Finding a forklift and moving house in DC

In My Humble Opinion
1

This was going to be a GQ strictly about renting a forklift in DC but, as I wrote it it became something else.

For the last few weeks I have been helping a friend who is going to a new college in the US and I saw how easy it is for her to drown in the details. I did not need to be concerned with details so it was easy for me to have an overall view and advise her with her university application, visa application, travel and moving arrangements etc. I would keep checklists of things which needed to be done and give her advice on how to do them best and help her stay focused on the important stuff. Things have been going well for her and I think I have been good help and saved her a lot of frustration.

At the same time I am not efficient in managing my own, similar, affairs and I am getting very frustrated. I figure maybe I can get some advice here.

Some months ago I sold my house in DC. The buyer was in a hurry to move in and I had some travel plans so, we agreed I could leave most of my stuff in the house for a few months. Now more than a few months have gone by and I seriously need to get my ass in gear and get my junk out of there. Except I don’t know where to start. Every time I think about it I just drown in details because I do not even have a clear objective.

The only thing that is certain is that I have to move my stuff out. It is mainly household furniture, clothes etc. A lot of it is probably not worth storing or moving. Storage is too expensive in the DC area to make it worth storing furniture unless it is expensive furniture.

I really need some ideas and also some encouragement because I have been procrastinating for months and the problem is not going away.

Traveling to Washington just to sell some of the stuff in a yard sale does not seem like the best idea since I have no place in DC any more and I would have to stay in a hotel. Paying for a hotel in order to sell a few items does not seem like it would pay.

Maybe I could just abandon a lot of the stuff but there are quite a few things which are personal property which I would like to keep. Books, documents, CDs. etc.

One specific thing: In the garage I built a couple of crates with plywood. They are on pallet type base so they can be lifted by a forklift. Each one is 3’ wide x 4’ deep x 4’high (plus a few more inches for the pallet base). It would be very convenient if I could lift these crates on to a truck when I wove the stuff, rather than have to empty them but I have no idea if I can rent a forklift just for this, or how much it might cost, or even if a forklift could lift these crates. One is full of household stuff, tools, etc, and would not be so heavy but the other is full of books and magazines. I estimate the weight to be around 2400 lbs. The idea of having to empty the hundreds and hundreds of books and magazines is not something I like. It would be a mess.

A forklift which could just lift the crates on to a truck and would not cost an arm and a leg would be ideal but I do not even know where to begin to look for such a service. Can an ordinary forklift lift 2400 lbs? Can I rent someone to come out and do it?

I have also thought of trying to lift the crates using booms, pulleys, come-alongs, etc. but it seems like a hassle if I can find a forklift. Anyway, at this point, I am just weighing options and want to kick ideas around and try to get started so that I can give the new owner a date by which my stuff will be out of her house.

So, trying to start defining a plan I would say the plan might be to plan to go to DC for (say) a week or ten days (the hotel cost is already probably more than all my stuff is worth but anyway). In that time the objectives would be:

  • Rent a moving truck.
  • Sell or give to goodwill large furniture not worth keeping (I guess I could just abandon it on her property but I prefer not to do that to her)
  • Find storage space reasonably priced and move the two crates and other stuff I want to keep for now.

Since I have no idea of what my future plans may be I should try to keep only the bare minimum (but I am a pack rat) and find cheap storage space. Maybe it would be worthwhile finding storage space farther away from DC. Let’s say 1200 cuft (10’x 10’ x 12’) of storage space for $100 /mo. How far away from DC do I have to go?

Well, that’s a first presentation of the situation. What do you all think? Especially about lifting a 2400 lb crate.

2

Finding a forklift that would be able to lift 2400 pounds is going to be problematic. I worked in a lumberyard for a summer during college and got rated on all the forklifts they had (about four types, from a little electric one like you see in Home Depot to the huge diesel ones that can lift full-size pickup trucks). 2400 pounds is going to be the outside limit for even a large forklift, and I’ve seen people drop stuff too many times to take outside weight limits seriously. (There’s also the vehicle you’re loading it on to be considered, too. I saw a F300 snap its axle when the shithead contractor demanded we put a full pallet in the back. ) You would need a large forklift to start with, then you’d have to figure out how to get said crate into a position that the forklift could lift it. Generally, the lifts I operated that were rated for that weight stood about twelve feet high.

