National move - long distance - how to find a moving company?

I will never move by myself again in this life.

Hopefully me neither, because I want to stay here. But mine. My best performance was a 2-room apartment. With the first flight from St to Berlin. There my wife + mother-in-law packed the whole apartment, except for the fitted kitchen and living room couch. On the 2nd floor without an elevator... Everything packed into a long Sprinter and back to us, friends then waited to unload. And well, it was not a problem.. nowadays I would probably have pain everywhere after half the time. By the way, Herz was the only one back then that offered unlimited km, all others a maximum of 500 km.

I hopefully not either since I want to stay here.

But mine. Best performance was a 2-room apartment.

With the first flight from St to Berlin. There my wife + mother-in-law packed the whole apartment, except for the fitted kitchen and living room couch. On the 2nd floor without elevator... Everything packed into a long sprinter and back to us, friends waited to unload.

And well, it was no problem.. nowadays I would probably have pain everywhere after half the time.

By the way, Herz was the only one offering unlimited km back then, all others max 500km.

I have moved quite often, mostly on my own without companies. But the last two moves with companies because I simply didn’t feel like the physical effort anymore. I also don’t want to involve friends anymore, the debt can be repaid with carrying service someday when they move. I’m done with that. When you also have small children on your back, you simply don’t get anywhere.

We always pack ourselves. It’s faster, you know where what is and where it belongs, it’s more discreet and just not a heavy task. Boxes are super cheap online or used from classifieds (and are passed on again with hardly any loss). You pack something every now and then for 3-4 days, the day before moving day the rest. Then it’s moving day, by the evening at least 50% is unpacked, the next day at least 90%. Boxes then as a complete set in the classifieds a week later. Done. You use the time then to supply the movers and make the old property nice. That should also be a topic for Kati, because if the household goods are heading to Saarland, she probably doesn’t want to stay there to at least broom-clean the old place, let alone drive back to the old house to take care of small stuff. At best the place is emptied, cleaned for 2 hours and then handed over to the new buyer, so you don’t have to make two 600km trips again.

The last move, from a single-family house to the newly built single-family house, cost about €1300. Distance was low, 20km or so. Whoever has 600km obviously pays more but 8000.... never.

Thank you all for the numerous assessments.
I think I can forget about making the move work for professional reasons with a 100% remote position. But I can still deduct the moving costs for service providers as a household-related service if I have one who gives me an invoice.

So I definitely wouldn’t do it completely self-organized. I will get 100% quotes for full service and use them if it’s affordable. Honestly, if it goes over €5000, it will probably be too expensive for me.

Yesterday I started here, after the first thread feedback, listing our things and thinking about what I want to take with me. I’ve moved a few times in my life and therefore know how quickly you underestimate the quantities. It’s usually more than you thought. You can simply list furniture per room, but boxes...I’m calculating with 200 boxes, just from experience.

I’ll try to take photos of the furniture this weekend and sell some of it. I still have an old sofa bed from Ikea here, many Besta cabinets in old designs that I actually can’t stand anymore, and more Kallax shelves than I can handle. A few of the old Kallax have to go. We also have new solid oak furniture in the living room that I don’t find as cool visually as on the photo on the internet, I’m even thinking of writing them off as a loss and selling them on KA, since they are unbelievably heavy to transport (200 kilos for a display cabinet). The same applies to the old Pax. Gigantic wardrobe with two huge glass sliding doors. I would never buy sliding doors for a wardrobe again, terribly annoying. I think you might even still get some money for them. But I don’t want to move them again. Oh yeah, that reminds me: Do the current Pax doors still fit systems from 10 years ago?

Anyway, if we go for the "drive ourselves" option, then I would try a) to ask the family from the south for help, whether they can come up for the move, drive one of the cars and help generally. And then I would also hire a moving company here at the starting point just to take over the carrying.
I prefer to pack boxes myself. I’m a bit of a perfectionist; every box has to say which room it’s for and what’s inside, anything else is sheer horror. But for disassembling furniture and loading, I would definitely hire a company.

Possibly the same at the destination.
Maybe load some things the day before, load the rest (beds and such) early in the morning, then drive down early in the morning and in the evening unload only the essentials (again the beds), so you might survive the first night with just a travel bag, and unload the next morning – and ideally get help again. We also have more private helpers down there, or you pay someone again, or both.

If you have good furniture that you are attached to, you should not choose the cheap providers.

During the last move, we had a company from MyHammer with good reviews and priced in the upper mid-range. What we did not know was that the company was working two ways and passed part of the orders on to subs.
The packers in the truck wedged the furniture together and taped all doors and drawers shut with packing tape or strapping. Although we had provided shrink wrap for this. And plenty of moving blankets. Neither was used. I was not there to help pack the truck because I was heavily pregnant and already in the new city with a small child.
That I did not have a premature birth at the sight of the damage was a miracle. Not one piece of furniture was undamaged. And the money from the insurance only provides limited consolation.

To all the Sprinter mowers: There is not just one size. I specifically wrote 4.2m flatbed. About half as much fits in terms of loading volume compared to a 7.5t. That would have been the tip for doing it yourself, since it was explicitly pointed out that no one has a truck license. That would work.

We moved last year from East Frisia back to Bavaria and hired a moving company from Berlin, which was significantly cheaper than all the regional companies we asked. We were really very satisfied. May I mention them here? Sorry, I'm not familiar with the rules here yet.
By the way, we did the move from Bavaria to East Frisia ourselves back then, with the help of my parents. Although it was cheaper than using a moving company despite a police fine (the transporter was significantly overloaded), it was also much more exhausting.

(By the way, I once had contact with you via email because we wanted to build a house in Westerstede.)