As another option to any of those leaving Alaska or moving to, consider using a large commercial truck trailer. When we moved from Nenana, to western Colorado, I called Sea Land Trucking and had them send a 40 or 50 ft. van to our house. They backed it up against our deck and we had it for a week. I had built some wood boxes to pack my guns in for the trip. Sea Land assured me the same trailer would be delivered, to our new home in Ouray Colorado. So I packed the guns in the boxes, put them in the very front of the trailer van and then packed in the contents of our three bedroom home into it. No way anyone was going to get to where those guns were packed.
I then called Sea Land, in Anchorage and they had one of their drivers stop by with their truck and hook on, hauling it to Anchorage where it was weighed and the charge determined. The cost was about 1/3 of what the commercial movers wanted for the same service. Sea Land put it on a rail car, which went on a rail barge and headed it to the Seattle area. There the rail car with our trailer on it was connected to a train headed for Denver, to be off loaded. A truck then brought it back over the mountains to Ouray and parked it in our drive way. We were given a week, again to unload it. We did and called Denver to pick it up. Another week or so later they stopped by and got their now empty trailer.
The entire process worked very well and was the best price I could figure out by a long ways. We weren't in too big a hurry to get our stuff, as we drove out in our motorhome, and other vehicle. We lived in our motorhome for about 6 weeks, while I went to work every day. By the time our trailer arrived, we had purchased a home and only had to move the junk one time.
The AMHS ferry boats move much of the commercial freight in SE Alaska. So they are loading refer vans with diesel tanks, on and off all the time. Now the cross gulf ferry isn't used too much for commercial freight as most of that comes up by barge out of Washington. Barge freight charges are even less than the ferry charges commercial carriers. The ferry system normally has a place the trucking firms can drop off and pick up their trailers and then the AMHS, has yard mules to load the trailers on and off of the ferry boats. They have the system figured out for sure.
Every place in the state of Alaska had subsidized transportation by the state, except for the bush areas. SE has the ferry system, the southern railbelt, the banana belt of the Anchorage bowl, has the highway system and railroad. But the bush where all the money the state receives originates, gets no subsidies on transportation. Sort of the Robin Hood operation, but in reverse, take the money from the bush, the mining, oil production and the fishing, and spend it on the urban areas of the state. Alaska is an extractive industry state, with very little added value added to any of their products. Time to put my soap box back in the closet.
