How should I transport a few cubic meters from TLV airport to where I live?

Question

I'm moving to Israel/Palestine (actually, in my case it's moving back, but it's a part of the cycle of expat life I guess.) I'm flying a few cubic meters of stuff from where I was living before, and it's going to get to the Ben-Gurion airport (TLV), and I'll need to come there and release it.

We're talking about cardboard and plastic boxes, some with fragile contents, but nothing that's oddly-shaped, and no dimension is longer than 1 meter, nor any box larger than 0.15 m^3.

My question: What are the most cost-effective ways to transport these boxes from the airport to some city (e.g. Haifa)? Specifically, is there some kind service available within the "airport city" that's worthwhile to consider?

Answer 1

One option is renting a van. You would need either an Israeli driver's license in the appropriate category for the van's weight/size, or to rent from somewhere that offers a van+driver combination. Look for something like "השכרת טנדר ליום" ("Rent a van for a day") on search engines.

Issues:

• This is not cheap; for a full day you could well pay over 500 NIS.
• Many (most?) places will expect you to return the van to where you got it, which means going back-and-forth twice (unless you rent it at the same city you're transporting your boxes to).
• You don't actually need the van for a day, just for several hours. Unfortunately, it's difficult to determine in advance exactly how long you need the van for.
• It may not be trivial to select the exact vehicle to rent in order to fit your boxes. I can't quite find listings of effective internal volume, and even then - you might have quite a bit of "dead space".