Moving your valuable possessions from one home to another is never easy!
In fact, there are too many situations where you may find the home moving process to be too challenging and too overwhelming to handle on your own – from having to protect and pack all the household items you’ve chosen to take with you to managing the heavy lifting and the actual transportation of your belongings.
Moving home is never easy… until you decide to make it easy by using the services of a professional moving company. That’s right – the only way you can guarantee a 100% success rate of your upcoming relocation is to find and hire one of the best full-service moving companies in your area.
But before you do that, you need to know what to expect from full-service moving companies in terms of services and cost. You need to be well-informed before you trust complete strangers with your prized possessions and definitely before you open up your wallet to pay the professionals.
Here’s what you should expect from your full-service movers.
What do full-service moving companies do?
Briefly, here are the major moving services offered by the best full-service movers in the country:
VISUAL IN-HOME INSPECTION
The very first service you should expect to be offered by a full-service mover is the issuance of an accurate price estimate after a visual inspection of your home. During that on-site visit, the moving experts will be able to take a look at all the household items you intend to move and will determine whether or not there will be any risks or difficulties on the day of the move – anything from tight corridors and narrow doorways to long flights of stairs and non-operational elevators.
Keep in mind that that in-home survey is the only way to have your moving cost estimated with some sort of accuracy. As a rule of thumb, you should stay away from professional moving companies that refuse to visit your home in person and instead offer you cost estimates by phone or via the Internet.
After the visual inspection by reputable full-service movers, you should be issued with a moving cost estimate that will best reflect the final cost of the move. ALWAYS opt for a binding cost estimate.
PACKING
You can save plenty of money if you choose to pack up your items by yourself and use professional moving service only to transport the already packed boxes and furniture pieces to the new home.
Professional packers at work.
However, you may not always be able to prepare and protect your things for the road trip for various reasons, ranging from lack of sufficient time (packing for a move takes forever to complete) and presence of special household items that will require special packing cares (which you don’t know how to provide).
After all, when was the last time you disassembled your priceless grandfather clock on your own and packed its components safely for a move?
Finding trustworthy full-service movers and packers is the ideal home-moving scenario when you are unable to pack some or most of your things by yourself. In addition to knowing exactly what to do to protect each and every item in the best possible way, the movers who pack for you will arrive with their own quality packing materials.
The best full-service movers in the country can also offer customized packing solutions such as wooden crating – the protection of extremely fragile and very valuable items in customized wooden crates.
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DISASSEMBLY AND REASSEMBLY OF FURNITURE
Moving companies that pack and move you – full-service movers – have extensive experience in protecting and transporting all types of home furniture – from small and easy to move chairs to huge and heavy furniture such as beds, dressers, desks, china cabinets, and so on.
In case you’ve already made up your mind to move some of the bulkier furniture you own, then the full-service mover you’ve hired will disassemble carefully those big furniture pieces and will pack them safely for the road.
And once your belongings are delivered to the new home, the experienced pros will be entitled to put back together those furniture pieces following your instructions in terms of destination rooms and exact location within those rooms.
However, before you hire the services of an all-inclusive moving company, ask yourself whether moving your large and heavy furniture pieces will make sense under the circumstances. The price of your move will be calculated on the basis of the overall shipment weight, which basically means that sometimes it’ll be more cost-effective to just leave your furniture pieces behind and buy new ones after the move.
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TRANSPORTATION
Full-service movers take care of everything. Currently, your items are being loaded into the moving truck.
Of course, one thing you should expect from full-service movers is for them to transport all the packed boxes and protected furniture to the new address.
In reality, your household items will be loaded into the moving truck, secured, transported, unloaded from the moving vehicle and taken inside your new residence.
If it’s a local move, then your items may reach the new house or apartment the very same day. In the case of a long-distance interstate move, you should expect your things to arrive in a few days in correspondence to the conditions in your moving contract.
STORAGE
Full-service movers are also moving companies that store your stuff. In case your new home is not yet ready to receive the items you’re moving, then you may request a storage service until that issue is sorted out and you can get your belongings delivered.
