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The whole notion of hiring movers and consigning all your worldly possessions to some unseen third party just strikes me as utterly bizarre. Hiring a few extra

The whole notion of hiring movers and consigning all your worldly possessions to some unseen third party just strikes me as utterly bizarre. Hiring a few extra helpers to load up the U-haul at one end, and then unload it at the other end, I can see! But I've never been more than the length of a van from my stuff during a move, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

ehnto 5y ago
The beauty of the mutually beneficial contract. If your stuff doesn't arrive they don't get paid, or perhaps even keep their job. That's their incentive to not steal your stuff.
ramraj07 5y ago
I understand feeling that way about some precious possessions, but you can’t trust a professional mover with _anything_ in your house? Sounds like you might be in a minority with possible trust issues.
greesil 5y ago
Do you have children?
lnsru 5y ago
My assumption is that people do not have many friends nowadays to ask for help with loading that furniture. I am moving 25 miles away and there is no way I hire unseen 3rd party for that. Rent smaller van 2-3 times and do it relaxed by myself with some buddies and beer.
- ehnto 5y ago
  I have a van and not one friend has asked me to help them move. I am almost disappointed. I think people are too socially awkward to ask for help. We are all so independent for the majority of the time that we are out of practice of being neighbourly.
  - joshka 5y ago
    An "uber for friends who you can ask for favors" app could be a solution, but I'm not sure if your friends would be classed as employees or contractors. </satire>
    - quicklime 5y ago
      Your friends might have to form a union to stop you from exploiting them through this app.
      - joshka 5y ago
        LOL
    - myself248 5y ago
      I believe that's exactly the sort of need that Craigslist started to serve.
  - sumedh 5y ago
    Your friends might think that if you say no that might put them in an awkward position. Have you tried telling your friends that they can call you if they need help moving?
- cstejerean 5y ago
  There’s a big difference between moving 25 miles away and say 250 miles away (or more). Around town moves I prefer to do as you mentioned and just take my time making a few trips. But the few times I’ve had to move across the country has been a completely different affair.
- ghaff 5y ago
  It may be partly an age thing. There's probably no way I'm going to be able to corral 2 or 3 buddies to help me for a Saturday move for some pizza and beer. Although I've done so when I was younger. When I moved to my current house from an apartment about 30 minutes away, I moved all the smaller items, and hiked someone to move the furniture.
- jayd16 5y ago
  If you calculate in the worth of your time, its an easy choice. Its so much cheaper and faster to just get movers. Safer too if you're worried about your back.
raverbashing 5y ago
This sounds like something more of a North American issue In other countries it is pretty common to hire people to do your move. Even Japan does that. Or, don't bother with stuff and rent furnished places. > all your worldly possessions to some unseen third party You mean like those storage facilities where people lock (and abandon) their stuff frequently? Yes, I wouldn't ship valuable stuff with them, for the most part, your furniture and posessions are valuable (in practice) only to yourself. And while help from friends is cool, they're not "free work" per se you know. And there's a limit. I'm not helping you take a 3-seater sofa down a flight of stairs, sorry.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  It's not a "North American issue"; it one forum commenter. Free your mind from chauvinistic biases.
- wccrawford 5y ago
  It's pretty common here in the US, too. But it's also pretty common here to think that if you can do something yourself, you probably should, and save the money. So most people think "I'll move my stuff myself" before either doing that, or looking at their stuff and deciding it's worth paying someone instead. A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me to help move. My wife and I helped him, but afterwards she said that she was never doing that again and that next time we'd just offer them some money towards the movers. I didn't argue at the time, but I enjoy helping people move. It's a lot of work, which means it's good exercise, and you spend time with your friend on something that matters to them. Also, I'm not sure how I'd offer that money without feeling like I'm looking down on them. It feels like a hand-out, not help. So I'll probably never do this, unless they straight up ask for money for a move.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    I understood helping friends move when we were students. Money is tight, it's the same city, and everyone moves at roughly the same rate. I didn't understand why a friend with a good job wanted his friends to drag all his furniture across town and up 4 flights of stairs. I'm invited to "help move" someone's stuff in September. He has booked movers, and says we'll drink beer while watching them unload, then have a party. That sounds like a good non-student version.
trainsplanes 5y ago
There are countless reasons for doing so. One major one being that people don't/can't drive a massive truck to haul their possessions and would rather leave it in the hands of a professional. Another one being that they're not driving to the place they're moving to, but instead taking a plane/boat/train/foot/bike to get there. Unless they charter private planes or boats, or pilot them on their own, it's a little unfeasible.
AndyPa32 5y ago
I would have said the same. But then I moved last year at the beginning of the pandemic. There were restrictions already in place in Germany. Basically you were only allowed to meet up with a very limited number of other households. So asking my friends to help out would have meant to also ask them to break the restrictions - and possibly endanger their health. It was a pandemic after all. So I hired a moving company. Boy, I will never again move myself. Best service I could imagine. Everything done in half a day. No bothering of friends and relatives. No heavy lifting at all for me. Everything insured, so if something breaks, it will be replaced. All furniture in place in the new appartment. And it wasn't that expensive after all.
- pgsimp 5y ago
