Planning a Road Trip

So, looking into the costs of shipping both our Trailer and the SIPs to our build site in Rhode Island, it's looking like it will be cheaper to drive down and pick them up ourselves... here's how the situation breaks down:

Geography: 1400 miles round trip
The trailer pick up is in a town called Chambersburg, PA. This SIPs are in a town called Danville, VA. Driving through Chambersburg on the way to Danville is about a 15 minute detour, so it's really feasible to drive to Chambersburg, pick up the trailer, and continue onto Danville to pick up the SIPs, load them onto the trailer, and then drive back to Rhode Island. Round trip, it's about 1400 miles and 24 hours of driving time. It's a lot of driving, but (if broken up over several days) possible.

Costs of Shipping: $3,300 to $1,600
The cost of shipping the trailer and the SIPs varies depending on the way in which we would do it. The simplest way (also the most expensive and inefficient way) is the ship the SIPs and Trailer separately. Tumbleweed changes $1,800 to ship to RI, and the UShip estimate to deliver the SIPs is about $1500. Total cost: $3,300 Option B requires more coordination on our end, and involves having the trailer shipped to the SIP manufacturing plant in VA and then having the SIPs loaded onto the trailer and hiring a guy on UShip to tow our loaded trailer to RI. It only costs $800 to ship the trailer to VA, and hiring a guy to tow your trailer is much cheaper than hiring a guy with a trailer to ship your materials. UShip estimates the cost of towing your trailer from VA to RI at about $800. Total Cost: $1600

Costs of Roadtrip: $1000
Rental Truck: ~$600 (priced from Uhaul's website)
Hotel Rooms: $200 (priced from priceline.com)
Gas:  $325 (Calculations shown below)
Misc Items: $75 (mostly done to make the numbers even)
Total Cost: $1,000

Gas costs calculated in the following way: Assuming a conservative  average of 15 mpg on the way down (no load) and 10 mgp on the way back (with a tow load), and an average price of $2.54/gallon (the average given for last month by eia.gov) the price of gasoline for the trip would be

700 miles/15mgp = ~47 gallons on the way down
700 miles/10mpg = 70 gallons on the way back.

47 gallons * 2.54 $/g = $ 150 on the way down
70 gallons * 2.54 /g = ~$175 on the way back.


Final Reckoning:
So, by picking up the trailer and SIPs ourselves, we can save anywhere from $600 to $2,300. We're still looking into the details, but I think that we're going to go for it.