This rental service is making moving a lot easier, one tote at a time
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RIGBY — A rental service delivers clean, durable, and reusable moving totes to your door so you can pack faster and move easier.
Teton Tote Rental is a Rigby-based family company that opened earlier this year. The owner, Trace Barney, says they service local moves in eastern Idaho. They provide free delivery to Bonneville, Jefferson, and Madison counties.
Surrounding areas have a small delivery fee, including Pocatello, Ashton, Blackfoot, and Victor. Click here to learn more.
“These totes aren’t just the simple ones. We actually have the commercial-grade ones,” said Barney.
Here’s how it works. Go to Teton Tote Rental online here. A customer would choose the package they want for their move. That means they pick the number of totes they are interested in, anywhere from 20 to 100. Prices vary. A dolly is included.
Then, Barney says they deliver the totes on the date the customer chooses. After that, it’s pack at your own pace, move, and then the business picks up the totes after the customer is finished using them.
“We clean them; every single one of them is sanitized. We pressure wash them and personally scrub each one,” Barney said.
The tote rentals can be used for local moves, apartment moves, college moves, decluttering, remodeling projects, and more.
“This is also really great for people moving offices and businesses that are moving across town,” Barney added.
The totes are 100 percent eco-friendly. There’s a frequently asked questions page on the website that covers tote sizes and how to label them.
The website says, “No buying cardboard, no assembling boxes, stronger and sturdier, delivered and picked up, cleaner move and better for the planet. Making moves easier, one tote at a time.”
Teton Tote Rental additionally offers a “Gift Program.” It’s fit for real estate agents, apartment communities, employers, property managers and anyone helping someone move.
“Let’s say a real estate agent joins our Gift Program. It’s a monthly charge. They can gift a 20-tote two-week rental to any of their clients once a month. On top of it, they get a 20% off discount code that they can gift to any of their clients,” Barney said.
Watch the video below about the Gift Program.
“If they close a client, instead of giving them a bottle of wine, like a welcome home, because a lot of real estate agents give out gifts to their clients, they can say, ‘Hey, here’s a gift that we have: use this code, and you get free totes to help you with your move,'” he continued.
The real estate agent’s logo and their information are put on the totes as part of the program.
Barney said he created Teton Tote Rental after he and his wife moved from Utah to Rigby to be closer to family. They used totes to move, and he said it was a night-and-day difference. It was easier than getting cardboard boxes.
He was interested in renting to move. He did market research and didn’t see a business like this in eastern Idaho.
“I think that eastern Idaho is ready for a service like this,” Barney said. “We needed totes to move anyway. So we ended up buying our inventory and using our inventory to move us. We were our first customers.”
He wanted it to be a rental service specifically because, after moving, what do you do with all the totes that you purchase?
“The issue is storing them, too. You’re like, ‘I’m going to go buy 30 or 40 of these totes.’ But then, when you’re done moving with those totes, why else do you need those totes?’ So that’s why it’s great to have a rental so you can use them to do the move, and then you don’t have to store them,” he said.
Barney is excited to have Teton Tote Rental in Idaho and hopes that people will try it out and make their moves simple and hassle-free.
“Every time we talk to someone, we’re getting the ‘Oh my gosh, that’s a great idea.’ It’s a new idea. Back east in the United States, it’s much more popular, but in east Idaho it’s such a new concept,” he said.
