How Do Movers Protect Furniture During a Move

One of the most common reasons to hire movers when you're relocating from one place to another is that moving your heavy furniture is, well, a pain in the back. Between trying to keep everything undamaged and the sheer lifting power required, many families decide that hiring movers is more economical in the long run.

If you're still on the fence, you may be wondering how exactly movers go about protecting furniture from damage? There are several different techniques they use.

Specialized Packing Materials

First of all, movers have access to particular materials that they can use to keep your furniture safe in transit. All of these materials would be available to a home user, but they tend to come in such huge amounts that they would be impractical to use. Letting movers manage these items is much more helpful.

You might see your movers using:

Bubble Wrap - this helps provide a cushion for wooden pieces that might bump up against another piece, preventing dings or scratches.

Plastic Wrap - like a huge version of what you use in your kitchen, the plastic wrap that movers use helps to keep moving parts in place. For example, a bureau or desk could have drawers that try to slide out while the piece is in transit; plastic wrap keeps that from happening.

Moving Blankets - like bubble wrap, these thick blankets help to keep big pieces of furniture safe from other items in the moving truck. They are often used with the heaviest and most expensive pieces, where simple bubble wrap isn't enough to ensure safety

Specialty Boxes - some items, like lamps or TVs, are safest in their own boxes, designed to protect them. Your movers will have access to the right kinds of boxes to keep your items safe.

Bigger pieces dismantled

If you have bigger pieces of furniture that can easily be dismantled, like bed frames, dining room tables, or sectional couches, you may ask movers to take these pieces apart. This gives them more flexibility to get everything neatly into the truck - and since for out of state moves you're often paying by the square foot, the more compact your items are made, the more affordable your move.

Ramps and dollies

This may sound silly, but being able to use ramps and dollies to get your furniture into the truck will prevent a great deal of damage. Having a handful of people trying to put a bureau into the back of a pickup offers many opportunities for damage - both to the bureau and to the pickup! Some rental trucks come with ramps and dollies, but whether or not these work will depend on the company and how well repaired it keeps its fleet.

You may be able to rent a dolly to use in order to get furniture out to the truck you're using, but it's also important to note that using a dolly isn't as easy as it looks, especially with big pieces. If you settle the wrong part of the furniture on the dolly, it's impossible to apply incredible pressure to places that can't handle it. In the worst scenarios, you could snap something right in half.

Secured in truck

When your items are transported by professional movers, you know that they will be carefully secured in the truck, preventing as much unexpected movement as possible in a truck. When you're tossing things into the back of your friend's pickup, they may or may not have the proper gear to secure things. If you've ever seen a mattress fly out of the back of a truck on the freeway, you understand how important it is to get things right on this point.

Every honest mover will tell you that some shifting of your belongings can occur during transit and that there's no way for them to guarantee that there won't be any damage at any point. This is why most movers carry insurance; if something of yours is damaged due to the movers, you may be able to get reimbursed for some portion of the item's value.

If you are moving very expensive pieces, your movers should know, and you should ask if they carry enough insurance to cover the more expensive pieces in your collection. If you're moving very delicate furniture or antique pieces that could suffer extreme depreciation at even the slightest damage, it's crucial that your mover know that ahead of time so that they can decide whether or not they can move the piece. If they can, they will be prepared to take the proper precautions.

Choosing professional movers to get your furniture from one location to another just makes sense, given how much work they put into protecting your furniture.

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