A DIY move can save you money on moving costs, but it can also be a pain in the back — quite literally. While decluttering and knowing how to pack up your house are pretty straightforward tasks, loading up the moving truck can be a hefty project. This is where hiring movers may be worth it.
“If you have art and expensive furniture — or it’s a complex move and multiple bedrooms or multiple delivery destinations — those moves cannot be handled [by] yourself,” said Sharone Ben-Harosh, founder and CEO of FlatRate Moving, which has operations in New York, Los Angeles and five other cities in between.
Invest in a professional moving company that has insurance and experience for moving valuable, bulky and fragile items.
Whether you try a DIY move or get help from the pros, below are the best strategies for packing a moving truck. These packing hacks and moving tips bring you one step closer to a smooth relocation.
How do you load a moving truck?
Follow this strategy to avoid playing a last-minute game of Tetris during truck packing. Boxes in the back, then furniture, followed by miscellaneous and often bulky items such as barbecues, fans, bikes and strollers in the front of the truck.
Keep important documents and valuable heirlooms with you.
Boxes
It’s tempting to save on moving supplies by collecting used boxes, but source double-walled moving boxes that will sustain the ride for long-distance moving, Ben-Harosh said.
Label and take a photo of the open box before taping it up. Instead of asking yourself, “Where did I put that?” you can check your phone.
When it’s time to load up, stack the boxes in the back of the truck. It sounds obvious, but “put the heavy boxes on the bottom and light boxes on top,” Ben-Harosh said. “Everybody says, yeah, yeah, but not everybody does it.”
Boxes with heavier items, such as books, can go on the bottom and boxes with linens and pillows can go on top. Wardrobe boxes should go on top as they can collapse if you put too much weight on them.
The wall of boxes could be two to five rows deep. Be sure to strap your load.
Furniture
Disassemble furniture before you load it in the truck. “If you don’t take the legs off the couch, those legs are not going to be holding stable any more,” Ben-Harosh said. Keep track of all the screws and keep them with the piece of furniture you dismantled. Wrap up the screws, place them in a plastic bag and use packing tape to keep them with the furniture.
Use furniture pads to wrap each piece — which is an art in itself. FlatRate double wraps furniture for long distances and even puts cardboard on top. “For example if it’s a glass cabinet, we do cardboard, then we put the blanket,” he said.
Unless you have plenty of moving experience, avoid stacking furniture on top of each other. “That’s why a do-it-yourselfer needs a little bigger truck,” Ben-Harosh said.
If you do stack furniture, place the lightest furniture on top of very stable, nonfragile, heavy furniture such as dressers. Strap these in.
Appliances and bulky items
Once boxes and furniture are in, the end of the truck should be filled with appliances such as washers and dryers — which professional movers tend to cover in plastic wrap to keep doors from opening and dials from getting snagged.
Load oddly shaped items — think grills, patio umbrellas, bikes and vacuums — around other pieces here.
Mattresses
Your mattresses are the last items to go in before you shut the truck door. When strapped in, these act as a soft wall that holds the rest of your possessions in place. The mattress is loaded sleep side in toward the shipment, with the strap on the underside.
Place a moving pad, unused box or some type of cushion between the mattress and strap buckle so the buckle doesn’t damage the mattress. Strap it in tightly.
You can keep the box spring with the rest of the furniture. Movers tend to load a queen box spring sideways against a wall. Twin box springs are typically wrapped together and loaded as a “brick” item such as a small bookcase, Ben-Harosh added.
How do you pick a moving truck size?
To pack a moving truck efficiently you need to book the right size truck. Moving companies, including FlatRate, use this formula: Take the square footage of your home, multiply it by 0.1, add that number to the square footage and you’ll have a rough estimate of the cubic volume.
For a 1,200-square-foot home, you will need a moving truck with 1,320 cubic feet (1,200 x 0.1 = 120; 1,200 + 120 = 1,320).
Tip
A standard moving truck has 60 cubic feet of capacity for each square foot.
Truck rental companies have trucks that range from 10 to 26 feet. For anything larger, you need a special license — professional movers can be licensed to drive up to 52-foot trucks. You’ll need a 22-foot truck for 1,320 cubic feet.
When in doubt, go for a bigger truck, Ben-Harosh recommended. Without experience, DIYers may not optimize all of the empty space and may need more room to avoid stacking furniture.
What do you need to load a moving truck?
You pack a box, but you load a truck. Movers refer to “packing” as filling boxes and to “loading” as filling the truck with said boxes, furniture and other belongings.
First-time DIY movers may be surprised to know that moving trucks aren’t padded. “Everybody thinks they are, but they are absolutely not,” Ben-Harosh said.
In addition to buying packing supplies, such as moving boxes, buy moving blankets and wrap the furniture with ropes, ratchet straps or tie-downs to secure it to the sides of the truck — the walls have poles and hooks for this purpose.
Dollies are another moving tool to invest in. These rolling wooden platforms will make moving everything much easier. “In a move, you definitely need a few, like five, to load boxes,” Ben-Harosh said.
Perhaps the most important tool you need to load a moving truck is an extra pair of hands. “You can’t load a truck by yourself no matter how much you want to, it’s not a job for one person,” Ben-Harosh said. “No mover works alone. It’s too dangerous. It’s very unsafe to carry even a small bookshelf by yourself. It has to be a minimum of two strong people who are ready to sweat.”
You and your brawny friends need to devote time to this project. Plan on spending at least 30 minutes for every 100 cubic feet of truck you’re packing with a three-person team. Allocate about six hours to load up belongings for a 1,200-square-foot house.
What’s next?
Good news: If you load a moving truck properly, unloading it is generally faster and easier. Take out the bulky items and set them aside, unload the furniture and put it in your new home. Bring in the boxes.
Keep in mind that if you’ve just driven a truck across by yourself and you’re going to be tired. Without a support system in place, Ben-Harosh recommended hiring someone to help you unload, especially those heavier items. Call a local moving company and say, ‘I need two movers to help me,’ and pay them by the hour. The relatively small expense is worth the money. You can also book someone to help you unpack via Hire A Helper.
Whatever you choose, a little research and smart strategy will keep things moving.
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