Unless you’re in your teens, chances are you’ve signed a lease and moved to a new apartment or house at least once. This means you’re aware of how much stress moving can cause.
Working with a local moving business is necessary to ensure the safe transportation and handling of furniture, appliances, and household and personal items. Even if you have your own van, experienced movers can come in handy.
The bigger and heavier your cargo, the more specialized assistance and manpower you need.
Yet manpower isn’t everything and not everyone has the same needs. Thus, understanding your service options will help you decide between different movers.
But what services does a local moving company offer, and are they that much different than long-distance moving services?
Understanding Local Moves
Generally, each moving company can set its own terms and define local moves however they want. But most of them classify any move of 50 miles or less as a local move.
If you’re leaving the city but not the state, the move could be classified as an intrastate move and incur higher base distance fees.
Storage Services
Just because you’re ready to move doesn’t mean you can fit all your furniture and household appliances in the new place. Because of this, you might need a local moving company that offers a particular service – storage.
Local movers with access to storage facilities can make or break a local moving experience. Imagine the following scenarios.
You can’t afford your current rent, so you must relocate on short notice and aren’t sure what you can and can’t fit into your new home.
Perhaps your new place is still being renovated, and not all rooms are ready. Maybe you’re unsure how everything will look in your new home, and you need time to decide what to keep and what to donate or sell.
There are many reasons why you can’t settle into a new place at the same time as your furniture, appliances, and other household items during a local move.
Whenever that’s the case, area movers that can store your possessions for a while before delivering them can help you avoid a lot of stress and logistics issues.
Furniture Assembling and Disassembling Services
Not every furniture item can be lifted and taken out of the house through the front door. Some furniture is just too big to fit or too heavy to move safely.
If you need help with taking apart, relocating, and reassembling your furniture, it’s not enough to find local movers with truck services. It’s best to find a local mover with furniture assembly experience.
These companies hire experienced staff who know their way around complex furniture pieces and have the right tools for the job.
Therefore, your furniture can be easily disassembled, packed, moved, stored, delivered, and put together again. This is the kind of full-service package that many prefer, especially when they don’t have time or experience handling these things independently.
While it can add to the moving quote, it’s a great way to ensure your furniture and larger appliances are handled with the utmost care.
Packing Services
Finding experienced moving companies for local moves is easier than you think. But the service packages are what usually separates the average movers from the best.
If you have ever moved locally, out of state, or internationally, you probably already know the pains of packing everything.
You need moving blankets, the right boxes, an understanding of how everything will fit in the truck or trailer, and a lot of time to get everything ready. Having the necessary tools and good spatial awareness is key for making the local moving experience go smoothly.
But this is where working with the best local moving company can offer substantial advantages.
Some local movers offer packing and unpacking or unboxing services. While it may cost a bit extra, you don’t have to deal with the stress of figuring out how to box and crate everything to make sure your items are well-protected and easy to handle.
A full-service package means that the moving company takes care of everything. They come to your house, measure, wrap, box everything, and safely arrange the boxes on the truck. At the destination, the movers will unbox everything for you, so you won’t have much to do except arrange the furniture and appliances how you like.
Packing services are highly sought-after when moving overseas, and there are customs packing regulations to adhere to. But they’re becoming increasingly popular for local movings too because of the quality-of-life benefits.
What’s more, receiving professional packing help means you don’t have to spend extra money on moving equipment you might not need or risk buying the wrong stuff to protect your furniture and household items.
Window Rigging Services
Relocating furniture from a second-story house can get tricky. Many stairways are too narrow to allow the transport of large furniture items. And in some cases, disassembling the furniture might not be an option, especially when dealing with antique items.
But your local movers may have the answer. Rigging furniture through windows is a popular way to get furniture in and out of a house.
If you want to cover all bases, find a local mover that has specialized equipment for hoisting furniture through windows. A good rope-and-pulley system can handle a lot of weight and enable your local moving service to move a wide range of items that can’t be loaded any other way.
This service is particularly useful when you don’t have the manpower to move around heavy objects.
In addition, rope-and-pulley rigs can generally keep your items safer. There’s no dragging involved that could rip the furniture legs. There’s no chance of scratching the walls, tearing the carpet, or causing other damage inside your home.
Local movers with truck transportation and rope-and-pulley rigs are ideal for complex tasks involving multistory homes.
Appliance Installation Services
When you ask for a moving quote, this type of service is rarely included in the base service package. But it’s an upsell that many local movers have.
