The Future of Moving
axios.com
axios.com
If someone could solve that problem - not just not being a scammer, but getting people to believe that you're not a scammer - I think they'd take over the industry.
But hey, you bought a new laptop - and you have the insurance money to pay for it.
Car services are notorious for this behavior where they quote you a price on the phone and after they have your car "hostage", invoice you a much higher price. Also phone companies/ISPs where sales reps would promise you some discounts on the phone or in person if you sign up today and when your first invoice arrives you have to pay everything in full with no discounts.
Seems to be the norm the norm in that country and not sure how you'd be able to argue against that in court with just words and no written proof of the contrary. God I hate Google for disabling the call recording API since Android 9.
Since then, I always ask them to send me "what we just agreed on the phone" in writing via e-mail. If they refuse, I know there's a high chance they won't honor it later.
Please let me know if I'm wrong.
Oral agreements may be legally binding, but it's pretty hard to prove they exist, or what the terms are.
Another piece of evidence about the "precariat" of young workers ...
Anyway, if someone wants a multibillion-dollar idea that may require more than a billion dollars of work, the technological solution needed here is "home inventory management".
There are a few startups that will let you wave a phonecam around a room and produce a floorplan from it. There are a few things like Google Lens that will identify products one at a time. What there isn't is a good quick way of scanning a room for all the stuff in it.
Once you can do that, you can inventory it all on the way onto the truck and on the way off the truck. You can assign a value to it. You could even offer the arbitrage service of "it's cheaper to sell this here and buy a new one at the destination, do you want to do that?"
This would be incredible for insurance documentation, too.
I figure that, as a way better than nothing first cut, a low-effort approach may be to simply do a detailed walk through with a video camera and record commentary.
I have watched most episodes of Shark Tank. I remember than when a 'pitcher' starts with the phrase "XYZ industry is a $$$$ billion business in the U.S., look like an upcoming target for disruption", the sharks start rolling their eyes. That person usually doesn't get the funding.
> As we've reported, Americans are generally moving less
We (the people not living in the USA) think that USA residents buy and sell houses 'frequently'. Buy --> wait --> price goes up --> sell --> buy the next house.
I think that a critical contribution to moving less is the financial crisis 2008-2018 it would make sense that people were stuck to the houses they bought, unable to perform the aforementioned loop, thus moving less.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spartan-van-lines-moving-scams-...
I had a TV stolen the one time I used movers instead of doing it myself.
I think I looked at PODS and the like when moving, but they have non-standard containers and end up being kind of expensive.
I know it can be done, because the SO of a friend of mine moved from the US to guam and got the container I believe for $1200.
(And, if a moving crew is still needed in any case, it probably mostly doesn't matter if you're using a container not. And there may be some advantages to a regular truck I'm not aware of. I assume any ocean freight is containerized in any case.)
I'm not sure it would make sense for moves within the US, since everything would probably go by truck anyway.
Of course I downsized considerably before moving, leaving behind all the obvious bulky things that made no economic sense to transport such as furniture, electronics, etc.
In the end I think I paid to ship 8 cubic-meters of "stuff". It was a couple of pallets which were around 2mx2mx2m when combined. Things arrived smoothly but I recall quite strongly that I paid more for the insurance than for the actual shipping. Happily I didn't need it.
Just two weeks ago I was texting with a former associate about getting some 53 containers, cutting them up into 5, 8x8x10 cubes and welding what's needed for a few other mods.
I'm thinking to myself, if we can sell these for $1300(?) it would be a good value for some situaitons right?
I've seen some of the problems and come up with a few solutions for a few of them, so it might be viable.
His dad moved his steel shop business, and I have not gotten a chance to get out to the new one.. but think maybe next week we should try to calculate things tighter and consider further.
Might need some seed money to get some prototypes done to show off an MVP and get a real calculation for all the time plus materials.
The usefulness with condos / apartments is much less, and some townhomes / non-attached homes can't fit or have na HOA that would not allow for portable building in backyard - so they would mostly be out for this idea..
however they could use the unit to protect the shipment and then sell or loan to someone else in the area that could use a storage building.
With that in mind, part of my plan is to add siding and have roof options that make this look more like a regular storage building and less like a shipping container, so they fit in more places.
This way they are used for shipping, then also used for storage and can be re-used for shipping or re-sold, etc.
Pricing for regular storage buildings vary, but it seems they are in line with this maybe.. so it might catch on.
For apartments though, I could see a "house concierge moving" as-a-service being a possible disruption of established moving companies. E.g. they move you for "free" for appropriately long and priced lease. The "hostage holding" of your goods is a non-event here since the goal is to have a happy tenant.
