Moving home - Am I mad to consider hiring a van?

Quartz said:
BTDTGTTS. Yes, you are mad. Get some mates to help you. You really don’t want to be shifting things like beds or fridges on your own.

Beyond that, double-check your licence:

www.gov.uk

Driving licence categories

Driving licence categories - entitlements on your licence and what vehicles you can drive - cars, motorcycles, mopeds, medium and large lorries, minibuses and buses.
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk
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Why, a Luton is the same category as a car.

A 7.5 tonne lorry is a different matter, but to honest even if you are entitled to drive one (and if you passed your test before 1997 you probably are) I'd think twice about it.

A few things to bare in mind when driving Lutons (and other van like things)

Mirrors are even more important, make sure you set them correctly (but not till you've got the seat in the right place).
When parking be aware of signs etc. Because a Luton has vertical sides you're much more likely to hit high things. Especially if the road has a camber.
When you arrive at junctions make sure you position the vehicle so you can see traffic coming from your left.
Make sure you get the hire company to show you how to use the tail lift.
It will take longer to stop when it's full of stuff. And if you slam the brakes on stuff is likely to get broken, so take it easy.

Lastly save up any old brankets, sofa cushions. They're handy for covering furniture and stuffing in gaps. And make sure you've got an good selection of screwdrivers, allen keys and also some sandwich bags (to keep screws in).
 
Having recently moved 3 weeks ago (first time in 25 years), I've got mentals scars from moving day still.
I hired a removals company and do not regret it for 1 second. I would absolutely not consider personally hiring a van if youhave to move a whole house.

I paid £630 in total for 2 lads for the day whole day and box vehicle, they turned up at 8:30am and were straight into it. The house was empty by 12:30 and that including the taking apart of the the settee, beds wardrobes which they re-erected on the other side.
They were with us until 9pm at night as we didnt get the keys until 4:30pm and they couldnt start unloading until 5pm..if that had been me I wouldn't havent been able to do it and as far as I'm concerned its about the best £600 I've ever spent.
 
Thought I'd update my own thread with my feedback in case it helps anyone else.

I hired a Luton van and moved myself in the end. I moved everything myself, apart from a few bits of heavy furniture where I roped my brother in.

To be honest, it went pretty smoothly. The only slight hitch was not allowing myself enough time to get the doors off the American style fridge freezer.

HOWEVER (and it's a big however) I was able to move our stuff into my in-laws a few days before my moving date. So I moved a bunch of smaller boxes earlier in the week, then hired the Luton the day before the move to move a bunch of the big stuff, before doing a final run on completion day. If I didn't have the temporary storage, there is absolutely NO WAY I would have been able to do it all on moving day. There would be nowhere near enough space in the van, nor would there be enough time to load it.

I'm sure the pros would pack the van better than I could, but by the time you get 2 sofas, 3 beds and a couple of pieces of furniture in the van, you really don't have much space left for everything else. Then you've got awkward stuff like bikes, lawnmowers, bbq's, chairs, etc which are an absolute pig to stack in an orderly fashion.

So to summarise, unless you have some form of temporary storage, have several vans and an army of mates, or are moving from a 1 bed flat, get the pros in. Otherwise, got for it!
 
Good to hear you got it all done well.

I'm expecting to be moving over the next few weeks, and plan to hire 3x Luton vans for the move (each driven by my wife, my father-in-law, and myself). I'm hoping it'll all fit in between the 3, but I'm still a little dubious. Luckily I have a garage I rent seperately, that I can leave some stuff in & come back another day if it doesn't all fit.
 
I moved from a 5 bed to a 3 bed about 20 mins drive about 15 years ago.

I hired a Luton van and we had a hatchback. It took us about 3 days and 1 day with the van, which was very hard to back up our drive (it's hard to back up in a large car). We had a friend help us with the small stuff and a couple of strong friends help with some big stuff including a massive Italian leather sofa (it's huge) that needed to be lifted over a 5ft Victorian spiked fence which I don't think a removal firm would have done.

It's doable but it's hard work, which is why guys that do it day in, day out charge £20 or so an hour and the insurance must be astronomical.
 
I have only ever moved house in a chain once and we didn't hand our keys over to the new owners until 6pm, it couldn't be helped though, they were first in the chain and had exchanged/completed by about 10am, our solicitor took until about 2pm to complete, we had removal guys, and they had obviously loaded up the luton in the morning and then had to wait until we had the keys to new place, they did 2 more trips which took until 5ish.

I'm not sure what you're supposed to do in our situation tbh.
 
DO NOT DO IT!

I moved in January last year by hiring a Luton van to move to an empty property only 10 minutes away. Was a standard 3 bed home move with a full garage worth of stuff, all pre packed ready...

Took 3 trips, a lot of stress, a lot of effort and to make matters even more stressful our buyers were parked on our road waiting and watching us! NEVER AGAIN!
 
I did this awhile back from a 3 bedroom house to a similarly sized flat roughly 5 mins down the road. My brother in law, sister, and one of her mates helped with it, took around 4 trips and we were finished (although not fully unpacked) by 12 after starting at 8. Was a pretty easy experience, just plan ahead what you're taking per trip and which rooms the things are going into. If your only help would be from people that get easily stressed and tend to flap I might reconsider, but I had no trouble and wasn't willing to pay silly prices for removal men.
 
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darael said:
The last thing I do, which I would think most people do these days now, is take your final meter readings and take photos of the said readings. There's nothing worse than a surprising final bill which has been estimated. On the same note, it's also the first thing you should do when moving into the new house - that way you won't be charged for somebody else's usage.
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I know this is anal and nothing to do with the thread, but you don't need "the" before "said". That's really saying the twice.

Therefore, it's "take photos of said readings".

Thanks for coming.
 
NotAGolf said:
HOWEVER (and it's a big however) I was able to move our stuff into my in-laws a few days before my moving date. So I moved a bunch of smaller boxes earlier in the week, then hired the Luton the day before the move to move a bunch of the big stuff, before doing a final run on completion day. If I didn't have the temporary storage, there is absolutely NO WAY I would have been able to do it all on moving day. There would be nowhere near enough space in the van, nor would there be enough time to load it.
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Glad your move went OK. I actually work for a removals company, but I maintain the vehicles, so not too involved with what goes on with the removals.

As you've found out its expected that you will be out by 1pm, otherwise you will have some unhappy spectators.

What I often see at work, is people coming in with lutons, they unload into containers, we'll store them for a while, then they'll be back later to move into the new place.

So for anyone that wants to do it themselves it may well be useful to hire some short term storage, and certainly easier than loading up a mates/parents house. You can move most stuff out the house prior to completion, making completion day a lot easier.

We have 20 foot containers at work for £42 a week, small 300 cubic foot containers are around £13 a week IIRC. There are literally loads of storage places all over the country, when my daughter moved student digs in York she put her stuff in storage over the summer months between lets, it was so simple.
 
I did most of the move by myself in van. I hired a company to take the big heavy stuff so it was only £600 for that and did the rest alone. I seriously underestimated how much stuff we'd accumulated over the years. It'd have probably cost £1500+ to take all of it and I think I'd just pay that next time. Still if I'd had help and wasn't moving so far it'd have been ok
 
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