Selecting the Best Mover for you is Easy with these Helpful Tips
When preparing to move, you may decide that it will work out better if you bring in professionals to help you out. However, with so many choices available to you, how can you be sure that you’re selecting the best mover? You need to check each mover’s qualifications and make sure that they’re a reputable organization that can handle local moves, long distance moves, heavy items, and any other criteria that you need. Here are a handful of tips for selecting the best mover in your area.
Around the corner or far, far away
There are two different types of moves from a logistical standpoint: Interstate and Intrastate. Interstate is moving from one state to another. Intrastate is moving inside the same state. There are additional rules and regulations that a mover needs to follow when performing a long distance, interstate move. You want to make sure that the professionals you hire are able to legally help you.
Financial stability and national backing
When selecting the best mover for the job, you want to make sure that you bring on people who are standing on solid ground. While a small, one truck moving company can be perfectly capable of helping you move, are they able to cover any accidental costs that might arise during the move? A franchise, on the other hand, has reach across multiple areas and as such typically comes with a much higher stability if the worst should happen.
Moving Industry Certifications
There are a number of industry certifications that the American Moving & Storage Association provides to present a unified standard to expect from a professional moving company. These cover in depth information that each mover you are selecting from should know by heart. If you find they have any of these AMSA certifications, you know you’re in good hands.
Staff Training
A good mover will have a solid training regimen in place for their employees. This will cover such things as proper truck loading and unloading techniques, proper lifting techniques, how to handle valuable and fragile items, and other such things.
Background Checks
When you have any contractor come into your home, you want to make sure that they’re honest people. You want to select a mover who has performed background checks on their employees to ensure you and your stuff is in good hands. You can also run a background check of sorts on the company by looking into its Better Business Bureau rating and also look into if there are any legal complaints against them.
Insurance
Make sure that your mover is fully insured before you confirm your contract with them. This can easily be checked at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s website (www.safersys.org). Once there, find the mover by either the USDOT number or searching by name. Look for the Licensing & Insurance link in the ‘Other Information for this Carrier’ box at the top right of the page. Open up the report and look for the BIPD and ‘Cargo Insurance’ information. They must legally carry at least $750,000 for BIPD and the ‘Cargo’ should be marked with a ‘YES’. If this all checks out, you’re good to go. If not, run away and select a different mover for your job.
Proper Equipment
Make sure that the mover you select has the right trucks and moving equipment for your job. If you have large, bulky items like a piano, it usually takes different equipment when compared to a simple boxes, beds, and wardrobe move. Ramps, jacks, lifts, hand trucks, appliance dollies and more all add up to a fully stocked, ready to roll moving company.
Reviews
An easy way to make sure that you’re selecting the right moving company is by looking at the reviews left by folks on popular review sites. This includes places such as:
You can get a feel for how your friends and neighbors view a particular moving company. This will let you get a good idea of what to expect when dealing with them. Let us help you make selecting the best mover easier. We can provide you with a number of quotes from moving companies that we trust. Take our list and we’re sure that they’ll pass with flying colors on all points.