I just wrote a 10 page report on the best ways to save money when you move. How much? My goal with these tips is to save you at least $50 and maybe up to $500, off the cost of your move.
This report is no longer available... I'll put it online some day. Sorry.
(steven not steve, don't forget the "v") I will send you this printable PDF report as soon as I see your order. Put your email in the info on Paypal, then email me at that email address above, to make sure I see it as soon as possible. Or hit me up on Facebook, if we're friends there. I'll send it right out.
Way back in 1991, while living on the floor of a tiny, one bedroom apartment in Huntington Beach, I needed some work. A friend said, "My brother works on the weekends for a moving company, call this guy." So I called that guy, and he said, "We need guys this weekend," and told me where to meet their crew. My first moving job, I helped move a giant IRS office out of their old building, and into the new federal building in downtown Long Beach.
I wound up working with a hardworking crew of Mexican American guys. I worked on and off, moving offices on the weekends, for several years. When I used to work at the TV studios in the summers, I was usually moving offices the rest of the year. Later, in 1994 through 1997, I worked full time as a household mover. I moved over 900 houses and apartments in that time. The tips to save money in this report are not the tips you find on the internet, they are the real things I learned by moving one or two households nearly every day, for over 2 1/2 years. In all those jobs, moving people's personal possessions, I saw, and moved, some weird stuff. Here are a few quick stories:
The first household move I did, I was still working for the office movers. One of the household crews needed an extra guy. The house was a big, $300,000 tract home (in 1992), in north San Diego county. The family was an American guy and his wife, and her extended family, from some part of India. Wherever they came from, it was customary for the men to just piss on the nearest wall when they had to take a leak. I'm not kidding. There were piss stains on all the walls of this expensive house, that was only a couple of years old. The whole house reeked of piss. It didn't bother the people living there, but we had to try to hold our breath each trip in, to grab a piece of furniture. That was my start in household moving. I don't know why I kept doing households.
Years later, we moved a woman and her daughter into a tri-level condo in Huntington Beach. We had to get some landscapers working nearby to help push her baby grand piano up the first flight of steps. The stairway was low, and it actually scraped the ceiling above the steps. Then the two of us movers got it up to the landing, up the second set of stairs. It was a bitch. Baby grand pianos are not only really expensive, they are big, heavy, and awkward. At the end of the move, my co-worker asked the lady, "So who plays the piano?" She said, "Oh we don't play, I just like the way a baby grand looks." We wanted to kill her. It was just decoration to her.
One time I was working on one pretty average move. When we finished, the boss told us to go help another crew. We got to a good size, two story house, in Fountain Valley, I think. The owner had a 14 foot long, curved on the end bar in his upstairs den. It was custom built in that room. His "den" looked like an actual bar, as in a place you would go to drink. The custom bar was beautiful, and huge. The thing was the size of a bar in an actual bar, and had a 90 degree, curved bend on the end, all trimmed in really nice hardwood of some kind. the guy wanted his bar moved to the new house. We had to get six movers, and take the huge bar out a window, across the first floor roof, then off the side of the roof. Then out into the truck. Cheers!
One lady in Westminster had us move about half a cord of firewood, which had been sitting for months, on the side of her house. It was winter, and the wood on the bottom was muddy. It wasn't that we minded getting muddy, but once our T-shirts were muddy, it was a lot harder to keep the rest of the furniture clean, when we unloaded it. The weird part was that the house she moved out of didn't have a fireplace. "Do you have a fireplace at the new house?" we asked her. "No," she replied, "But my son brought the firewood all the way down from Bishop (in the Sierra Nevada mountains, six hours away), and I don't want to leave it here."
One Friday, during the busy early summer season, my partner and I got a third moving job for the day. We were dejected, knowing we had to be back at work at 7am the next day, and would have to move two houses that day, at least. We were tired, and just wanted to get home, eat, and get some sleep. The 3rd move turned out to be at the Breakers apartments, near the ocean in Huntington Beach. The young woman's apartment was on the third floor, with a 4th floor bedroom. The problem was, The Breakers didn't have elevators. Everything had to go down three floors, six outside flights of stairs, followed by a 40 yard walk to the truck. We asked her, "Where are you moving to?" She replied, "I'm moving to the third floor on the other side of the complex." Third move of the day, everything went down six flights of stairs, a long walk to the truck, and then a 150 yard drive, then up six flights of stairs, and another floor to her new bedroom. Luckily it was only a one bedroom apartment, that didn't have much furniture. The women who live in that complex often call it The Heartbreakers, because the complex is full of young, single people. There were always a lot of in-the-complex relationships starting and ending. But us movers called it the Backbreakers, because there were no elevators.
So there are a few quick tales of my adventures as a furniture movers. The tips to help save you money when you move, or friends and family, their next move, come from years of pain and misery and pushing cat piss stained couches up stairs on 90 degree days. So buy a report, It's only $5, and it will definitely pay for itself several times over when you, or your friends or family, move next.
I'm doing a lot of writing on Substack these days, check it out:
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