For reasons that remain a mystery, almost every lease in Montreal begins on July 1st. What this means, in practical terms, is that the days immediately surrounding June 30th / July 1st see a huge amount of activity in terms of people moving in, moving out, and leaving huge amounts of discarded furniture and belongings on the street corner. Throw in the summer heat and the fact that July 1st is also a national holiday, Canada Day, and it is easy to see how being forced to move on this date can be a frustrating experience for everyone involved.
Beat the crowds
As you might be able to figure out, since so many people are moving simultaneously, resources like truck and van rentals and moving companies get stretched to their limits. It is almost impossible to rent a moving truck for this date unless you call ahead and reserve well in advance. You may have to reserve in the month of March in order to make sure that you have a truck available to you for July. Not only that, but some of the rental companies, like Uhaul, try to maximize their profits by only allowing you to rent the vehicle for a period of up to 4 hours at an inflated rate. This lets them rent the same truck to as many as 3 or 4 different people over the course of a single day. When you are making your arrangements, make sure that you find out how long you will be allowed to keep the truck – don’t make any assumptions.
A novel way to beat the rush to grab a truck is to look outside of the city for a vehicle. Most companies elsewhere in Quebec will also be dealing with a large number of rental requests, due to similar lease-ending periods, but Plattsburgh and Burlington are just an hour or so across the border. The rental chains there offer reasonable prices and unlimited kilometers, meaning you won’t rack up extra fees driving the truck to Montreal and back again.
Moving companies will also be completely booked for this period, and so if you don’t intend to lift any boxes yourself, be prepared to make your plans many months in advance. The prices for moving services vary wildly depending on which company you call – it is not surprising to see differences of as much as 100 percent for a move – so it is in your best interest to shop around.
Get your boxes quickly
It’s not only trucks and movers that are in short supply right around moving time. It can also become difficult to locate packing materials and boxes as the date looms on the calendar. It’s important to be proactive and start visiting grocery stores and moving supply shops a month or so before the big day in order to avoid being disappointed.
Welcome to New To Montreal ! If you are new here, you can learn more about Montreal in subscribing to the RSS feed or via E-mail. Thanks for visiting!