  I also know many people who have seriously hurt themselves while helping friends moving - shot backs, destroyed knees. I guess it is fine while you are still young and poor, and have few possessions. But as soon as you can afford it, you should pay the professionals to protect your friends from harm.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    How much training and equipment do the professionals get?
    - falcolas 5y ago
      More than friends and family. ;) My wife worked for a company who did this. The packers were dedicated packers, it's what they did. The movers were dedicated movers, moving boxes and large furniture. They were able to do things we wouldn't have thought of - protecting corners and doorways. They also had all the equipment they needed to move heavy/awkward stuff. I'll personally never move myself again - too much stuff that's still good and would cost too much to replace. And I'm getting too old to want to move a 3BR (aka 1 br and two offices) worth of stuff again. Standing desks are fscking heavy.
      - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
richrichardsson 5y ago
Unforunately sometimes you just don't have any choice. Any also unfortunately it can end in less than ideal circumstances: during our move from UK to Croatia 2 boxes went "missing", one I couldn't have cared less about (except for the cost of replacing it), the other box however had irreplaceable items contained within.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  I guess that keeps the number of things that are irreplaceable small as possible; I need to be able to take them everywhere and keep my eye on them always (must fit on/in the nightstand of hotels). Closing in on 50, I finally managed to have 0 non-living objects I care about more than the hassle of ordering them again. Can recommend it; it is a great freedom.
AndrewOMartin 5y ago
Maybe if you used the Tokyo based Art Moving Center also known as Art Hikkoshi Center ( アート引越センター ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0RX59G2jaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0RX59G2jaA Seeing their rigour and discipline is like a visual ASMR video.
kmlx 5y ago
who has time to move furniture around? this is what i do: i hire the movers i go to a restaurant to dine and work i then go straight to the new location where things are getting unloaded i even went on a 3 day trip once. i went to the airport and when i came back everything was moved to the new house. this carried over to my cleaning lady. she almost always comes around when nobody's at home. the feeling that you get especially after a long trip coming home and everything's clean and tidy is priceless. things like these are totally worth it imo.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
monster_group 5y ago
Not sure where you are from but Americans have mind boggling amount of stuff. There are people in my neighborhood who have 3 car garages attached to their house and yet they park their cars in the driveway because the garages are full of junk.
ipsi 5y ago
Yes, I'll ask a few friends to help load my stuff into a van. Then onto a ship. Then they will, out of the goodness of their hearts, spend 30 - 60 days on the ship while it sails around the world, help me unload everything onto a van at the other end, drive potentially five hundred miles or more from the port to the final destination, unload everything, and then finally travel back home. Easy! And I know I've never sailed a ship in my life before, but how hard could it be to sail a ship 15 thousand miles? And before you say "Well, just sell it and re-purchase it!", I personally have so many items that I want to keep that are not re-purchasable, either due to being out of print, or due to being limited edition, that they would never fit into the checked baggage allowance I'd get on a plane.
NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
That's crazy talk from my point of view. The last time I moved home, it was a half-mile straight line distance and I'd as surely pay for movers to do that as move all the way across the country. Getting sufficient boxes, tape, packing materials; wrapping items and putting them into boxes; loading boxes via elevators into a van, reversing the process; taking away all the packing materials ... so stressful and physically strenuous. I'd throw money at that problem all day and all night.
Johnny555 5y ago
I guess it depends on how attached you are to your worldly possessions and how much of your move you want to coordinate. Last time I moved, I hired a moving firm to move my stuff, except for a few personal items we moved myself in the car. If the moving truck burst into flames, I'd have been happy to get the insurance money and would replace the furniture (I paid extra for all-risk replacement value coverage, not the 50 cents/pound coverage they included for "free"). I didn't really want to drive a U-haul that far towing the car, and worry about stuff getting stolen at overnight stops, we took the scenic route and spent over a week, we had to cut our trip short by a day when the driver called to say he was there already and would be delivering tomorrow. It was a pretty painless process, we used a service that gave us a few quotes online, and the company we chose supplied all of the labor to load/unload and hired a smaller shuttle truck because the apartment complex we were moving into couldn't fit an 18 wheeler. No real loss or damage, just a few scratches on a couple pieces of wood furniture, didn't even bother trying to make a claim. We priced one of the storage pods (they drop a container off, you load it yourself, then they take it to your destination), but it wasn't much cheaper than the moving company and we didn't really had a convenient place to put the container.
HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
It's freeing in a weird way. I always used to move myself. I had a small Toyota pickup (hilux type) and my method was anything that didn't fit in the bed to allow me to move in one trip was tossed. That was my way of making sure I didn't accumulate too much junk. Then I took a job halfway across the country and relocation was part of the deal. They came to my apartment, packed everything up in a few hours, and put it all in a moving van and then drove my truck onto the van. I got on a plane and my stuff arrived a few days later and was put into storage until I needed it. The entire process was so seamless, that I'd happily do it again. Living in a hotel for a month while my stuff was in storage really drove home the point that I really had no attachment to my "stuff." The only thing I missed was having my weights, so I got a temporary gym membership instead.

