I have done this several times, moving cross-country via U-Haul. It's easy enough to drive the trucks, even with your car on a trailer behind it. I hire loaders/unloaders based on reviews. You can really save a lot of money doing it yourself, and it's prudent to hire professionals to do the heavy lifting.

Sure, you can run into problems and have a bad experience this way. But the movers my company paid for didn't do such a great job either. On the other hand, the guys the Army sent were amazing.

I have a toy U-Haul truck on my bookcase, because wanderlust.