Packers, Movers and the Hidden Cost of Loading
Most moving quotes price the distance carefully and the labour loosely. The labour is where the variance lives.
Compare three moving quotes and the distance charges will be within a few per cent of each other. The totals will not be, and the gap is almost entirely in how each firm has thought about getting things into and out of the vehicle.
Why loading is the variable one
Distance is known. The road does not change length on the day. Loading depends on the number of stairs, whether the lift works and is large enough, how far the vehicle can park from the door, and how much of the packing was genuinely finished before the crew arrived.
Any of those can double the hours. All of them are knowable in advance and most quotes do not ask.
What a serious quote will ask you
- Which floor, and is there a working lift that fits furniture.
- How close the vehicle can park, in metres rather than impressions.
- Whether packing is done by you or by the crew, and if by you, whether it is actually finished.
- Anything unusually heavy or awkward - a piano, a safe, a large fridge.
- The same questions again about the destination, which people routinely forget.
If nobody has asked you what floor you are on, you have been given a price rather than a quote.
The destination is half the job
This is the most common omission we see. Clients describe their current home in detail and say almost nothing about where the goods are going, and unloading into a third-floor flat with a narrow stair is the part that runs late.
What to do with three quotes
Give all three firms the same list of answers to the questions above, in writing. The quotes will move, sometimes a lot. What you are left with is a comparison of the same job rather than three different guesses, and that is the only version worth comparing.
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