ehnto 5y ago

The beauty of the mutually beneficial contract. If your stuff doesn't arrive they don't get paid, or perhaps even keep their job. That's their incentive to not steal your stuff.

ramraj07 5y ago

I understand feeling that way about some precious possessions, but you can’t trust a professional mover with _anything_ in your house? Sounds like you might be in a minority with possible trust issues.

greesil 5y ago

Do you have children?

lnsru 5y ago

My assumption is that people do not have many friends nowadays to ask for help with loading that furniture. I am moving 25 miles away and there is no way I hire unseen 3rd party for that. Rent smaller van 2-3 times and do it relaxed by myself with some buddies and beer.

ehnto 5y ago
I have a van and not one friend has asked me to help them move. I am almost disappointed. I think people are too socially awkward to ask for help. We are all so independent for the majority of the time that we are out of practice of being neighbourly.
- joshka 5y ago
  An "uber for friends who you can ask for favors" app could be a solution, but I'm not sure if your friends would be classed as employees or contractors. </satire>
  - quicklime 5y ago
    Your friends might have to form a union to stop you from exploiting them through this app.
    - joshka 5y ago
      LOL
  - myself248 5y ago
    I believe that's exactly the sort of need that Craigslist started to serve.
- sumedh 5y ago
  Your friends might think that if you say no that might put them in an awkward position. Have you tried telling your friends that they can call you if they need help moving?
cstejerean 5y ago
There’s a big difference between moving 25 miles away and say 250 miles away (or more). Around town moves I prefer to do as you mentioned and just take my time making a few trips. But the few times I’ve had to move across the country has been a completely different affair.
ghaff 5y ago
It may be partly an age thing. There's probably no way I'm going to be able to corral 2 or 3 buddies to help me for a Saturday move for some pizza and beer. Although I've done so when I was younger. When I moved to my current house from an apartment about 30 minutes away, I moved all the smaller items, and hiked someone to move the furniture.
jayd16 5y ago
If you calculate in the worth of your time, its an easy choice. Its so much cheaper and faster to just get movers. Safer too if you're worried about your back.