As it is now, the solutions to these problems have varying levels of self reliance. At the bottom, most simple, with highest level of self reliance
- Own, borrow or rent a truck, pack your own things, drive your own things to your destination, return truck if not yours. Requires packing loading and driving everything yourself. Price can vary but usually cheaper than movers.
Next you've got:
- Random personal ad people with trucks. Not usually professional companies, varying levels of quality and reliability from, will probably smash and lose your shit to basically a professional. Vehicles come varying sizes, may not be suitable for large or high end moves. Price varies, quality tends to correspond with price.
- Professional movers, varying levels of quality from will probably not break your stuff to will dust off and spit shine everything you own. Service can vary from simple loading transport and unloading to complete packing, loading, transport, unloading and unpacking. Cost can get high.
- Container options. These have much of the same upsides and downsides as a truck rental, with the fun of dealing with shipping.
All of these suffer from problems with shortage of booking around common moving days, a problem that has more to do with the way moves tend to be either the end or the the middle of the month.
Anything that involves other people handling your property will have a risk of poor reliability. Movers are one of those professions, similar to landscaping and other jobs that are physically demanding, but not that difficult, so tends to be a lower paid job companies fill with unskilled and temporary labourers, the reliability of whom can be questionable.
I've probably missed some things, but after moving only a few months ago, this is kind of the summary of what I found available. I just can't really think of anything that could really do it any better under those constraints.
It doesn't work for furniture, but it can go a long way.
If you're renting you really shouldn't be spending on furniture anyway, just get rid of it.
It's getting someone else to show up and stick all your crap in containers to your satisfaction and then the reverse at the destination that's the problem.
Graebel has moved me every single time I have had to move across the US. They have moved me almost a dozen times. The packers and unpackers showed up somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour early. They will pack and inventory your entire house--in no more than 2 days. The truck driver will load in no more than a day, and generally about half of one. The truck driver will beat you to your destination if you dawdle at all. They will unpack at destination, and put it in your cupboards and closets if you are there to direct them. The packing will be amazing and everything will get there with no broken pieces. And, to this day, I am convinced that the single box that disappeared was my fault somehow. And Graebel handled everything when something went wrong--packer missing? another guy dispatched within an hour. Big rig can't get into complex? Small relay truck dispatched immediately. Truck broke down--another one dispatched transparently to grab the load and keep it moving. Trucker got in early--truck unloaded into storage and delivered on smaller rig.
This has cost me somewhere around $5K-$6K each time--Graebel would have definitely charged more if they thought they could get away with it (they should have--I would have paid it). You are talking easily 125 man-hours or more. That's about $40-$48 an hour if everything went to labor and the truck driver--and it doesn't. You have all of the people in the offices coordinating everything, you have all the fleet and logistics management as well as storage spaces. I suspect that people are probably around $20/hour or less when all is said and done.
I have had HORDES of people with moving horror stories, and yet I had never had one. Apparently, Graebel was so much better than the rest of the industry that it prevented this.
And yet the old Graebel is no more--I have no idea who to call the next time I have to move. Apparently people would rather have their stuff broken and stolen rather than pay the people handling your valuables enough to avoid the problem.
This is just like the airlines. People claim to be unhappy, but when push comes to shove, they're such cheap bastards that they'll buy the $10 cheaper ticket and either get nickle and dimed to death or get treated like sardines in a tin can.
Edit: The US HAD a moving company like the Japanese one below. And it went under because Americans are too fscking cheap.
(Video link courtesy of thinkingkong elsewhere in thread) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynEjnebw8LA
I think it's so much people are cheap cheap, as pretty much since 2008 most people are not stacking up lots of extra cash, they just have less money.
On top of that, I've seen articles where there is so much 'heirloom furniture' being gifted / inherited and most people don't want it, don't have the space for it and don't want to pay to store it, that goodwills around the country are being over flooded with it.
I've definitely seen trends where many people are buying cheaper, more disposable furniture, clothes, and everything. I'd hazard a guess that many people moving these days would have enough space in a rental car for their cherished / valuable stuff - and all the rest would not be worth six thousand to re-buy, much less the hassle of packing and unpacking and risks associated with that for six grand.
I did not think about these things in this way in the 90s, early 00s.
No argument, but that's probably the lower bound for competence. If you aren't willing to pay that, congratulations, you have decided to do everything yourself. As I pointed out, there are a LOT of man-hours involved in moving and the employees involved are probably around $20/hour. That's a bit above the $15/hour wage that seems to denote above average competence (Target and Costco are both at $15/hour minimum--Costco goes up from there).
As for that $5K, you can pay it in cash; you can pay it in time; you can pay it in grief. Choose your currency.
Americans or most westerners ?
A lot of fields have become sad due to competing race to the bottom. People "today?" are too deeply wired to pick the cheapest, the market will reflect that.