I’m also getting ready to ship out in March to Sri Lanka, so I feel your pain on the moving/storage thing. For the documents, I’d keep what I needed immediate access to in file boxes in my residence, and pay a document storage place to store the rest. I mean, outside of diplomas, insurance documents, clearances, birth certificates, titles, powers of attorney etc, you’re probably not going to have to be able to lay hands on it within 24 hours anyway, right? All the documents I have that fit that description fit in a steel lockbox that I can lift with one hand. The rest are stored with a firm in MD that I can have delivered within a day if need be. It costs sixteen bucks a month for what I have stored.

For the clothes, use the “If I haven’t worn it or needed it in the last eighteen months, it’s not essential” rule. My wife does well out of selling clothing on E*Bay, and makes enough to cover the cost of her time several times over. Or try a consignment shop.

CDs, well, that’s another story. I’ve got two hundred, and I periodically cull stuff that I haven’t listened to lately, but I rip it to MP3 or another audio format before I sell it. External HDs are cheap, and you can always burn it again if you need it on CD for some reason.

For the furniture, well, if it doesn’t have sentimental value or you aren’t thinking of refurnishing a house in the next two years, I’d say sell it or donate it. We got the advice that unless its value exceeds moving it twice, get rid of it. You have a live-aboard, right? Unless you’re going to have a house in the next two years where the cost of moving and storing wouldn’t exceed the combined value, I’d try and sell it.

3

I’m about two and a half hours outside of DC and the rental rates for storage units that would accomodate all your goods is probably in the $ 60 - 100 + per month range for a mini-storage unit(s). Compressing the volume down will obviously save you money. The question you really need to answer is whether you are going to get a house again. If not, divest everything but true essentials.

I sell and lease commercial and industrial real estate for a living so I’ve got a few hundred thousand sq ft of warehouse space I could personally squirrel stuff away in very temporarily if need be ;), but if I was seriously looking for longer term storage I would contact my best friends and ask to lease their office basements for some nominal fee. I know several lawyers with oversize older buildings they are not fully utilizing and each one has a few thousand (or at least several hundred) sq ft of low ceiling unfinished basement I could probably use a corner of for a few years on a low or no fee basis. If you know people in this scenario it might be worth looking into.

Another fairly cheap long term scenario is to ask a friend with a big (and relatively secure) back yard if you can place a shed in a corner there for a few years. You can get very sturdy sheds (at least in this area) with locking doors and optional windows and ramps for 1000 - 2500 +/- that would probably gobble up your whole load. When it comes time to get house you can move the shed on a trailer to your property or give it to the friend in exchange for the use of the land if you have not further use for it. Here are some examples of sheds. and here are some more

4

With respect to lift ruck rental here’s a sitethat serves your area, but I imagine lifting capacity is likely to be less than you desire, and cost is probably “not that cheap” for a one day rental. They can probably give you specific lifting capacities and rental costs but I would imagine it would take a pretty hefty lift truck to handle a pallet weighing over a ton.

A pallet truck (see the linked website) that can handle 5,000 to 7,000 lbs could probaly be rented and transported cheaply (I gave three away when I cleaned out the last warehouse) but I don’t known how you’d get the power to move it up onto the back of the truck as they are really designed for loads on flat warehouse floors.

As another thought you could possibly rent a large truck with a power life gate on the back that could lift the pallet load right off the street, but you would have to use rollers of some kind under the pallet to hump it around from there. I don’t know if there are trucks with lift gates that will handle a ton.