raverbashing 5y ago

This sounds like something more of a North American issue In other countries it is pretty common to hire people to do your move. Even Japan does that. Or, don't bother with stuff and rent furnished places. > all your worldly possessions to some unseen third party You mean like those storage facilities where people lock (and abandon) their stuff frequently? Yes, I wouldn't ship valuable stuff with them, for the most part, your furniture and posessions are valuable (in practice) only to yourself. And while help from friends is cool, they're not "free work" per se you know. And there's a limit. I'm not helping you take a 3-seater sofa down a flight of stairs, sorry.

alisonkisk 5y ago
It's not a "North American issue"; it one forum commenter. Free your mind from chauvinistic biases.
wccrawford 5y ago
It's pretty common here in the US, too. But it's also pretty common here to think that if you can do something yourself, you probably should, and save the money. So most people think "I'll move my stuff myself" before either doing that, or looking at their stuff and deciding it's worth paying someone instead. A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me to help move. My wife and I helped him, but afterwards she said that she was never doing that again and that next time we'd just offer them some money towards the movers. I didn't argue at the time, but I enjoy helping people move. It's a lot of work, which means it's good exercise, and you spend time with your friend on something that matters to them. Also, I'm not sure how I'd offer that money without feeling like I'm looking down on them. It feels like a hand-out, not help. So I'll probably never do this, unless they straight up ask for money for a move.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  I understood helping friends move when we were students. Money is tight, it's the same city, and everyone moves at roughly the same rate. I didn't understand why a friend with a good job wanted his friends to drag all his furniture across town and up 4 flights of stairs. I'm invited to "help move" someone's stuff in September. He has booked movers, and says we'll drink beer while watching them unload, then have a party. That sounds like a good non-student version.

trainsplanes 5y ago

There are countless reasons for doing so. One major one being that people don't/can't drive a massive truck to haul their possessions and would rather leave it in the hands of a professional. Another one being that they're not driving to the place they're moving to, but instead taking a plane/boat/train/foot/bike to get there. Unless they charter private planes or boats, or pilot them on their own, it's a little unfeasible.

AndyPa32 5y ago

I would have said the same. But then I moved last year at the beginning of the pandemic. There were restrictions already in place in Germany. Basically you were only allowed to meet up with a very limited number of other households. So asking my friends to help out would have meant to also ask them to break the restrictions - and possibly endanger their health. It was a pandemic after all. So I hired a moving company. Boy, I will never again move myself. Best service I could imagine. Everything done in half a day. No bothering of friends and relatives. No heavy lifting at all for me. Everything insured, so if something breaks, it will be replaced. All furniture in place in the new appartment. And it wasn't that expensive after all.

pgsimp 5y ago
I also know many people who have seriously hurt themselves while helping friends moving - shot backs, destroyed knees. I guess it is fine while you are still young and poor, and have few possessions. But as soon as you can afford it, you should pay the professionals to protect your friends from harm.
- mavhc 5y ago
  How much training and equipment do the professionals get?
  - falcolas 5y ago
    More than friends and family. ;) My wife worked for a company who did this. The packers were dedicated packers, it's what they did. The movers were dedicated movers, moving boxes and large furniture. They were able to do things we wouldn't have thought of - protecting corners and doorways. They also had all the equipment they needed to move heavy/awkward stuff. I'll personally never move myself again - too much stuff that's still good and would cost too much to replace. And I'm getting too old to want to move a 3BR (aka 1 br and two offices) worth of stuff again. Standing desks are fscking heavy.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago

richrichardsson 5y ago

Unforunately sometimes you just don't have any choice. Any also unfortunately it can end in less than ideal circumstances: during our move from UK to Croatia 2 boxes went "missing", one I couldn't have cared less about (except for the cost of replacing it), the other box however had irreplaceable items contained within.

tluyben2 5y ago
I guess that keeps the number of things that are irreplaceable small as possible; I need to be able to take them everywhere and keep my eye on them always (must fit on/in the nightstand of hotels). Closing in on 50, I finally managed to have 0 non-living objects I care about more than the hassle of ordering them again. Can recommend it; it is a great freedom.