Expect to be charged for the time your household items are stored at your full-service mover’s storage facility. The storage fee will be proportional to the storage period, so the sooner you get reunited with your things, the better it will be from a financial point of view.
Also, your possessions may be placed in storage by the full-service moving company in case of a possible dispute or disagreement between you and them. In such situations, the faster your resolve the issue with your mover, the better it’ll be for each party.
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UNPACKING + DISPOSAL OF PACKING MATERIALS
As we’ve mentioned earlier, top-rated full-service movers can offer you the service of unpacking your freshly-delivered boxes, arranging the household items and re-assembling all furniture pieces in their respective rooms according to your preferences.
If you wish, the hired professionals can even dispose of the excess packaging materials so that your new home looks nice, tidy and definitely not cluttered after the movers leave.
SPECIALIZED MOVING SERVICES
Sometimes you may have no other option but to turn to the best full-service moving company you can find in your area. The reason? You happen to need specialized moving services that are not readily offered by most professional movers.
If you own a large piano which you’re bringing with you at all costs, then a full-service mover should be able to offer you hoisting services – that is, to hoist the piano out of a window or a balcony. The same is true for other large items as well, like huge pieces of antique furniture that are too risky to be disassembled and moved down the stairs.
How much do full-service movers cost?
Hiring full-service movers is expensive. Yet, there are many things you can do to lower the final moving cost.
It’s a great relief to know that your entire house move will be handled safely and professionally from the very beginning to the very end. The real question here is whether you can afford to hire one of the best full-service moving companies as your trusted relocation partner.
Full-service moving is expensive, arguably the most expensive type of home moving after international relocation. Nevertheless, that higher cost should be well-justified because you won’t have to do anything besides picking the right full-service moving company.
- How much do full-service local movers cost? Local moving companies charge by the hour which basically means that TIME is the major factor that will determine the price of your move.
On average, expect to be charged around $100/hour for 2 movers and a truck. Each additional worker will cost you extra. Each additional service like packing or unpacking, and furniture disassembly or re-assembly will require more time to complete, which will mean more money out of your pocket. - How much do full-service long distance movers cost? Long distance full-service movers will charge you based on a number of important factors such as the distance between the two homes, the total weight of your shipment, and the number and type of additional services you’ve requested
Because of the case-by-case nature of the home moving process, the best way to know what to expect from full-service movers in terms of price is to get into contact with several top-rated moving companies and ask them to come to your home for a visual inspection so that you can get full-service movers cost estimates.
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What’s the best thing about hiring full-service movers?
The best thing about choosing a full-service mover for your move is that they will complete all the required tasks for you so that you practically don’t have to lift a finger.
Trusting a full-service moving company will mean you get to transfer the stress that’s associated with a house move to experienced professionals so that you can have a relatively stress-free relocation. As an added bonus, paying for complete moving services will free up much more time for you – bonus free time which you should use to take care of other important tasks, like saying goodbye to family and friends.
If you can afford to hire one of the best full-service moving companies in the country, don’t hesitate to do it.
It’s important to understand that full-service moving companies do offer the complete package of moving services to their customers. And while those complete moving services will usually come with a higher price tag, it often pays off to hire professionals to do it all for you, especially when you know you won’t have the required time to complete most of the tasks without professional assistance.
Briefly, here’s what you’ll gain by deciding to go with a mover that can offer you the complete set of services – that is, provide you with the comprehensive assistance with your next house move.
- Reduced stress. Once you know that experienced professionals will handle the toughest aspects of your move, your stress level should get back to normal.
- Peace of mind. The professional movers you will hire will be insured in case of damage or accidents. What’s more, the pros will arrive in your home with the proper moving equipment and know-how so that any chance of property damage is greatly diminished.
- More time. While your full-service movers work on your move, you’ll get that precious time to finish other important tasks before you move away.
Click here to learn how to find the best full-service movers near you.
