Philadelphia Movers

Free Mover

A free mover may bring up visions of your friends showing up on a weekend to help you load your stuff into your car, so you can move a few blocks away. The pizza, bagels, or soda may have worked as a lure back then, but now you are in need of a truly free mover. When you were young you could afford to throw caution to the wind. After all, you may have had all hand-me-down furniture, and other free items.

There is inherently the risk of damage or destruction of your possessions while you involve any mover, even full service movers. Yet, now you may have more to lose by having any free mover handling your belongings. For starters, hopefully if you are going to be having a free mover, whether it is friends, family, or the cheapest mover you can find, you have homeowners or renters insurance. Far beyond that, it is important that when you are seeking a mover, that you find someone who has an accident free and criminal free history. It is also quite useful for you if the mover also carries their own insurance policy. While it would be a shame to have anything break, it would be almost painful to have to pay to replace your belongings for yourself.

Scale of Professional Services

If you are wondering about the fees that each mover charges, with free being optimal, it is important to learn all about what you can expect from various types of mover companies. For starters, of course you may still have friends who will work for free, or even in exchange for a cookout afterward. Again, be mindful about insurance and what you could stand to lose with a free move by friends. Beyond that, you may rent a truck by the hour, in addition to having friends and family help you.

The next step up from a free mover might be a local, no frills kind of company. They may have one truck and just work throughout Philadelphia, for instance. Even if you have a lot of items, they probably have room in their truck. And, they only have to spend minimal in gas to get around the city, which will save you some money as well. In this case, though, to keep costs as close to having a free mover as possible, will require that you find boxes, tape, and pack it yourself.

If you have sufficient time, patience, and do not mind packing it yourself, then this method will keep you as close as possible to having a free mover. The only thing that you will rely on the free mover for is to load and unload the truck. Depending upon the amount of belongings and how well you can pack them, this may make for quite a simple and straight forward job that can be completed within a couple of hours.

Shopping by Price

One key to this is to have a few of the more basic professionals come to your home to provide an estimate. It is vital that they stop by to look at what you actually own, to help determine how much it will cost. If you have heavy furniture, which could hold up the process, they have to take that into account as well. Time is money in this type of business. So, whatever you can do to help save the professionals time, means that you save money.

They will provide an estimate in writing. Though, be aware that there are two kinds of estimates, a binding and non-binding estimate. The binding is pretty much set in stone, unless you forgot to show the professionals a whole room that was filled to the brim with stuff. Otherwise, unless there are additional items found that you had not shown them, then it is set. The non-binding estimate is open ended, meaning it can change for whatever reason.

It is important that you take the time to pack properly. Make sure that no boxes are holding more than fifty pounds of goods. Likewise, be sure to triple wrap breakables and not put them beneath heavy pots and pans, for instance. In addition, put padding around the breakables to ensure that they are secured in place and that they cannot bump into one another. Be sure to pack the items you use least first. Of course, be sure to label the boxes so that you know which room they will be placed in when you arrive. You may want to be more specific and identify the contents. A free mover may mean friends and family. Though, it can be very low cost if you do much of the preparation work on your own. This will help you to save money.