And if you think about it, it’s a great perk. Having professionals hook up large appliances like AC units, water purifiers, audio/visual equipment, or even small things like smart thermostats and outlets, can give you peace of mind.
Expert assistance is necessary if you’re not experienced with electrical wiring, plumbing, and things of this nature. But why bother hiring a different company to come and install your appliances if you can get the same service from your local moving company?
You can save time and money if your area movers offer this service and still benefit from the expertise you’re lacking.
Have someone else install your washer, dryer, oven, and other appliances where you need to ensure proper and safe functionality.
Specialty Items Transport Services
When people move, they often move furniture, small appliances, kitchen utensils and silverware, glasses, diner sets, clothing, etc. on their own. But some people may need to transport more valuable items.
For example, you might have an impressive painting collection. Perhaps you’re a collector of vintage wines or other luxury items.
In these situations, you’ll want a local moving company with experience in handling and transporting priceless art or valuable cargo.
This might involve special packaging, extra insurance coverage, and even transporting your valuable cargo with a different truck or trailer. Not every moving company is willing to take on the added burden of transporting very expensive cargo.
But if you have such cargo to move, it’s best to find the correct service package.
Of course, specialty transport services aren’t reserved for inanimate objects. Maybe you’re moving with pets and can’t take them with you in your car. In that case, you might want to arrange to transport your pets with a moving company.
Some movers have pet-friendly vans that can quickly and safely relocate your beloved animals to their new home in a single trip. The best movers won’t even ask you to provide your own transport cages.
Fully Enclosed Transport Services
If you want to save money, you can get away with moving a lot of furniture, appliances, and personal items in an open trailer or the back of a pickup truck. But this isn’t ideal even if you’re moving across town.
Any possible exposure to sunlight, rain, wind, road debris or even the nefarious glances of a thief can ruin your moving experiences.
Items can be stolen from open trailers. Your cargo can sustain heavy damage from flying road debris and bad weather.
While a car or bike can handle a rough ride, your furniture and other household goods aren’t made for such outside travel.
That’s why you should figure out which movers have enclosed transportation options before moving on to finding the best local movers.
And keep in mind that vans might not cut it either. Local movers with a truck fleet are the best option because they’re more likely to have room for large volume cargo, irregularly-shaped furniture, etc.
Luckily, dedicated area movers know the importance of enclosed transportation, and many of them offer and recommend this service.
Fast Moving Services
The great thing about relocating locally is that it won’t take days or weeks to ship your items to a new address. This means you can save a lot of money even if you have a lot of heavy cargo.
But not all local movers operate with the same efficiency. Finding the best local moving service is a matter of identifying companies with quotes that fit your budget, have the necessary equipment to handle your cargo safely, and have sufficient muscle.
Many homeowners want the moving process to be over quickly. But while your items can be transported within a couple of hours, the unpacking and installation can take longer.
It all depends on how many movers the shipping company can assign to your order.
The best area movers have more than enough employees to handle high-volume jobs. For example, it can take around three hours and two or three movers to move everything in a studio or one-bedroom apartment to a new location.
But a three-bedroom apartment or house relocation job may require up to five movers and can take more than half a day. Not all movers can accommodate high-volume work, and they’ll give you different time estimates.
Larger companies or more experienced movers can manage quicker turnaround times, complete with packing and installation services.
However, commercial moving services have more complex logistics. Residential moves can be completed within a day, but a commercial relocation will take longer, regardless of distance.
Year-Round Transportation and Storage
The time of the year can raise or lower a moving quote. Additionally, not all movers are equipped to handle transporting high-volume cargo in the winter or don’t have the best storage solutions to protect fragile items.
Finding year-round transportation and storage services could be a priority if you need to move during the cold season or a period of extreme weather conditions.
Furthermore, you might need year-round storage options if you have items that need a controlled environment. For example, your paintings might need humidity control, some appliances must avoid extreme heat or cold, etc.
Some local movers will be able to transport and store your items in the safest conditions, regardless of season, weather conditions, and other factors.
Full Service Brings Peace of Mind
Do you know how your items should be wrapped, packed, and stored for safe moving? While you may have some ideas, there’s a reason many people hire the best local movers when relocating, even within 50 miles.
Practice makes perfect and their years of experience help reduce the chances of human error.
Movers can do a better job, plain and simple. They can handle a higher volume of boxes and furniture faster than you could on your own. Add to that storage, packing, installation, transportation insurance, and other services and it makes sense to let someone else take on all the physical challenges and logistics of moving.
