Pay someone to drive it with their own car. There are enough desperate schmos out there that will do shit like that for money. It will be expensive but much less than a U-Haul. Slightly more risk, they might just steal it from you.

Another option would be to find someone who is doing a cross-country hike from Texas to Illinois. They might carry it for you if they could sleep on it each night on the side of the road.

Cut it in half and strap it down. Sew it back together when moved in.

Bingo

Sell your car and buy my pickup.

Dear Hootie,

Don't be a douche nozzle and get banned from a pretty laid back website. Then you could ask your stupid questions yourself.

Love,
Diddy

terrible advice.

Start a website about the travels of "Madeleine the Mattress". Invite people to take the mattress traveling with them as long as they take pictures of where it's at. Keep tabs on the website as the mattress travels around the world having its picture taken at the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, and other interesting places. Wait until someone takes its picture in Illinois, and then go snag it.

Ask your local congressperson to start a program allowing significant federal subsidies to companies that move mattresses north. Take advantage of the subsidy.

Sell it to an illegal immigrant. Move to Illinois and start a lettuce farm. Wait until harvest and keep an eye out for that immigrant. Buy the mattress back from him.

You can buy freight space on a truck already headed that way for probably about $150 for something that will take up that little space.

Offer to put it in the pickup bed of a lot lizard at a truck stop, on the condition that she can use it for a month but must then give it to another lot lizard at the next truck stop to the north, with the same agreement. Eventually it will make it to Illinois and you can retrieve it.

If you drive fast enough you can fly it behind your car like a kite.

Seriously though Rick, with as much of a stud as you've told us you are in the bedroom I can't imagine you could get more than 6-8 months use out of a mattress before you have to invest in a new one. Are you certain its worth all the trouble to move it?

If it isn't a Temper-pedic throw it out on the curb and buy one when you get to Illinois.

You'll thank me later.