Underground Moving

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Our office was in our apartment, but the constant barrage of phone calls day and night made the place seem—at times—more like a fortress under siege. A bulletin board over our desk contained rosters of helpers with and without trucks, their phone numbers and the times they were available to work. A strategic diagram of our mini-van showed its length, height, width and door dimensions. Would a 5X7 bookcase fit in? We could tell right away. Another sheet listed the vital information we had to give our customers: rates, non-responsibility for breakage, etc. We wanted to be sure there would be no misunderstandings at pay-up time.

We set a notebook by the phone, with a page for each day, and wrote down the jobs as they came in. For each appointment we filled in name, address (and how to get there if we didn't know), phone number in case of changes, the time we were to come, the number of helpers requested and a brief description of the job—like, "two trunks to Brooklyn, five flights up"—or an estimate of the time it would take.

Estimating job times requires a bit of skill. You have to consider [a] what's to be moved (will it take two trips?), [b] from and to where, [c] what time of day (rush hour jobs mean traffic jams) [d] if it involves stairs (they take longer than elevators.) . . . and then allow some for broken elevators, acts of God, and indecisive customers. Underestimates can be disastrous when you're booking jobs back to back, so leave yourself lots of leeway in the beginning. You can schedule more tightly once you get the hang of it.

We tried as hard as humanly possible to meet all appointments on time, and we asked our customers to extend us the same courtesy by notifying us immediately of cancellations or changes in the location or size of a job. We absolutely refused to book tentative assignments. Occasionally we'd get requests for special rates or special services . . . we learned, the hard way, to simply turn such jobs down. The people who hassle you on the phone are usually the ones who hassle you on the job, and we didn't need that.

To establish our rates, Chris and I checked the local newspaper (in New York, The Village Voice) used by other underground movers, then decided on a competitive price: $7.50 per hour for one man and a truck, $11.50 for two men. (Later on we upped our rates to $8 and $12 respectively, simply because that made it easier to figure fractions of an hour). That price included gas but not tolls. We set a one hour minimum for each booking, charging to the nearest quarter of an hour thereafter.

The customer was "on the clock" from the time we left home until we got back (we'd make a reasonable estimate for getting home), obviously with no coffee breaks or dallying on the way. That's called travel time, and all professionals charge for it . . . you're cheating yourself if you drive a long distance on your own time. If a customer was suspicious, we'd invite him to drive along. We never agreed to flat rates on local jobs; it's too easy to mis-estimate the time involved.

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