Moving to Hilo

We moved to Hilo in November 2007 after years of visiting Hawaii. This is the story of our move to Hilo from California. It describes how we picked our neighborhood in Hilo, the moving decisions we made including shipment of our cars and household effects, and our process of setting up utilities and licensing our cars. We hope these pages help others in their move to Hawaii.

• How we picked our Hilo neighborhood
• Setting up our move to Hilo
• Executing our move to Hilo
• Setting up Utilities in Hilo
• Car and Driver Licensing in Hilo
• Moving Pets; Buying a house or Acreage: Finding Statistics

Setting up our Move to Hilo

How to get to Hilo turned out to a time consuming investigation and process for us.  We have moved many times over the years, but this was the first time that we were paying for a move ourselves and that we were shipping stuff across an ocean. 

We had to determine how to get our effects to Hawaii (shipping container, US mail, UPS), how much to do ourselves versus movers and packers, whether to bring our cars or buy new ones, and timing of the move. Here are some of the things we needed to decide and the choices we made:

Cars – to bring or not to bring. We have two used cars, both of which we like a lot, but seemed unfitting to the Big Island. We envisioned having a big 4-wheel drive truck or SUV- something more in line with what the locals drive, but instead we had two California commuter cars. Our investigation began by calling car dealers on the Big Island to determine prices and availability of used trucks and AWD station wagons. The dealers' lack of enthusiasm and high prices moved our phoning efforts to Oahu with more used car inventory, great enthusiasm from the sales folk, and cheaper prices even when adding the cost of transport from Oahu to the Big Island (which they said they were happy to set up for us). We found prices for the same used cars were cheaper in Northern California but then we would have to pay to get them shipped and licensed for Hawaii. After taking into consideration the costs and hassles we decided to ship our own two cars. We used Pasha Hawaii transport lines and were pretty happy with their service. They picked up our cars in Cupertino for a fee, which saved us the hassle of getting them to their pickup site in Hayward. The cars arrived in Hilo 20 days after Pasha pickup and were easy to collect near the dock in Hilo. At this point I am really glad we brought our own cars. It feels great to drive cars that we are already familiar with around our new town.

How much and what stuff to bring. I checked out the Hawaii message boards before our move and what to bring is always a big subject of discussion. Some folks bring only a small amount of stuff, others are sorry that they brought all the wrong stuff. We had already been downsizing our belongings for a year after selling our house in California and moving to an apartment in Silicon Valley, but planned to take only a portion of what we had left with us to Hawaii. We left behind our overstuffed furniture, pine bookshelves (tasty treat for termites), and gave away as many clothes as possible. In retrospect, I could have gotten rid of even more clothes - we just don't wear much in Hawaii. We brought our books (after filtering out books we knew we would never read), our software, computers, Flat screen TVs, DVDs, and some folding hard-wood bookcases and shelves. We finally have time to read all the books we have collected and we love our electronics, computers and movies. The quantity of things you bring may drive or be driven by your choice of how to get your effects to Hawaii.

Ship versus Air If your effects can fit into a reasonable number of boxes, air freighting them is probably the cheapest and easiest way to go. With this method, you need to have an address and person to ship them. Since we didn't have a place to live lined up in advance, we had no mailing address. We called a bunch of storage places on the Big Island and none of them were willing to accept packages.We struggled about whether we should bring everything we had (including stuff sitting in a San Jose storage area) or just move a subset of our stuff and keep the remainder in storage in California. The combination of not having a place to mail packages and the feeling that shipping stuff to Hawaii would only get more expensive as the cost of oil rises convinced up to bring everything and ship it in a container. We calculated that a 20 foot shipping container would hold everything we had in storage as well as all the stuff in our apartment that we wished to take.

Matson versus Horizon We were attracted to Matson since they have smaller 20 foot containers allowing us to ship our effects without sharing a large containers with other movers or merchandise and great web pages explaining how their shipping services work. Horizon is their biggest competitor. Matson provides an online estimate tool that allowed us to determine our costs. We discovered that Matson's "door-to-door" service means they drive the container to your site, leave it on a chassis (see wheels under the container above) for a couple days for you to load and then come back to retrieve it and drive it to the ship. The chassis makes the container difficult to access because it is up above the ground and comes with no ramps or lift gates. Once the container is filled, it needs to be packed tight with materials and a wall needs to be constructed to keep boxes from shifting. Having no place to park a container for a couple of days nor the physical ability to pack up and drag all our stuff from our upstairs apartment into a container sticking up in the air, drove us to check out movers.

Packing our own container versus using movers Due to cost considerations we researched local movers, national movers, read message boards and checked references on movers to find a mover that had reasonable charges as well as experience shipping to Hawaii. Since we had determine the costs associated with Matson, we had a price range that we were willing to pay above that cost. We had the complexity of needing to collect our boxes from a storage area in San Jose, pack our apartment in Cupertino, and deliver them to an unspecified location in Hilo, Hawaii. Our initial moving estimates were discouraging. Our lucky break came when we contacted a mover in Hilo that had good references and was very helpful on the phone, Big Isle Moving and Draying. They told us they had had good luck with moves to the Big Island set up by Unipack Global Relocation in San Diego. With Unipack we were able to specify that we wanted a 20' Matson box (we didn't want to share a container), that we needed to pickup boxes at two locations and our delivery address in Hilo was unknown. We were able to insure our effects which helped our peace of mind. Our Unipack coordinator in San Diego set up everything for us including picking up the Matson container in Oakland, driving it to our apartment in Cupertino and loading our apartment effects that they had packed combined with our storage boxes from San Jose that they had picked up and in some cases repacked, into the container. They packed it in tightly and built a wall in the container, sealed it up and drove it to Oakland to catch the next Matson ship. Once in Hilo, our coordinator worked with Big Isle Moving and Draying to pick up the Matson container (the container was delivered to Kawaihae harbor instead of Hilo) and deliver it to our rental. Unipack and our coordinator in particular, were awesome. Since we knew the costs of the Matson portion of the move and the medical costs for strained backs and injuries, we knew that the price was right in line with the complexity and effort required. In the end we were very happy with our choice.

