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+-- Thread: How I moved my shop- (/showthread.php?tid=7060092)
Re: How I moved my shop- - Terry W - 07-25-2015
I'm moving 100 miles in three days. That includes my basement shop. Most of my tools are small to mid sized. 6 inch joiner, 14 inch band-saw, bench-top planer etc., so I will be loading them into the 26ft truck along with the household furniture and boxes. I'm hiring loaders at one end and unloaders at the other. I figure if me and one friend carried a tool around to my basement then two professional movers can carry it back up and load it on the truck.
Thanks for the reminder. I'll run by the local Harbor Freight and pick up a bunch of ratchet straps.
Re: How I moved my shop- - Jonny Rocket - 07-25-2015
I am still completing my 3rd move in 6 years. MN-IN, IN-IL, IL-IN. I've used sunbelt trailers a few times and they're very nice. When you rent over the weekend like Mike said they are much cheaper than a uhaul (although I think uhaul is the only place that will rent trailers on a one-way trip).
I really wanted a drop deck trailer for my heavy machines. This last move, I took everything out of my shop prior to the move and stored it in the family barn since it was half way to my new house (big mistake*). However, the drop decks require a 7 pin connection and my old truck didn't have it and I didn't want to mess with installing it. I ended up and rented one of their 14' tilt decks and used a come along to pull the jointer on. That worked really well and the engine hoist was capable of setting everything on without an issue.
Below are a few shots of the trailers loaded and going to IL. In this case, we had movers paid for, so they moved all the hardware, some benches and other small shop stuff (although it was pretty amazing how much stuff was still left over).
This is my friend's trailer. When it came time to move the machines he drove over and took a truck and trailer load.
This was my truck and trailer load:
You can't see my trailer loaded very well in that shot, but it was tail heavy. I was swaying like I was driving on ice at 55 mph, at 50 I was fine. We had loaded my trailer with plans to put a heavy machine up front, but went to lunch before we put it on. When we got back we forgot all about the plan and went and loaded up the other trailer. At any rate, it was 14 hrs of loading trailers and about 4-5 hours of driving at 50 mph in the middle of the night. The truckers were none too happy to see me going slow on the road.
So after that move, I learned my lesson on loading the trailer and decided when I was moving back to IN to start early and often. My trailer loads were a little lighter and I was bringing house stuff too, but I figured I rented 2 12' uhaul trailers, a 12' uhaul box trailer, a sunbelt 14' trailer, and finally bought a trailer for myself and pulled that twice (although one load was basically the disassembled playset).
This was the last load coming back to IN:
FWIW, that is a Delta 20" bandsaw in the back of my truck. Makes it sit down a bit, but there was a lot of discussion about moving said bandsaw not to long ago.
From all the moving, I've learned a few things. 26' box trucks can haul a LOT of stuff IF they're stacked right from the start. I've had 1/2 plywood on hand both times and I've used that to cover furniture and make another deck in the trucks to set more stuff on top. Penske trucks are more expensive, but I think they're a much better truck and they guarantee they will have the truck there (learned this the hard way on the lastest move).
I've pretty much given up on 1" straps or anything light duty. In this last move I had two ratchets break (one is lost along highway 24 in IL) and they were just holding some boxes.
If something doesn't seem secure, it probably isn't. This goes for covers on starters, dust door covers, knobs, handles, etc. The last thing you want is something flying off your trailer at 70 mph going down and interstate and it is pretty amazing how the tightest of knobs will come loose. I almost prefer box trucks and trailers for this reason, but good luck loading heavy machines into those and strapping them down.
Wood deck trailers are nice because you can always screw some blocking into your deck or just lag a machine to the deck.
And if you're making a lot of trips or even one long trip, get a book on tape.
If anyone suggests storing machines in the basement of a barn during one of the wettest springs in history, do yourself a favor and just get a rental unit.
