Mitcham Removals

Small jobs

The small end of this trade is sold badly

The small end of this trade gets sold badly, by firms set up for households and by vans set up for nothing in particular. Most of what goes wrong comes from four assumptions, and all four are avoidable.

There are two ways to get a small job wrong, and between them they cover most of the market.

A firm set up for household removals treats a single wardrobe as a house move with most of it missing. The crew, the vehicle and the overhead are all sized for something else, so the number is wrong and everybody knows it is wrong.

A van with one person in it treats a whole flat as a big version of a wardrobe. Under two hands, under-planned, and the day runs on until it has cost you more in time than the saving was worth.

Both mistakes come from the same assumption: that these jobs sit on one scale. They do not.

What actually makes each one hard

A single thing

One item

A delivery problem.

One thing, from somewhere to somewhere. Most of these are a sofa, a bed, an appliance, or something bought online from somebody who will not deliver it.

 A room out of a shared house

One room

An access problem.

Everything you own, out of one room in a house full of other people. Treated properly rather than as a favour with a van attached.

 A studio or a small flat

One van

A packing problem.

A studio or a one-bed — enough to fill a van and not enough to fill two. The commonest move in CR4 and the one most often under-prepared.

 A house or a family flat

A whole place

A planning problem.

Two bedrooms and up. The point at which a move stops being about carrying and starts being about planning, because nobody can hold all of it in their head.

The assumptions

What people are told, and what is actually true

“A small job is a big job with less in it.”
It is a different job. A single item is a delivery, a room is an access problem, a van-load is a packing problem and a household is a planning problem. Pricing them on one scale gets three of the four wrong.
“One item, so one person can do it.”
Most single items that get damaged are damaged by one person managing something that needed two. A sofa on a staircase is a two-person job whatever it weighs.
“It’ll fit in one van.”
It will if it is packed. Loose bedding, loose kitchen and loose clothes are what turn one van into two, and that is decided days before the van arrives, not on the morning.
“We’ll just help ourselves, it’s only a room.”
The room is easy. The shared hall, the staircase and the fire door you must not prop are the reason room moves cost deposits.
“They quoted over the phone, so it must be simple.”
A quote given without asking about floors, stairs, parking or measurements is a number somebody is planning to revise when they arrive.

What is standard, whatever the count

  • Two people unless we agree otherwise

    Including on single items. Most damage at this end of the trade happens when one person manages something that needed two.

  • Blankets, straps and a trolley

    Standard on every job. Nothing travels loose in the back, whatever it is and however short the trip.

  • Communal areas protected

    Halls, stairs and door frames covered before anything goes through them. On a room move that is where the deposit is lost.

  • Dismantling and reassembly

    Beds, wardrobes and flat-pack, with the fixings bagged and labelled to the item they came off.

  • Put where you want it

    In the room, not in the hallway. Leaving somebody with a sofa in the doorway is not finishing the job.

  • A straight answer about size

    If your job is genuinely more than the van you are asking about, we will say so before you book, not after.

Get a price

Tell us how much is moving

One item, one room, one van or a whole place — and the floor at each end. That is genuinely most of what we need to give you a price that holds.

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