Hi, Has anyone moved house using a 'standard' removal firm and had their machine tools transported? I'm thinking of moving, but am not sure if Pickfords (or whoever) will move my lathes? Will they view them as industrial machinery, or move them if they can lift them?
Anyone got any experience of moving house that they'd like to share?
A normal company moved my lathe for me (a Unitool / Boxford- not sure of the exact model but bed is about 1m long) without any problems. I removed the motor assembly and tailstock and they did the rest. Didn't bat an eyelid.
Pickfords won't touch it, I tried them last time we moved 4 years ago. After looking in the workshop the guy doing the quote went away and we never heard from them again!
Most small removals companies quote per van/men per hour, so they don't mind if there is more to move as you pay for more hours.
When we moved last year I booked a standard removals van for the house and two luton transits for the workshop, each van came with two men
-so there was plenty of available manpower. I can't remember the exact hourly rates, but it ended up costing about £1000 for the three vans and six men for a full day (started at 8.30am and didn't finish until about 7pm).
It's worth talking to a few companies to see what they say, and checking out that they have suitable lifting gear. Although when they turned up to move me last year they didn't have a tail lift on the lutons. It took all six of them to pick up the surface grinder and put it in the van!
They must have gone downhill since I last used them. I had a lathe and a totally dismantled vintage car in the garage and while three other companies took one look and refused to quote Pickfords didn't bat an eyelid.
More recently I moved from Cambridge to the south of France via storage and the removals company had no problems with the Atlas lathe. Now if I had a Colchester it might have been a different story.
Well I did a 'rough guesstimate' at the weight of my machines and ancillaries and it's well over ten tons as a move, although not iminent, is on the cards in the next 5 years. 'Man with a hiab' needs cultivating.I reckon !
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