I have been planning on retirement after next school year, but circumstances changed and I had yet another BS run in with the school district I work for this morning. My wife (who works for the same district) and I promptly sent letters of retirement to the superintendent. We are done as of May 24 and flying out of Alaska, May 25. That gives us 10 days to sell all of our stuff, our house, my truck. It will be quite the deal, but we are done and were really dreading another year of the school and living in the bush. What a relief!!! Here is the real question, which you can answer after congratulating me, I can ship 2 pallets of stuff from here, Galena, AK, to Fife, WA pretty reasonably but Lynden Freight, ( one of the better freight companies in AK) only goes as far as Fife. Who should I use to ship two 500lb pallets to western WI or Minneapolis/ St Paul, MN? I am not in too much of a hurry and the pallets will be tarped and plastic wrapped.
I would think any LTL carrier would work. We see R and L around here alot for our engines/ transmissions that come up from Milwaukee and a few other places.
If I didn't have pressing business on 5/23, I would drive up and get them! Welcome home (almost), Ken
Congrats! Didn't want to escape winter completely though? We use CH Robison for LTL at work and I can't think of a single time I had an issue with an order they did.
Fastenal is mentioned when shipping bikes on a pallet for a reasonable cost, maybe see if they have a store or distribution center near Fife/Tacoma. And congrats, sort of. Too bad that it happened so soon, but it is on your terms.
I have a complete Chevy LS coming with Midwest Motor Express, from Spokane to Springfield, IL. It was $240 for tailgate service or $300 liftgate service. Pretty reasonable, in my mind. I’d rent a small U-Haul van and drive it. There’s a lot of beauty across the northern states.
We've used YRC (used to be Yellow) a few times with freight and they were quick and easy to deal with. Pricing was very competitive. Congrats on the retirement!
Thanks for all the congrats. It was nice to be in a position to just be done. We were retiring next year anyway so this isn't too big of a deal. I have made the drive across the northern part of the US many times and it isn't that much fun, but is still an option. I have my family in Dallas, OR so I could fit in a visit if I went that route. I might fly out to WA, buy a cheap used pick-up and drive back, but don't really want to take the time at this point. But I could use a truck since we are selling ours here in the village rather than barge it out. It is all a village logistics thing. If anybody wants a really nice house in AK, I'll make you a deal. It is about 1300Sf with 2 bedrooms on the floatplane lake. It also has a rental cabin and 3 other outbuildings and is on city water. It is probably the nicest house in town on the nicest piece of property. I am asking $189K but for the Beeb special I will take $175K. So, if any of you are owns a floatplane and wants a place in the middle of the best moose hunting territory in the world, let me know. I'll gladly pay a finders fee if you hook me up with a buyer.
Check with "Forward Air", they used to be the best deal for ground transport of crated goods, period. I could ship a crated R6 engine from Austin to LA for right at $100! Been a few years since I used them so I don't know what they up to these days...and BTW they ship everything via ground transport, no idea why they call themselves forward air..
No real anxiety at all, I am 62 and we have been planning this, we just moved it up a year. We built our retirement home a couple of years ago on property we have had for 20 years. We need to spend time with our kids and grandkids, in addition to needing to be more available to aging parents. I think we have our finances in order and the Sate of Alaska retirement plan is pretty good with the pension based on a percentage of an average salary over your best 3 years multiplied by the number of years in the system. It also includes free medical with a reasonable co-pay and deductible. In the past 24 hrs, I have really come to realize that I won't miss very much of school administration at all. I won't miss the whiney staff, the irritating parents, stupid policies, mountains of paperwork, and supervising everything. I will miss some of the kids, but they leave anyway. I have lots of things to work on in my garage and I need to get in a few races this year.
Ken, I just re-read the post, what's your drop dead for having the freight back to the upper Midwest? Have to check on the blonde child's last day of school, but maybe I could do a round trip to Fife and back with the chillinz. Looks like I could potentially head out like 6/8, have to be back by 6/14