Transporting tools in a move

[fim]

Cool. The BT is probably the only piece of hardware that if lost/damaged I could not easily replace even if I got my full cost back from insurance.

The moving guy doing the estimate was admiring the BT's SMT...that's going to be the first thing I check for when I receive things!

Are the BT's completely gone from HD at this point?

Thanks again for everyone's responses

[JimD]

We are in our fourth house. I have gradually accumulated tools but some were moved in each case. We went from an apartment in Philadelphia to our first house in Kansas City to another house in Omaha, to a house in Pittsburgh and are now in Columbia, SC. All the moves were paid for by my employer. I lost a few tools in the moves - thought I had lost more than I really had because some eventually showed up - but had none broken. I just let them do whatever they thought was appropriate. We had damage to furniture in each move but not to tools.

I agree that it is good to watch how they load but we have usually had to go into storage at one end or the other. How they load when they leave is not necessarily how it is loaded when it shows up. If you can go house to house I think it helps.

My wife is the one in charge when we move. She absolutely will not sign for a box until she sees it and she will not let a box leave the house without a tag that she sees on the list. Our experience is they tend to show up late and then want to make you feel rushed and that they can be trusted. I wouldn't. They are probably honest but you never know. The stuff that did not make it to our house probably ended up at somebody elses. We have had little stuff that wasn't ours (a broom or mop or something) show up and have refused to accept delivery of bigger items before. If you do not fill the truck, especially for a long distance move, they will fill it and then the boundry can be a little fuzzy, at least to a mover.

Putting tools back into the factory boxes is a good idea but I think tools are relatively low on the list of things to worry about. I would worry much more about furniture for damage and electronics for damage or loss.

Jim

[Greg in Maryland]

Thanks for the great suggestions.

The PODS are an idea, but I need my stuff insured for such a big and long move.

I used PODS for my last move and it worked great. They have reasonable insurance, so I would not be turned off of PODS because of that. I purchased insurance for the contents if there was an accident on the road, fire, theft, etc. What it did not cover was damage from packing. I could have gotten that, but I choose not to.

What I really liked about PODS was that there is no handling of my stuff by anyone outside of my control and supervision. I arranged for the movers (labor), worked along side of them, packed it to my satisfaction and put a big time lock on the door.

One thing to note, the load shifts and if not properly secured the doors are difficult or impossible to open. The doors are the roll up type, not swinging doors. I found this out the hard way. I was finally able to open the door, but not without a few cuss words, elevated blood pressure and visions of complete moving disaster

As an aside, the machinery to move the PODS is quite nifty and interesting to watch. However, it is little scary to see all your valuable stuff swinging on four chains between a mobile carriage 5 or 6 feet off the ground.

Good luck!

Greg

[docrowan]

Three moves since August 2004. We moved ourselves, so we did our own packing. We found the local newspaper let us have left over rolls of newspaper for free - as many as we wanted. It comes in roughly 30" wide rolls, about a couple of hundred feet long, so you can wrap, or rip and roll it into balls. Another nice thing about it is there's no newsprint on it, so your hands don't turn black. It's not very strong, but free and long means you can put a lot of plies around something. I wrapped my planes, chisels, etc, in several layers. Wrapping them thick increases volume and lowers the weight of the box. The biggest problem I had (other than moving 3 times in 2 years!) was keeping the weight down in some of the boxes. A lot of newspaper and smaller size boxes helped with that.