AndrewOMartin 5y ago

Maybe if you used the Tokyo based Art Moving Center also known as Art Hikkoshi Center ( アート引越センター ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0RX59G2jaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0RX59G2jaA Seeing their rigour and discipline is like a visual ASMR video.

kmlx 5y ago

who has time to move furniture around? this is what i do: i hire the movers i go to a restaurant to dine and work i then go straight to the new location where things are getting unloaded i even went on a 3 day trip once. i went to the airport and when i came back everything was moved to the new house. this carried over to my cleaning lady. she almost always comes around when nobody's at home. the feeling that you get especially after a long trip coming home and everything's clean and tidy is priceless. things like these are totally worth it imo.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

monster_group 5y ago

Not sure where you are from but Americans have mind boggling amount of stuff. There are people in my neighborhood who have 3 car garages attached to their house and yet they park their cars in the driveway because the garages are full of junk.

ipsi 5y ago

Yes, I'll ask a few friends to help load my stuff into a van. Then onto a ship. Then they will, out of the goodness of their hearts, spend 30 - 60 days on the ship while it sails around the world, help me unload everything onto a van at the other end, drive potentially five hundred miles or more from the port to the final destination, unload everything, and then finally travel back home. Easy! And I know I've never sailed a ship in my life before, but how hard could it be to sail a ship 15 thousand miles? And before you say "Well, just sell it and re-purchase it!", I personally have so many items that I want to keep that are not re-purchasable, either due to being out of print, or due to being limited edition, that they would never fit into the checked baggage allowance I'd get on a plane.

NovemberWhiskey 5y ago

That's crazy talk from my point of view. The last time I moved home, it was a half-mile straight line distance and I'd as surely pay for movers to do that as move all the way across the country. Getting sufficient boxes, tape, packing materials; wrapping items and putting them into boxes; loading boxes via elevators into a van, reversing the process; taking away all the packing materials ... so stressful and physically strenuous. I'd throw money at that problem all day and all night.

Johnny555 5y ago

I guess it depends on how attached you are to your worldly possessions and how much of your move you want to coordinate. Last time I moved, I hired a moving firm to move my stuff, except for a few personal items we moved myself in the car. If the moving truck burst into flames, I'd have been happy to get the insurance money and would replace the furniture (I paid extra for all-risk replacement value coverage, not the 50 cents/pound coverage they included for "free"). I didn't really want to drive a U-haul that far towing the car, and worry about stuff getting stolen at overnight stops, we took the scenic route and spent over a week, we had to cut our trip short by a day when the driver called to say he was there already and would be delivering tomorrow. It was a pretty painless process, we used a service that gave us a few quotes online, and the company we chose supplied all of the labor to load/unload and hired a smaller shuttle truck because the apartment complex we were moving into couldn't fit an 18 wheeler. No real loss or damage, just a few scratches on a couple pieces of wood furniture, didn't even bother trying to make a claim. We priced one of the storage pods (they drop a container off, you load it yourself, then they take it to your destination), but it wasn't much cheaper than the moving company and we didn't really had a convenient place to put the container.

HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago

It's freeing in a weird way. I always used to move myself. I had a small Toyota pickup (hilux type) and my method was anything that didn't fit in the bed to allow me to move in one trip was tossed. That was my way of making sure I didn't accumulate too much junk. Then I took a job halfway across the country and relocation was part of the deal. They came to my apartment, packed everything up in a few hours, and put it all in a moving van and then drove my truck onto the van. I got on a plane and my stuff arrived a few days later and was put into storage until I needed it. The entire process was so seamless, that I'd happily do it again. Living in a hotel for a month while my stuff was in storage really drove home the point that I really had no attachment to my "stuff." The only thing I missed was having my weights, so I got a temporary gym membership instead.