What Are Your Movers Really Thinking? Interview with Jose

moving house by Nathan O'Nions (CC BY 2.0)

A moving crew consists of a Moving Team Leader (aka the foreman), as many moving Team Members (Helpers) as needed, and a professional driver. Jose Frausto is a professional driver and Moving Team Member of the NorthStar Moving family. He can get our big red trucks into tiny parking spots or out of crazy LA traffic jams. Recently, Jose has been hanging out with us in the office, healing from a slight back injury until he is back in tip top shape. This gave us a chance to talk and share stories and inside pro moving tips:

Can you give us some tips on how to make a moving day more efficient?

 Whenever movers approach a job, they should walk into a place and take a look around, the layout, the boxes, how packed a client is, if they have stairs, etc.  You can know what’s going to happen and how everything is going to go just by looking at it. If clients have stairs, or a long driveway you have to prepare yourself, both mentally and physically. A lot of movers try to push themselves fast in the beginning and they end up tiring themselves out. Best advice is:  assess your task and the conditions, make a mental plan, pace yourself and keep going at an even pace.

Most times clients leave their packed boxes scattered around the house when movers arrive, but if you arrange most boxes in one main room it can save time for your movers. Your movers can bring in a dolly, start piling boxes up and keep going.

Many clients have color code systems. Some people will use colored stickers ready color labels or even sticky notes in different colors. They’ll label the boxes in different colors and then label each room with the corresponding color. Movers love this! When it’s time for your movers to move things into the new home, each room has a different color sticker on it’s door and we just move in the boxes labeled in that color into that room.

Did you meet any cute pets while moving?

There was a couple we moved from San Pedro to Riverside. Their condo in San Pedro was on the 10th floor, you could see the whole Los Angeles Harbor waterfront spread in front of you. They had a little pug. This little pug thought she was a human. Like a little baby. She would follow me around from room to room and watch me pack, looking at what I was doing. The clients would call her name to get her out of the way, and she would put her head down, like she was saying “oh man…” and then turn around and go to them. She’d come back, following us down the hall.

What are the hardest to move items for movers?

We had to move a full size grand piano on a recent long distance move from Thousand Oaks to Michigan. It is the heaviest and hardest thing I’ve ever moved. With this piano, two of the legs could not be removed, because the people who originally put it together messed up the screws, so we had to flip in over. Movers usually take all the legs off so the remaining body of the piano is flat and ready to be transported. In this case we had to flip it over so the two legs will stand up and be protected while in transit.

It was five of us movers, we disassembled the usual parts you take off from a piano when moving it, except for those two legs, and then we flipped the piano over on top of a bundle of blankets. When we put the piano on top, it was so heavy the blankets looked almost as thin as cardboard. As we were flipping it we heard the strings of the piano play, it was quite beautiful. Of course, you always have to have a piano tuned after a move. We wrapped the entire piano, it was completely protected, nothing was going to happen to it. We placed it separately at the back of the truck and strapped it. It arrived safely to its new home.

I also remember once we moved a woman who had a dining room table that was very long, almost like the Last Supper table, with two long benches on each side. She was moving to a loft in downtown LA. The elevator was too small, so we brought it up through the stairs. She moved to the 8th floor, but it took two flights of stairs to get to the first residential floor, so it was basically moving this dining room table to the 10th floor by stairs. We investigated the layout of the building, checked all options: there are the regular stairs tenants can use, and a second set that were emergency and service stairs. We decided the service stairs were the widest, so we used them, but they were at the other end of the building, so after we got the table up, we had to take it down the hallways which were narrow with sharp turns. We had to maneuver the table in different angles and disassemble light fixtures that had glass in them along the way. We disassembled the glass light fixtures, put them a side, kept going and in the end came back and put them all back. After we were done our client took pictures of us sitting down at the table.

On Air photo credit: Bounder