Executing our Move to Hilo

After we figured out what we were going to bring to Hawaii and a timeline for our move, the next big effort was to plan our exit, the trip, and where to stay and what to do in the initial weeks in Hawaii.  Although we knew we were going to Hilo and we had our dream rental house defined, we didn’t have a lead on any rentals or even a contact to talk to.  Plan B was to check out rentals in other towns on the Big Island if finding a place in Hilo didn't work out.

In preparation for the move we packed books, files and papers ourselves, organized the apartment with what to take and what to leave and thoroughly cleaned the cars (cars have to be free from folliage or anything that could contaminate Hawaii to get through agriculture control). We also pre-set shut off of our utilities. We had a tight schedule with no room for error on the California side. If we missed our flight out, we would have to wait 3 days to get past the Thanksgiving crush on the airlines. Here is what our schedule looked like:

Week One: On Monday we rented a car, packed our suitcases, and prepared for the move. Tuesday we met the Movers at our storage area in San Jose then moved to our apartment in Cupertino. They packed everything and loaded our 20' Matson container as we watched. At the end of the day, they sealed it up and drove it away. We checked into a hotel. On Wednesday, Pasha picked up our 2 cars. We cleaned the apartment and disposed of everything left. We had to use GotJunk for a couple of large pieces of furniture we couldn't give away (they have helped us in the past). We returned our cable box and gave the keys to the apartment complex. Early Thursday morning we headed to the Oakland airport, turned in the rental car, and got on our Aloha flight to Kona. In Kona, we rented a car and stayed locally for a few days recovering from the move.

Week Two: We started heading toward Hilo on Monday, staying in Volcano a few days. We love to hike the paths in Volcanoes National Park. Our favorite place to stay in Volcano, Hawaii is Kilauea Lodge which has awesome breakfasts and our favorite place to eat is Lava Rock cafe. We rolled into Hilo on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving and checked into the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel. They have great room deals if you book through the internet. On Thursday we hit the Queen's Court for their lavish Thanksgiving buffet (we made reservations for the buffet weeks before and even then they had only a few openings). The Queen's Court is located in the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel.

The problem with timing the move to Hilo during Thanksgiving is that everything is closed. We checked out the classifieds in the local papers, but nothing was open and no one returned calls. We spent the time driving neighborhoods, checking out Puna and getting the lay of the land. (see renting in Hilo for more), we had a lucky break. A local home owner needed renters immediately, since his current renters were moving out. He showed us the house that evening and we all loved it. We gave him a deposit on the spot.

Week Three: We extended our hotel stay and car rental yet again. We were able to get a signed lease by Wednesday for move in the upcoming weekend, which allowed us to set up most of our utilities in Hilo. We purchased a couch, bed, and dining table at Furnitureland in Hilo and set up delivery for the following Monday. On Friday, we were able to determine our Matson container had arrived and we began to negotiate delivery to our Hilo rental with the local moving company. On Sunday, the hotel was no longer able to extend our stay, so we checked out, bought 2 airbeds at Walmart and moved into the rental house.

Week Four : Our furniture from Furnitureland was delivered on Monday, but there was no sign of our Matson container. We discovered it had arrived at the Kawaihae harbor instead of Hilo, for some unknown reason. As far as we can tell, Matson ships deliver all the containers from the mainland to Honolulu and tug boats drag barges to the other islands.

This picture shows a tug boat dragging a barge of shipping containers, with a really long tow line, into Hilo bay. If there is no berth available in Hilo, or bad weather, or they just feel like it, the tug boats go to Kawaihae instead of Hilo. So our moving company had to drive to the other side of the island to fetch our Matson container. This delayed our delivery by a week. We finally got our container delivered on Friday. During the week we set up internet service and found an insurance agent willing to transfer our auto and rent insurance from the mainland. They verified that we lived in an area of Hilo that was insurable. Pasha emailed to tell us their ship was due into Hilo harbor on Sunday so we set up a pickup time for Monday.

Week Five: On Monday we picked up our two cars at Harper Rentals near the dock and dropped off our rental car at the Hilo airport (we had to pay extra to drop it off at Hilo since we rented it in Kona). We transferred our car insurance, re-titled and relicensed our cars. At the end of week 5, we had completed our move to Hilo, except the many boxes yet to unpack.

Timing is something to consider in a move to Hawaii. We decided to move the week before Thanksgiving (2007) since the movers were open and they told us there was room on Matson and Pasha ships during that timeframe. Moving during the Christmas season is usually more expensive and we hoped to be settled before then. We had some idle time (meaning hotel, car and eatting out expenses) during Thanksgiving week, but we were happy to be in Hawaii during that time and we had to hang out somewhere while waiting for our shipments to arrive.

This is just one family's experience moving to Hilo, but if you are thinking about a move, consider the length time required in a hotel and to rent a car in your moving budget. We were lucky that nothing slowed down the arrival of our cars or container such as a strike or bad weather. We also took a risk by not having a rental lined up in advance. Any delays would have increased the cost of the move.

Copyright 2008,2009, 2010