Loading & Unloading

When the truck is sorted and the muscle is not

This is one of the more practical bookings we take. The vehicle is already arranged, maybe the company is paying for the truck, maybe a tempo is rented for the afternoon, or maybe a consignment is arriving from another city on somebody else's lorry and there is nobody at this end to get it off. What is missing is a crew that knows how to load a truck properly.

That is bookable on its own. You get a crew for the hours you need, with the lifting equipment they work with, and no vehicle in the price because you do not need one.

Loading is a skill, and it shows in the unloading

How a truck is packed decides what arrives intact. Heavy and rigid things go at the bottom and against the bulkhead, the load is built up in tiers so nothing has a gap to fall into, soft goods fill the voids, and anything fragile rides high and last where nothing can settle onto it. A load that is tied off properly does not shift on a flyover, and a load thrown in loose will rearrange itself somewhere on the Ring Road whatever the driver does.

Our crews are trained on lifting technique and on the awkward pieces, so a double-door fridge goes down a stairwell on a strap rather than on somebody's back and a marble table top travels on its edge. They come with trolleys, straps, blankets and the basic tools for taking a bed frame apart, and they will tie and sheet the load if the vehicle needs it.

You are also getting people who do this all week rather than casual hands hired at a junction. That difference tends to show up around hour three, when a job is behind and the temptation to start throwing things is at its highest.

Unloading a consignment that has already travelled

Half of these bookings are unloading rather than loading. Household goods have come in from Delhi or Pune on a transporter's lorry, the driver is not going to carry anything up to the third floor, and the building will only give a two-hour window for the lift. The crew meets the vehicle, gets it emptied inside the window, and carries everything up to the flat rather than leaving it stacked in the basement.

Where you want it, cartons go into the right rooms and furniture gets reassembled. And if the lorry turns up late, which happens on long-haul freight more often than transporters like to admit, tell us and we will hold the crew rather than have you pay twice.

How it is priced and what it does not cover

Loading and unloading is quoted on the crew size and the hours, adjusted for the floor and whether there is a working service lift. Four floors of stairs is a different job from four floors with a lift and it would be dishonest to price them the same. Tell us the volume, the floors at each end and roughly what the heavy items are, and you get a firm figure in writing with a GST invoice.

What is not in it: no vehicle, and no packing material unless you ask for it. If your things are not already boxed we would honestly rather you booked the packing too, because a crew loading loose crockery into a rented tempo is a bad afternoon for everybody. Packing can be added to the same booking, or taken separately.