Why It Can Be So Difficult to Find a Contractor for Your Relocation?

On the other hand, there can be dozens of van lines available in your city to choose from, and this seems to be great. Yes, but only at first blush. Why? Just think a little – are you going to call each of them in order to do your own research on their prices, days available for move, trucks they have in their fleet, liability coverage they can offer and other things associated with moving? But you can spend all the day just collecting moving company quotes! Do you know that according to the American moving and storage association the number of companies working in the industry exceeds seven thousand? In major cities like New York, San Francisco, Chicago or Los Angeles, the number of contractors goes into hundreds! You have no chances to call around and compare all the prices, conditions, reviews and other details.

Even upon gathering the information from some contractors, you will need to rack your brain choosing the best option from all those offers. Are you sure you have no-haggle prices or there is an opportunity to bargain on them? The more so that many companies prefer articulating average prices until details of future move are given. And what if you don’t intend to provide the details to every Tom, Dick and Harry? It wouldn’t be a bad idea to exercise some caution, especially when negotiating with independent movers and small little-known companies – not only moving scams, but also various kinds of theft are not uncommon in the industry. And this will lead you to the idea that it is not very smart to choose a contractor based only on moving quotes.

Yes, you will need to check the companies prior to hiring one of them, if you don’t want to fall victim to a moving scam or some other kind of fraud. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration was even forced to launch a campaign on protecting moves by informing customers about possible types of fraud and available ways to research a would-be contractor. Sure, there are major companies with the established reputation, and addressing them can save you the trouble of doing the tiresome research. However, their services may be unavailable in your city and usually their fees tend to be higher than smaller local contractors can offer.

So, prior to your relocation you need to do your homework that basically includes:

• finding moving services available in your area;
  
• contacting them for learning their moving quotes and discussing other important things like types of estimates they can offer, level of liability they can provide, amount of deposit you need to pay and so on;
  
• comparing the offers based on your preferred criteria;
  
• checking companies’ registration, insurance, complaint history, reviews or references;
  
• making your choice and calling the contractor selected to make a deal. At last!
  

Aren’t you tired of just reading about all the hassle associated with choosing a contractor? And then you will need to survive your move! Couldn’t it be a little bit easier to cope with the task? Yes, you can save your time and effort by making movers to search for you instead of searching for them by yourself. Moreover, you can avail of more attractive prices, while enjoying lower risks of stumbling across an unfair mover. Look how this works.

How to Get Movers Quotes Fast and Easy?

When you don’t want to bother about your relocation, you just need to visit our website https://www.truckplease.com/ and place your job offer here. Upon publishing, you need to provide general information about your move for candidates to understand the scope of work to be done. This includes:

• date when you plan to move;
  
• starting point;
  
• destination;
  
• type of move depending on the average work scope;
  
• list of items to be moved.
  

Also, you need to submit contact details, including your name, phone number and e-mail address – this is required for us to send you notifications and for would-be contractors to get in touch with you, once they are chosen for the job. Note that you will be the only one to have control over your job offer – the TruckPlease platform just sends messages about the order submitted to operators rendering moving services in your area. No other details are provided by the platform to the operators, except those you chose to show in your job offer – your personal data is protected and it isn’t forwarded to third parties on this stage.

But what is next? How do you get moving quotes? Moving companies and individuals registered in your area get notifications from our platform about your job and then they can place their bids to win your order. Certainly, nobody can guarantee that dozens of candidates will fight over your job offer and that this auction will lead to reducing the prices significantly. However, both common sense and our experience show that such bidding cuts movers’ fees and thus advantageous for customers.

The fact is that the bidding system is more flexible and competitive for contractors – they can observe the current supply and demand ratio, explore the prices of their close competitors, consider their own capacity and schedule, as well as other factors. Look, if you were a contractor having a time window in your work schedule, would you refuse doing a small job nearby even for a cheap price instead of standing idle and earning nothing? There you have it! This transparent competition establishes conditions for more attractive moving companies quotes – and customers can benefit from this easily.

Besides, there are new companies and independent entrepreneurs emerging on the market regularly. They are just starting to create their own client base and they cannot boast strong reputation and plenty of reviews from real customers, so they tend to win clients by offering lower fees. If they deliver quality services, why not choose one of these growing movers? And don’t forget about those individuals, who carry out cargo transportation as their side job! Well, they may not have full value protection for you, but does it really matter, when you need to transport old grandma’s bed to a landfill? And do you really want to pay a fortune for this dubious pleasure? Sure, you don’t!

In such instance, all you need to do is explore the movers quotes and choose the one (or a couple of them) that suits you best. Then you can proceed with direct negotiations with the chosen mover about the details of your relocation and conclude a contract based on the conditions you like. After the job is completed, you are free to place your review about the company or individual you cooperated with. This will help other users to better understand where they can find the best value for money, while also giving a hint to our team, since the platform strives to link its users to reliable service providers.

And this is one more factor to keep in mind – the part of research on your future contractor has been already done by the team of this platform. Yes, there is some pre-moderation on both companies and individuals before accepting them to our platform. However, you are always free to dig deeper using our ratings or any available off-site means.