Re: How I moved my shop- - Dave Diaman - 07-26-2015
Ken Vick said:
I moved my shop and a 1000 bd ft of lumber twice in he last 4 years, the first time something over 400 miles and the second, maybe 10 miles. I looked at pods and found them about twice as expensive as 26 ft rental trucks including using professional movers to load and unload the trucks. Moving is a pain, no doubt about it but the most pain is the getting everything boxed up--not the big stuff, but the boxes and boxes of small stuff--and the unboxing and organizing at the new destination. Professional movers are cheap when used to just load the stuff and they know how to get in on the truck and fastened down so it gets to its destination in good shape. I guess if money is no concern pods are fine but I just wanted to share with you another option that is cheaper and doesn't require any more work or aggravation. Ken
Ken,
If I had just been moving from point A to point B in a day or two it would have been cheaper to rent a truck but I had to store everything for three weeks. All and all the pods cost about $400 for everything. You can find coupons online if you look around a little. I think the coupons saved me about $200.
Re: How I moved my shop- - woodworker2000 - 07-26-2015
Jonny Rocket said:
If something doesn't seem secure, it probably isn't. This goes for covers on starters, dust door covers, knobs, handles, etc. The last thing you want is something flying off your trailer at 70 mph going down and interstate and it is pretty amazing how the tightest of knobs will come loose.
+1. Learned that lesson many (many) years ago when a set of shelves lifted out of a trailer and took an ironing board out with it. Thankfully, the shelves flew into the median but the ironing board landed on the road with its legs extended and spun around several times before a semi took it out of its misery. Thankfully, nobody got hurt (except the ironing board and the shelves). I think about watching those shelves and the spinning ironing board in my rear view mirror nearly every time I am loading a pickup or a trailer.....if I think one strap will hold it, I use 2 (drives my kids crazy).
Re: How I moved my shop- - Souperchicken - 07-31-2015
Thanks for starting this excellent thread, I have to move my shop about 200 miles in a few months. I have a 25x35 garage shop fairly well filled (can't park a car in there without jamming everything together), and a 14x24 barn that's filled on two floors (top with wood). I'm buying a large shed to place at my nearby brother's since we'll be moving for the next 10 years (my wife is in the Air Force), and putting the wood and maybe some machines there.
Everything else I'm going to sell or move, and I've been debating between: PODs, purchasing a 20' box trailer (have diesel F250), or paying movers. Biggest tool offenders are a 24" Felder bandsaw, 20" Grizzly planer and Powermatic 3520 lathe. I'm not looking forward to the move but some useful info here, thanks again.
And in case that wasn't enough to keep me busy, our first child is due in a few weeks...
Re: How I moved my shop- - Terry W - 08-04-2015
We just completed our move along with the shop. None of my stationary tools would be considered big iron so it fairly easy to do. We hired professional packers and they loaded up the 26' Uhaul truck like puzzle masters. The biggest heavy stuff was strapped together and strapped down. It's all in the garage here, waiting for me to finish the new shop. All in all not too bad.
RE: How I moved my shop- - mongo - 08-17-2016
Well I moved again(this time to a house I bought so hopefully not again for a long time) Used Packrat again for the big stuff. worked great again. I still hate moving. Did all the littler stuff in my pickup. Still have a little left.
RE: How I moved my shop- - geek2me - 08-18-2016
(07-22-2015, 11:43 AM)skizzo Wrote: EDIT: A thread on another forum of a guy who moved a filled ABF trailer from Virginia to Oregon said the ABF cost was something like $8500, plus he hired professional movers on both ends to load and unload, so he was a bit less than $10K garage-to-garage.
As another data point, we moved 40K lbs cross country with professional packers and movers for around $8K total - so the $10K sounds high, not to mention a lot of work.
(07-22-2015, 12:14 PM)skizzo Wrote: Talked with movers and they don't have a way to handle loading/unloading the heavy stuff, nor anchoring it inside the trailer.
What is "heavy"? They had no trouble moving my equipment, but the heaviest is probably 1,000 lbs. Basically they can handle appliance-like stuff. If you are moving a 3000 lb saw that cannot be disassembled into <1,000 lb pieces, that might be an issue.