England · Scotland · Wales · Western Europe
Where we work, and what goes wrong
The whole of Britain and western Europe by road — described by the complaint that recurs in each region rather than by a list of towns, because that is the more useful map.
No branch network implied. Vehicles that travel and crews who stay with the load, which is the part that actually matters over distance.
Six regions, six recurring failures
Permits in the south-east. Transferred loads on the cross-country runs. Streets that vary more than towns in the north. Last-mile access in the west. Driving hours in Scotland. And paperwork across the Channel.
The south-east: permissions, not handling
In London and the counties around it the recurring complaint is almost never about how goods were carried. It is a bay that was never suspended, a building that would not permit the day, or a lift that was not booked — and all three are arranging failures that happened weeks earlier.
Which is why the survey here spends as long on the street and the building as it does on the furniture.
The spine: the transferred load
Most long-distance work crosses the Midlands, and the complaint that surfaces on those routes is goods that arrived incomplete after being consolidated or transferred somewhere in the middle.
One vehicle and one crew from door to door removes the mechanism entirely. It costs more to run. It is the single most effective thing we do on distance work.
The north: the street, not the town
Dense Victorian terracing beside generous suburbs, sometimes inside the same postcode. Quotes given without a survey go wrong here more often than anywhere, because the variation is at street level and no form captures it.
The west, Scotland and the continent
In the south-west and Wales it is the last mile — a full-size vehicle sent to a lane that will not take one. In Scotland it is hours, and a plan that quietly assumed an illegal driving day. Across the Channel it is the file, assembled after departure instead of before it.
Different regions, the same underlying error: something that should have been established at the survey was assumed instead.
Coverage
Questions about where we go
- Do you really cover the whole country?
- For moves of reasonable size, yes. For a single-room job in a town where we have no vehicle nearby, a local firm will beat us and we will say so — quoting badly to win work is how the complaints on this site start.
- Do you have depots everywhere?
- No, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise. What we have is vehicles that travel and crews who stay with the load. Storage is arranged where it is needed and always inventoried.
- Why is the transferred load such a problem?
- Because every transfer is an opportunity for something to be put in the wrong place. It is a normal way to run freight and a poor way to run a household move, and it is the single biggest cause of goods going missing over distance.
- Northern Ireland, the islands, the Isle of Man?
- Ask. A ferry leg changes the planning and sometimes the honest answer is a specialist rather than us. We will tell you which before quoting.
Ask us the awkward questions
Will you survey before quoting. Will the crew who load us unload us. How many vehicles will our goods be on. What happens if the day overruns. Start there.