The basic unit of loading a moving van is called a tier. A tier is a wall of household goods assembled inside the van. My 53-foot moving van contains 4,200 cubic feet of space. Household goods average 7 pounds a cubic foot, so my truck can hold over 30,000 pounds. A standard tier is about 2 feet deep and goes across the truck 9 feet and up to the ceiling 10 ten feet, so a tier takes up 160 cubic feet. In a fully loaded van there will be twenty-five tiers each weighing 1,100 pounds, more or less.
When I arrive at a residence to begin a move, assuming I’ve gotten into the driveway and close to the house, the first thing I’ll do is prep the residence. My crew and I will lay pads and then Masonite on any wood floors, carpets will be covered with a sticky durable film that gets rolled out, and we’ll lay out neoprene runners throughout the house. Banisters and doorways will be padded with special gripping pads. Anything in the house that might get rubbed, scratched, banged, dented, or soiled is covered. Next, we’ll go around with the shipper to see exactly what is going and what is staying. Then we’ll pack everything in the house into cartons. I don’t love packing; it’s inside work and mostly tedious. I do enjoy packing stemware, china, sculpture, and fine art, but that stuff is getting rarer in American households. Books are completely disappearing. (Remember in Fahrenheit 451 where the fireman’s wife was addicted to interactive television and they sent fireman crews out to burn books? That mission has been largely accomplished in middle-class America, and they didn’t need the firemen. The interactive electronics took care of it without the violence.)
After packing, which usually takes at least a full day on a full load, I’ll write up an inventory where I put numbered stickers on everything that’s moving and jot a short description on printed sheets. The numbers all get checked off at destination so we know everything we loaded has been delivered. The inventory includes not only a description of the item but also its condition and any marks or damage. It’s essential for me to catalog the origin condition of an item in the event a shipper files a damage claim. A lot of criticism about movers has to do with how claims are handled. Moving companies require considerable documentation before paying a claim. Do you know why? It’s because so many people file bogus claims. Lots of folks want to get the moving company to pay for a refinishing job on Aunt Tillie’s antique vanity. Guess what? The moving company doesn’t pay these types of claims, nor does some nameless insurance company. The driver pays them. Me, personally, out of pocket. My deductible is $1,600 per move. That’s one reason why I’m going to be careful with your stuff, and it’s also why I’m going to write up an accurate inventory.
After prep and packing, the crew will break down beds, unbolt legs from tabletops, and basically take anything apart that comes apart. Next we’ll bring in stacks of moving pads and large rubber bands, and cover all the furniture. Padding furniture with rubber bands is a working-class art form. The bands are made by cutting up truck tire tubes into circles. Down south I’ll often see an old black man sitting on a bench at a truckstop cutting up tubes with his knife and putting them into piles. Fifty bands go for five dollars.
Upholstered pieces like sofas will be padded and then shrink-wrapped. Nothing on any of my jobs will ever leave the residence unpadded. The whole point is to minimize the potential for damage, thereby minimizing the potential for a claim. Movers don’t like claims. We don’t like to get them, we don’t like to deal with them, and we certainly don’t like to pay them.
After all this preparation, I’ll have a very clear idea how I’m going to load my truck. Smart drivers will always load problem pieces, called chowder, first. Chowder slows you down, takes up too much room, and is usually lightweight for the amount of space it takes up. Chowder also has a greater potential to damage goods loaded around it. Obviously I wouldn’t load a leather sofa next to a barbecue grill. All drivers hate chowder, but it’s a fact of life, and how you handle it is one of the things that separate good drivers from bad. The general loading rule is chowder first, cartons last.
Now I’m ready to start loading. I’ll start my tier with base pieces like a dresser and file cabinets. On top of the base I’ll load nightstands, small desks, and maybe an air conditioner. Now the tier is about eye level, with two rows of furniture going all the way across. The next level I’ll load end tables, small bookcases, and maybe a few cartons to keep it all tight. The next level I’ll lay some dining room chairs on their backs, starting with the armchairs and then interlocking the other chairs. Any open space in the tier gets filled with chowder like wastebaskets and small, light cartons. Now the tier is about eight feet high, and I’ll be up on a ladder. The next level will be light, bulky things such as laundry hampers, cushions, and plant racks. At this point there will be a few inches open to the roof, and I’ll finish the tier with maybe an ironing board and any other flat and light stuff I can find, like bed rails. When I’m finished I should have a uniform and neat tier from floor to ceiling with no gaps or open spaces anywhere.
A well-built tier is a beautiful thing to see and lots of fun to make. It’s basically a real-life, giant Tetris game with profound physical exertion incorporated into the mix. When I’m loading I go into a sort of trance because I’m totally focused on visualizing everything in the house and mentally building tiers. This is one of the sweet spots where—as anyone who has done repetitive manual labor understands—the single-minded focus, concentration, and hard physical work combine to form a sort of temporary nirvana. Helpers who regularly work with the same driver will anticipate what piece the driver wants next before he even asks for it, and furniture will disappear into a tier the instant it’s brought out. This makes loading go very quickly, and it resembles nothing so much as an elegant, intimate dance between crew and driver. Because I have a picture of everything in the house in my head, I’ll often leave the truck to fetch a particular piece for a particular spot.
It’s hard work. On a standard loading day I’ll spend ten to fourteen hours either carrying something heavy, running laps up and down stairs to grab items, carrying furniture and cartons between the house and the trailer, and hopping up and down a double-sided stepladder building my tiers.
In addition to the mental and physical strain of packing, loading, and keeping my crew motivated, there is also the presence of the shipper. Shippers are frequently not at their best on moving day. They are, after all, leaving their home and consigning all their possessions over to strangers. Shippers can be testy, upset, suspicious, downright hostile, and occasionally pleasant and relaxed. It’s the driver’s job, in addition to loading and carrying, to make sure everything and everybody runs smoothly.