Pianos vs. Pool Tables: Moving from behind the eight ball

Ask any mover how many pianos they’ve moved, and the answer usually comes with a pause, a laugh, and a shake of the head.

“Oh god — too many,” Kamloops mover Ron Fill says. “Too many, man. Too many.”

After years in the moving industry, pianos have become a constant presence in Ron’s career. Uprights tucked into apartment corners, grands dominating living rooms, instruments that families have owned for generations and refuse to leave behind. They are heavy, awkward, emotionally valuable, and rarely positioned in places that make removal easy.

Yet despite their reputation, Ron is quick to point out that pianos aren’t always the worst items on a move.

“I’ll tell you what’s worse than pianos,” he said. “Pool tables. They suck. They are so bad.”

The comparison isn’t about weight alone. Pianos are heavy — often three to four hundred pounds — but they’re built with movement in mind. Their solid wooden frames provide natural gripping points, allowing trained movers to work together safely.

“Usually they’ve got good lips to grab onto,” Ron explained. “They’re always made of wood, so you can always get a good grip on them.”

That grip is everything. With the right technique, a piano can be shifted inch by inch, carefully rocked, tipped, and guided through doorways that look impossibly narrow at first glance.

“You can usually one-man shuffle it about,” Ron said. “It takes a second man to get it out of the building.”

The challenge isn’t strength — it’s control. Movers aren’t simply lifting dead weight. They’re managing momentum, protecting polished finishes, avoiding cracked keys or snapped legs, and making sure the instrument doesn’t shift unpredictably.

“The hardest thing is manipulating that weight and getting it through the doors,” Ron said. “Once it’s out the house, the weight’s off your shoulders.”

Inside a home, every hallway feels smaller. Corners tighten. Doorframes become obstacles measured in fractions of inches.

“You know the exact dimensions,” Ron explained. “You work out, like — do I have an inch?”

Often, that inch decides everything.

“That inch is usually what gets it out of the building.”

Nowhere is that precision tested more than on staircases — especially spiral staircases, which are among the most challenging environments a mover can face.

“We’ve done pianos going up spiral staircases before,” Ron said. “And I can tell you — that sucks.”

A spiral staircase removes straight lines entirely. Instead of moving forward, movers must rotate the piano constantly, tipping it just enough to clear the railing without scraping the wall or losing balance.

“It’s just angles and tipping,” Ron said. “You’re not scratching the wall, you’re not scratching the piano, because you’ve got a good grip on it and you know exactly where you are.”

On stairs, teamwork becomes critical. The mover at the bottom carries much of the raw weight, while the mover above controls direction.

“When you’re on the top, you’re far more in charge of manipulating how it moves,” Ron explained. “The bottom guy is usually just taking the weight.”

The bottom mover, he added, rarely has much visibility.

“You’ve usually just got a face full of piano.”

From above, the view matters.

“Seeing dimensions is second to none,” Ron said. “Your hand’s dragging against the wall, so you know if you’re pushed to the left or the right.”

Every movement must be intentional. Too much lift shifts weight downward. Too little rotation pins the piano against the wall. Gravity never negotiates.

“It’s a real balancing act,” Ron said.

Despite the difficulty, Ron still prefers piano moves to items that appear simpler on paper. Pool tables, for example, often look manageable until they’re taken apart — or can’t be taken apart at all.

“The thing is, they’re so delicate,” he said. “A lot of the time you can’t disassemble them because they’re glued together.”

Even when disassembly is possible, the slate beneath the felt creates an entirely new problem.

“You’ll have two or three massive granite slates,” Ron explained. “Each one of those is easily over 300 pounds.”

Unlike pianos, those slabs offer almost nothing to grab.

“The edges are usually cheap, flimsy plastic,” he said. “You can’t really grab it.”

That lack of grip makes the load unpredictable, especially when well-meaning customers attempt to help.

“I said, ‘You can help if you want, but we didn’t need help,’” Ron recalled of one particularly frustrating move.

The customer insisted anyway.

“He thought the table was balanced,” Ron said. “So he let go.”

The result was immediate.

“It fell over and went through the wall.”

Moments like that reinforce why specialty moving isn’t about brute force — it’s about experience, communication, and knowing exactly how an object will behave before it moves.

“We’re trained to lift weight,” Ron said. “But weight isn’t the problem.”

Control is.

With pianos, that control is achievable. Their construction allows trained movers to guide them carefully, protect their structure, and keep them stable even in tight spaces.

“Once it’s out the front door,” Ron said, “you chuck it in the truck and it’s done.”

But until that moment, every step matters.

For movers at Two Small Men With Big Hearts, piano moving is a blend of planning, patience, and problem-solving — knowing when to pause, when to rotate, and when to trust that a single inch is enough.

After years of navigating staircases, doorways, and impossible angles, Ron summed it up simply.

“When it works,” he said, “it’s because everyone knows exactly what they’re doing.”

And when a four-hundred-pound instrument makes it safely from living room to truck without a scratch, that experience makes all the difference.

Ready to plan your move? Contact us for a free quote.