It’s T-minus 7 days until the annual migration of some 250,000 college students begins, and near 80% of the Boston rental market turns over to accommodate the influx of co-eds. I happen to live at ground zero for this campus invasion, in the Brighton section of Boston, which is the college-i-est part of the college-i-est city in the country.

I am right on Commonwealth Ave, dead between Boston College and Boston University, and on September 1st (which happens to fall on a Saturday this year), all hell breaks loose as every single U-Haul truck available within 100 miles of here ends up double parked along a 3 mile stretch of road. Aside from the fact that it is a complete catastro-fuck trying to get around that day, it is really something to see. To say there will be 500 rental trucks on Commonwealth ave between BC and Fenway on Saturday, would be conservative at best. And without fail, I can almost guarantee that at least one of those trucks, will end up pinned beneath a Storrow Drive overpass. It happens every year. I’ll try and snap some photos this year to document a bit of the madness. It’s kind of unreal.

If you are an enterprising person, there are two interesting ways to make a buck from this nuttiness.

1. Rent a truck in advance (way in advance) for September 1st, even if you don’t need to move. Inevitably, there are hundreds of folks that DO have to move on the 1st, who for one reason or another, assumed they would just rent a truck the week before, only to be left high and dry. Desperate and truck-less, offering to provide a truck with driver (no moving things, just providing and driving the truck for the moving parties), is probably worth about $125/hour to those left with no other options. Foresight + a truck rental + a craigslist ad + poor planners = business opportunity for you.
2. If you have a pickup truck, SUV, van, etc, hit up Craigslist, or even just cruise around Allston and Brighton looking on the curbs, and snap up the dozens and dozens of free items that are being tossed out by people leaving the city. The money items are the bedroom sets, tables, and other wood items, that sometimes just need to be sanded down and re-finished before they can be re-sold (at near 100% profit) back to the incoming people, who are now in need of furniture to set up their new places.

As I write this, there are three U-Haul trucks outside of my window, but it is still the calm before the storm. The students are coming, but at least this year, so are the police.