One House, Three Trucks: A Two Small Men Moving Story

When movers are tasked with a huge job, lots of preparation goes in to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible and to ensure maximum efficiency. But sometimes, huge jobs will sneak up on movers and will only make themselves known once they're on sight and it's time to start loading everything up. For Two Small Men mover Kalmin Contenti Ranger, one packing job in Calgary turned into just such a nightmare scenario.

"We had a job where it was all nine movers," he says. "It was three different trucks going to pack it."

It all seemed manageable at first. Everyone knew they were going to pack up a big house. But something seemed off.

"When we were told it was a pack job, you don't really expect three full trucks of packing," says Kalmin.

But three trucks turned out to be absolutely necessary. The whole hose needed to be packed up and everything needed to go into storage while a new house was being finished. All the possessions therefor needed to be packed extra carefully and protected enough to endure long-term storage.

"It was going into storage for the time being because they were building their home," Kalmin explained. "We ended up using three different containers."

On top of that, there was a wide range of special items to move.

"Lots of different things," Kalmin said. "We were doing gym stuff, patio stuff, all household items."

There was also "really, really nice, expensive tables," and other furniture that called for special attention. Did we mention the sauna?

"It would be like a portable sauna almost," Kalmin said. "It was like a pretty small square. I ended up having to disassemble it, which was actually my first time. It was weird."

The complexity of the move made it interesting and rewarding for him.

"Just basically like a really big, interesting packing job," Kalmin said. "Lots of different things to it. Lots of different people involved."

To speed things up, they split up the job by zones.

"We ended up having basically like different stations going," he explained. "Some people upstairs, some people on the main floor, some in the basement."

Despite this clever strategy, it was still an arduous task.

"I think it took, with nine people, it took us over eight hours, I believe, to get it all packed," Kalmin said.

Somehow, they got it all done in the span of a day.

"Yes, all in one day, and then the move was the next day."

When it comes to putting things into storage, Kalmin has his own proven methods.

"Put pads on it depending how big or, like, how nice the item is," he said. "We do one or two pads and then we would put shrink wrap around it to keep it nice and tight, nice and safe. We'd make sure table legs or anything loose are taken off of it before—pack those separately. We put flat items usually in between two beds so it's nice and safe."

Even with all that protection in place, the clients sometimes still require extra reassurance.

"You can tell they're a little anxious for just how things would go," Kalmin said. "Nice furniture—they were a little anxious about that. That's probably the biggest stress. Either that or marking the walls - more in the new home."

To manage that stress, the crew prepared as much as possible.

"If there was a wooden railing on the stairs, we put pads over the railings to make sure nothing gets scratched," Kalmin said. "For flooring, we'd put our runners out to keep the floors nice and safe." Big items were wrapped before they ever moved. "We do have ways, usually, to try and keep or ensure our safety about pieces."

When the client saw how professional these movers were, they started to relax.

"They end up calming down after seeing our ideas and the strategies we used to go about it," Kalmin said. They were extremely happy," he said. "By the end of the day, they kept thanking us."

The clients were especially impressed by the consistency.

"They thought we'd send someone else after the pack, but all of us wanted to go back and complete the move."

Kalmin says he learned a lot from the experience.

"For sure, just… more like room strategy," he said. "There's lots of things. So how we pack things—it helped me think of different ways of packing to make everything fit."

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