Besides, you can avoid waiting for contractors to respond your job offer and go straight to encouraging them to come into play. There is an extensive list of movers on the website, covering service provides in the USA, Canada and even other countries. You can search for the services available in your area by yourself and get mover quotes by applying directly to the operators. Thus, the platform allows choosing a contractor in different ways:

• you place a job offer and wait for bids from candidates notified by our service;
  
• you choose companies through our list and invite them to bid your job offer on the platform;
  
• you choose a company you like based on its description and reviews, and then send a request for its quotes;
  
• you choose a company and contact it directly via e-mail or phone by using the contact details specified in our list of service providers.
  

It is very convenient to look for a provider using the platform tools, which allow the search by location, name and services delivered. Upon registration, each mover is asked to choose types of services they can provide, and thus you can take advantage of these fast searching opportunities depending on your needs. By the way, maybe it is exactly the time to draw a line and to summarize all the advantages you can enjoy by using the platform.

Handy Way to Find Moving Companies in the Neighborhood

Let’s review all the goodies you get through utilizing this awesome service:

1. You can free yourself from tiresome and time-consuming calling around – it is enough to submit one job offer on the website to attract multiple moving services and then to choose only few or even the one of them to negotiate with.
   
2. You can avail of lower fees due to the competitive environment the platform creates, while making a more grounded decision based on real customers’ reviews.
   
3. You get access to our extensive database of all kinds of movers: companies and individuals, long distance and local moving, small moves and special services, truck renting and packing materials suppliers.
   
4. You can find a mover and get in touch with them directly, using traditional ways – via e-mail or phone.
   
5. You don’t need to share your sensitive information during numerous negotiations – such details as names and phone numbers are not shown with your offer and are not provided to contractors.
   
6. You can delete or edit your job offer at any time you like, as well as you are not obliged to choose a provider from those coming through the platform.
   
7. You can enjoy a fast and easy process of submitting your job offer. For your better convenience, we created a handy selecting inventory tool that allows choosing items in a single click. Moreover, the tool will automatically calculate the approximate weight and volume of your items intended for move, thus saving your effort, while giving more details to service providers.
   

And the last, but not the least is that you get all the opportunities the platform grants completely for free!

However, you should keep in mind that the platform acts only as an intermediate between movers and customers, thus it will be smart to choose an operator based not only on mover quotes, but also on operator’s reliability. Though sometimes "the cheaper the better" approach is acceptable, our platform is focused on connecting customers to good services rather than the cheapest ones. Since our aim is to help you in making your move smooth and trouble-free, we strongly recommend you to learn how to choose a good company for performing your task.

What to Focus on When Choosing a Mover?

When you are going to move to another state, it is recommended to check your would-be contractor with the help of a searching tool provided by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. There you can find movers registered with the Department of Transportation for performing interstate transportation and learn their safety rating (not available for all contractors), type of insurance, complaints filed (if any), number of vehicles in the fleet and other details, helping you understand whether a service provider complies with federal requirements and how reliable the company is.

Unfortunately, there is no similar checking tool when it comes to intrastate transportation, since local rules and requirements vary, while the federal law doesn’t apply to contractors working within one state. However, you can find a moving company you are interested in through one of the following resources:

• The American Moving and Storage Association provides a list of professional associations in some states, as well as AMSA’s ProMover program for local carriers in Florida, California and Michigan.
  
• FMCSA’s website has its own list of the local associations with plenty of links to their official web-resources, where licensed contractors are mentioned.
  
• The Better Business Bureau allows checking local moving companies for BBB accreditation, customers’ reviews and complaints. Also, you can get movers’ quote right from BBB’s website by submitting their online form.
  
• State consumer affairs agencies, transportation departments or utility commissions are usually among those local bodies that are responsible for licensing in the moving industry, and thus you can check the company you want to hire through their online tools.
  However, it can be rather wearisome to browse a bunch of websites trying to understand who must license what and how this can help you in your search for a reliable operator. In this case, you may want to take a different approach and to search for those warning signs that are often associated with unfair movers. Think twice, when you face the following problems:
• A large deposit required by a contractor prior to your move speaks against the company. It looks like the mover tries to get some money from you regardless of how well your task is performed.
  
• Be wary of any moving companies’ quote that is too good to be true. When you get most bids of about $ 1000 and then you get a bid of about $ 800, this is Ok. But when the best bid is $ 500, this usually means some kind of a moving scam.
  
• The refusal to provide a written estimate, as well as any attempt of persuading you to sign incomplete documents should ring alarm bells. Further, you can expect an increased fee, extra costs, lack of insurance coverage for damaged items and other troubles.
  
• The operator seems to hide the company’s name – phone calls are answered without specifying it, and on a move day a truck comes unlabeled, as if it is rented by the contractor somewhere else. All these don’t sound like professional and fair services.
  
• The mover fails to specify the company’s local address – maybe, there are some unpleasant reasons to avoid mentioning it. Maybe, your mover is a good example of a fly-by-night operation.
  
• You are offered to wait until all your items are loaded – your service provider claims that only after the loading he can determine the final cost of his services. But are you going to demand unloading if the mover hikes the price? It’s meant to be.
  

Don’t fall for these tricks and make sure to discuss all details of your future move beforehand – our platform gives you every opportunity to communicate directly with movers, while facilitating the process of choosing the right operator. Jump at the opportunity and place your job offer on the website with no hesitation!