowed for out-of-town moves. The smallest truck we’re allowed is a 10-footer. That’s 10 ft long. Oh well, what can we do?

When I had booked the vehicle, UHaul said they’d call the day before to tell me when and where exactly to pick up the truck. But no call came that Thursday.

Friday afternoon, I called UHaul, and was put on hold for an hour. Then their answering service hung up on me. I tried again, but this time it took only 45 minutes, and someone answered, saying they’d send the Toronto office an email. Well, that hadn’t worked the night before, but what could I do?

Friday late afternoon rolls around. We’d wanted to pack up the truck Friday afternoon and leave Toronto early Saturday morning, but that plan was looking unlikely. I finally get a call from UHaul, saying that the closest truck was in Kingston. “But we’re in Toronto,” I reply. “Well, the closest truck is in Kingston.” “That’s three hours away.” “Oh.” So I suggest I can wait until the following day, Saturday, as long as they can guarantee me a truck. They say we’ll get a phone call by 9am as to where we can get a truck. My aunt cooks us a lovely lamb dinner, which helps ease the frustration of dealing with such incompetence!

Saturday morning we receive a call. At 11am, two hours after they’re supposed to call. They’ve a truck for us! Finally! We get the truck and load it up. The truck’s floor is less than 2/3 covered, with only one layer of boxes. It’s ridiculously empty! We stop at the Home Depot in Buffalo and add some rugs to our truck, and stay overnight at the scuzziest motel in a Rochester suburb. The next day, we drive to the Ikea at Elizabeth, NJ and pick up some odds and ends (dressers, bookshelf). Still, our truck’s floor is visible!

The George Washington Bridge connects Manhattan to New Jersey at the north end, where we live. It seems that Sunday night is a busy time for the bridge. We wait over an hour in snail-pace traffic to pay the toll, and creep along the bridge. Get home well after dark, and spend another 2 hrs unloading all our stuff.

Now, UHaul claims you can drop off a rental truck after hours simply: just leave the truck in a UHaul lot and deposit the keys and contract in the “after hours drop box” at the office. I guess this doesn’t happen in Manhattan though. The closest UHaul is just a few blocks to the north of us (in Harlem, that is), and the lot is fenced in and gated shut. No place to leave a vehicle, no place to leave keys and contract. Hmm… We drive around looking for a place to park nearby, but the signs are confusing and ambiguous, and we’d rather not have to deal with a towed rental truck the next day. So we drive back home and find parking on the next street over. The next day we’re able to return the truck (the gates have opened at that Harlem UHaul place).

But, we did get a $65 parking ticket. Commercial vehicles aren’t allowed to be parked on NYC streets overnight. GRRRR!