That’s funny… N + 1 is still the law, and you are to be celebrated for your suffering before the move, but the law still applies! It is the way… They with the most bikes wins. I’m shocked at how many I own.
I’ve done a couple of cross-country moves with bikes, and if you’re using a long distance moving company, communication is key. Make sure they have experience handling bikes and ask how they’ll pack them. Some movers just throw them in with furniture, which is risky. I’ve had good luck boxing my bikes myself and labeling them clearly so they get extra care. Also, double-check their insurance coverage just in case.
Yep. In college, I worked for a moving company for 4 years. Much later, I worked as a bike mechanic for 5 years. In the interim, we moved between NY, CO, NV, CA, MA, CO. Back in the moving company, there was no particular expertise or consideration for valuable bikes. With longer moves, you’re usually dealing with at least three independent entities, the local moving company (which does the sales job and provides labor for packing and loading) , the road driver (usually in charge of loading/loading the trailer), and the local company at the destination (provides labor). Best is if the road driver directly loads and delivers your stuff without it being transferred between trucks or stored in a warehouse. Keep in mind that it’s not uncommon for what actually happens to be different from what they said will happen. I doubt this has changed much since. With 6+ bikes between us, we variously took some with us driving one or more of our vehicles, and packed them ourselves if the movers were going take them. We used transportation cases or bike boxes and packed them as if we were traveling with the bikes or shipping them. When the movers were loading our stuff, we talked to them and identified and labeled the packed bikes as fragile and to be “top loaded” or “floated”, which means having nothing loaded on top of them. We never had a problem with our bikes. Other things got damaged, but not the bikes.