A High-End Mover Dishes on Truckstop Hierarchy, Rich People, and Moby Dick

https://longreads.com/2017/09/21/a-high-end-mover-dishes-on-truckstop-hierarchy-rich-people-and-moby-dick/amp/

Since I now work for a boutique van line doing high-end executive moves, all of my work is what we call pack and load. That means I’m responsible for the job from beginning to end. My crew and I will pack every carton and load every piece. On a full-service pack and load, the shipper will do nothing. I had one last summer that was more or less typical: The shipper was a mining executive moving from Connecticut to Vancouver. I showed up in the morning with my crew of five veteran movers; the shipper said hello, finished his coffee, loaded his family into a limousine, and left for the airport. My crew then washed the breakfast dishes and spent the next seventeen hours packing everything in the house into cartons and loading the truck. At destination, another crew unpacked all the cartons and placed everything where the shipper wanted it, including dishes and stemware back into the breakfront. We even made the beds. We’re paid to do all this, of course, and this guy’s move cost his company $60,000. That move filled up my entire trailer and included his car. It was all I could do to fit the whole load on without leaving anything behind, but I managed it. I do remember having to put a stack of pads and a couple of dollies in my sleeper, though.