Reduce the stress in moving

Moving in the USA is considered to be one of the top five stressful events in a person’s life. Only events like a death in the immediate family, divorce, loss of job, and the purchasing of a new home rank higher than moving in the stress category.

The combination of the move, the purchase of a new house, the sale of your present one, perhaps a new job, children changing schools, leaving comfortable surroundings and friends and having to make new ones while learning a new city, and there is no surprise why moving ranks so high on the stress meter.

The life changes described above are unavoidable, however one of the most common problems with moving, “Loss of Property” can not only be avoided, but eliminated.

LOSS
Loss of property, is the number one claim reported by the moving industry. One in every five moves has a claim of over $1500.00, four out of five of these claims are for “lost items”. How are they lost? Items are missed shipped, stolen, lost in a warehouse, delivered to the wrong address. How can this be, you watched the movers load all of your goods on a truck, nothing was left behind! However the inherent problem with the moving industry is its inability to handle small loads, less than truck load moves. Many individuals that move have household goods that in total, weigh less than 12,000 pounds. The average move consist of a range between 6,000 pound to 10,000 pound moves. These “partial” loads force the typical van line truck into combining loads of more than on individual’s goods into one truck. Your possessions are now mixed with other’s peoples possessions; this in itself creates the potential for loss. The van line offers competitive pricing based on their ability to control freight costs, with small shippers the van line company must load two, sometimes three separate households all on the same truck to control these costs.

The problem just begins there, many national movers have a fleet of trucks painted with their company colors/logos. However many of these trucks are not owned or operated by the van line, they are simply owner operator vehicles that are the sole property of independent business men, the driver. These independent operators will only take loads that make them money, allow them to fill up their trucks, have limited stops, preferably one. So part two of the problem, the owner operator, is not interested in taking the small load at all, or only willing to take the load a portion of the way, but not the entire distance to the new destination. These factors force the national moving company to handle the customers goods numerous times; from the house to a truck, to a warehouse, into a truck, off of a truck into another warehouse, now back into a different truck and hopefully off of that second truck to the final destination. What if the customer needs storage at destination? Delay in closing, no new address, new house not ready? All of these common events, that are just a contributor to the “stress of moving” will require yet another unloading and loading of a truck with the customers goods. Goods that are handled more than once, no matter how careful a company is, things do get broken , lost, stolen, and mis-shipped as a result of this required additional handling.

VICTIMS
Who are the victims, the young professional accepting a new assignment, they have a one-bedroom apartment, load is no more than 3000 pounds. The young couple, new baby, transferring to a new city, the load 7000 pounds, less than half of a truck, and the empty nesters moving to their dream home to enjoy retirement. All of them have something in common, their goods cannot fill a truck, they all have valuable items, irreplaceable memories, that all are subject to loss and damage, because of the “system”.

The loss is not always apparent when you get to your destination. Most national van lines effectively handle claims for damage, but loss is typically discovered too late, the truck has pulled away, a few days later, a few months later, the moving customer now determines that they are missing the lids to their pots, there seems to be a few missing boxes, six months later, the baby pictures, your daughters wedding album, memories, one of kind items, cannot be replaced, the damage is done, and there is no recourse that is offered and none that can ever replace the true loss.

The other victim is the company paying for the move and their productivity. Human resource departments try their best to make a new employees move go as smooth as possible, the transferred employee is faced with many challenges, now the move just added to those challenges. Lost time, lost work production all add up as a negative that may not show up in a budget, but certainly hurts a company’s morale, and continuity.

How can this be eliminated? The moving customer must look for a moving option that can handle small loads, efficiently with the minimized handling. A move solution in which the goods are only handled the absolute minimum, loaded once, unloaded once. The solution must start with the ability to efficiently load and ship these smaller loads, in a secure manner, ensuring the integrity of the shippers valuables. Throughout the move, from the beginning to the end, the goods are not touched, the customer must be given the guarantee of this no touch. The result no loss, greatly reduced damages and a satisfied customer, and time saved by both the employee and HR personnel.

Loss is an aged old problem, a problem that the industry has simply filed under unavoidable. Loss of goods has simply been accepted as the normal course of business, an unavoidable risk, basically embraced, so sorry Mr. Customer deal with it. The typical consumer moving has had little or no choice but to deal with it, until recently.

SOLUTION
Recently a new company, Smart Move, Inc. has emerged that is not typical, that has brought a new approach to the industry. This new company was started by individuals not from the moving industry, but by logistics experts, experienced in asset management, combing the strengths of key, diverse service providers, like UPS Freight, Aeris.net and Ayantra, Inc. Smart Move has brought this best of breed together to combine to deliver a solution that has never been offered in the moving industry until now.

The solution combines a state of the art container, that can be locked, secured and tracked by both barcode and GPS tracking technology. The SmartVault™ is delivered to the customers home, goods, valuables are loaded and then the vault is locked with the customers padlock, and the logistics provider, UPS Freight places a unique, numbered security seal on the vault door, assuring the customer that their goods will never be touched in transit, the door is only opened at destination, when the customer is present and the UPS seal is intact. Smart Move Inc, and UPS freight have combined to bring a unique solution that combines logistics execution, security and state of the art software and tracking technology to give customers control over their move. The vaults are moved across the country inside of secure trailers, within the existing infrastructure of the UPS Freight terminal network. Nationwide coverage with delivery transit times unheard of in the industry. The customers goods can be delivered, guaranteed Boston to LA in 6 days. No need for expensive temporary living arrangements, the employee is moved swiftly, securely, on time.

Moving has never been an easy task, but there our new options, options that will hopefully drop “moving” way down on the stress meter in the future.