After hearing so many horror stories of stuff not being delivered on time, being damaged, or even held hostage for extra payment, when I did a cross country move, I just hired local movers to load and unload the truck and I drove it myself. It took a few days, but I had full control of the process and I was never handing over all of my stuff to some random company.
I did the opposite. I had a POD set down in my driveway and we loaded it up at our leisure. We packed and secured everything ourselves, then had it moved to the new house and unloaded it at our leisure. Since we packed it ourselves, nothing was damaged or broken at the other end. I'll never move any other way again. It was so nice not having the stress of renting, driving and returning a truck on time. The rental costs of a pod is pretty cheap, so you can load it up a week in advance... and having it moved was also surprisingly cheap.