5

I must disagree with False God. Where I work we have many forklifts running around moving airplane parts and most of these have 3000 lb weight limit in large letters painted on the side. These are not what most would consider to be large, 7 feet high, 16 feet long including forks and powered by 4 cylinder engines. These forklift regularly lift 737 engines and the 1200 pound engine cradles no problem. My father had a 6 ton rated forklift in his auto wrecking yard and it wasn’t very big. We picked up cars and trucks all the time with no problems. The only time I ever saw it tip is when my father tried to pick up the yard flat bed truck to move it. The truck had 3 crushed cars on the back.

6

Thanks all for the input. After thinking about it I think the idea of a forklift is out. First it would have to be a pretty large one and second, just getting it there would be a major operation. So how about a crane of the type mounted on a truck? Probably much faster and easier. I can have a sling in place so the crane can arrive, hook, lift, put down and go.

The getting rid of stuff is my weak spot and the truth is that I could get rid of a lot of the stuff. But with the given situation, right now I need to move it first and then I can start messing with things. The house is no longer mine so I have to move out efficiently.

Astro, you say you work in commercial real estate. Some years ago I was in touch with some guy in your area who specialised in marinas as I was looking at the possibility of buying one. I forget the guy’s name now. Anyway. . .

Moving my stuff out to the Eastern shore may not be a bad idea as I have my boat on the Bay. Regarding storage sheds, rented basements, etc, I have thought of those solutions but never really followed on trhem. I even looked at some outfit which sold used shipping containers. They would bring it and put it down on your land. I don’t know how on earth you could get it off later though. I also thought of buying an old trailer so the stuff would be already on wheels and could be moved around more easily.

I dunno, I feel pretty frustrated with all this. Every time I start thinking about it I get frustrated and just keep putting it off. At this rate the problem will resolve itself when the new owner starts dumping my stuff.

7

I actually saw something over the weekend that could possibly assist with your transportation problem.

A simple, large gated trailer you tow behind a large car or truck on a trailer hitch, and the kind that lawn maintenance companies typically use to haul their riding mowers around, will usually tilt down or have ramps to allow you to roll your pallet box onto it. You could fit at least two pallet boxes on one trailer as they are well over 4 feet wide and are close to the ground so box rolling is less of a chore.

They should be cheap to rent and you may even have a friend with a trailer of this type that will loan you one for a few days.

8

I work for a company that sells and rents forklifts (based in the Mid-Atlantic area, www.moderngroup.com):

2400 lbs is nothing. You can easily get a compact forklift that would lift that. The real problem is then getting that load onto a trailer or truck. The landscape trailer may be your best option, but please check on the weight capacity first. Also, you need to look at the terrain. Is there alot of gradient changes? Rough or broken ground?

A rough estimate for cost would be $200 a day for a 3-4000 lb truck. Your local Hyster dealer is McCall Handling Company and I would suggest you give them a call, explain your situation and let them come up with a solution. www.mccallhandling.com

Hope I’ve been able to help.

9

Frank, thanks for the info. I have been looking for information on the Net and it does seem like even a small forklift can handle 2400 lbs but I think getting the forklift to my place may be the complicated and expensive part. I am thinking if a truck with a loading crane might be a better option (like those I have seen delivering construction supplies). At any rate, just the loading part is not something I would want to spend a fortune on. I was hoping something like a nearby warehouse would have a forklift and would do it for a few bucks but there are no nearby warehouses. Or some truck with a crane could stop by and just lift it for me for a small gratuity. If we are talking renting a truck or forklift expressly to come out and do this then we are probably talking some serious cash and I would be better off just unpacking the crates and repacking them even though it would mean a few hours of work.

I have also thought (sailor that I am) of building a lumber frame and hoist. A bridge frame would not be difficult and a hoist or tackle or comealong would lift it. Then an open bed truck could be positioned underneath but not an enclosed one.

astro, since I have so much stuff and some of it so heavy, I would probably need a large truck like the 24’Uhaul but, in any case, the first thing I need to do is have a clear and complete plan of action which means finding storage space, deciding what to get rid of and how etc.

I have even thought of buying an old truck and using it as storage. Saves loading and unloading.