Truck-trailer combination for BE license

Arnout

@moderators: Hopefully I'm posting this in the most appropriate subforum, if not feel free to move it.

Last year we moved to Ireland, and as we're currently living at a temporary address we left a lot of stuff in storage in the Netherlands. Once we buy our own house, the contents of the storage unit have to be moved too. It would be too much for a normal van, so we might need a professional moving company or a friend with a C/E license.

But there's another option that we're looking at: it's what we call in the Netherlands a "BE-trekker", roughly translated "BE-truck". Such as this: https://veldhuizen.nl/verhuur/43m%c2%b3-gesloten-oplegger/

It can be driven by someone with a BE-license, if they acquired that license before 19 January 2013 (after that the rules for BE became more strict, and C1/E licenses were introduced). I am such a someone.

Now it would be a lot easier if I could rent one of those here in Ireland, so I don't have to fly back and forth. But I'm having difficulty finding anything, does anyone know if these combinations exist in Ireland and where I could rent one?

hoodie6029

Would renting 2 box trucks that you can on a B licence and yourself and your OH driving over and back be a bit easier?

Arnout

It's not just the volume, it's also the weight. The loading capacity of box trucks is just dreadful.

mickdw

Well those interesting looking baby artics do not exist here.

What kind of weight are you thinking?

I can't see that mini truck having a huge load capacity either.

hoodie6029

Not to state the obvious but with the inflation of everything, I don’t think there will be any way of doing this that will give you massive savings. It’s really down to how much of the work you want to do yourself and how much effort that would take.

Taking time off work will cost you wages/your annual leave allowance. Movers will be more expensive but you won’t need to worry straps, drop cloths, missed ferries, breakdowns etc.

The only kinda outside of the box suggestion I have for you is, if you’ve lived without this stuff for a year, how much do you really need it? Is it worth selling most of it and just taking the really important/sentimental pieces back?

Arnout

We already got rid of a load of stuff. We live with my wife's parents and I don't think they'll appreciate it when we take their washing machine (just a random example) with us 😆 I agree that we definitely have some calculations to do. Another thing to consider is the hassle with toll in Belgium and France (as I don't fancy dealing with UK customs). I got a few quotes from movers, just ballpark figures for the moment, as I don't know an exact volume, but 30m3 would be between €6k and € 7.5k.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120925460#Comment_120925460

The link I provided states a net loading capacity of 5 tons. So that's a clear win over a box van. Or two box vans.

hoodie6029

6-7k! You’d buy a lot of furniture and washing machines for that!

mickdw

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120925937#Comment_120925937

Have you licence for the larger 7.5 Luton van.

They would take 3 tonne I think

zg3409

Most hire companies don't allow you to take hired vehicles to other countries in ferries as it's insurance hassle and trouble if it breaks down or crashes in another country.

There are official movers but it's cheaper to get "man with a van" or palletized transport. If you could get most of your larger items on pallets there is networks if shipping companies that move pallets at low cost. If you are in no hurry often lorries or hgvs are going one direction empty and they organise a load to make the trip worthwhile.

For example a lot of shipping companies or individual man with van have uk shipments weekly. They move cars, equipment machinery, anything anywhere in Ireland and UK. Similar for France. There is lots of options for Poland due to large population in Ireland. I suspect a 40ft container or similar might work out cheaper and in some cases no driver travels with the container on.the ferry, instead new driver on far side.

I suggest looking at options and bringing anything delicate by hand. Avoid movers as they are too expensive.

Arnout

@mickdw No, I only have BE.

@zg3409 Interesting information. The funny thing is that movers also mention 40 (and 20) ft containers. But I'll look into it. It probably won't come down to a day or two. Or a week or two. I want to try and avoid the UK though, if not using a professional transport company. Don't want to get stuck in an endless pile of paperwork if not worse.

Regarding taking hired vehicles to other countries: so far I haven't had any trouble yet. Sure I might have come across one or two that didn't like it, but then I called the next (can't remember after all those years). I went on holiday to the North Cape in Norway many years ago with a group of friends, so we rented an Opel Vivaro. Even got a fixed week price with unlimited kilometers, very useful if you're doing 8000km in two weeks 😁 When I moved my wife (and her belongings) to the Netherlands I rented a van, again no problems with taking it to Ireland. And when we moved here and needed a van again to move some of those belongings back, along with a bunch of stuff of myself and our children who were born in the meantime (and the bicycle of our former neighbour's son, who moved to Northern Ireland 4 years prior and finally found an answer to the question how he was going to get his bike there cheaply), we rented a van here and they told us they deal with people going abroad all the time. They even showed us the GPS trail of the tracker in one of their vehicles, in which another customer went all the way to Sweden (well zoomed out of course, so no privacy issues). So they just keep track of you, that's all.

I must say, with the last one, I neglected to mention that I had never driven a right hand drive vehicle 😇 But they didn't seem too upset when I told them when we returned the van (undamaged, just to be clear about that).