DEFINITELY NOT RECOMMENDED.
We moved from a large house in Idaho to our second home in Arizona. Since the Arizona house was already furnished, we only needed to move 8-10 large pieces of furniture (dining table & 6 chairs, patio table & 6 chairs, pier group for king size bed, air bed and platform, dresser, armoire, TV table and TV, sofa table, and a grandfather clock).
We walked through the house with Marvin Howard (owner of Mountain Movers) pointing out all of the furniture we wanted moved. We told him we would also have lots of boxes since we were packing our stuff ourselves.
He said it would fit in a 17 foot truck and even talked me out of taking a 6x12 Uhaul trailer load earlier, saying there would be plenty of room on the truck. He texted me a quote for $4787.87 plus $400 for packing TV and pictures. As we progressed with our packing, we realized we had a lot more boxes than we originally thought and communicated that to Marvin. He said not to worry.
One of Marvin's main guys (Larry) did a walk-though the day before the move and we again noted everything we wanted moved and showed him the boxes. Marvin told us he found another load to fill out the truck so was going to use a bigger truck.
However, after they loaded the truck, Marvin called me and said we had way more stuff than we told him. He said that we told him the furniture that was to be moved was staying. The reality was that we filled a 26' truck. Larry told us he told Marvin, after the walk through, there would be room for another load on the same truck only if the other load was one box.
Anyway, Marvin called me and said his breakeven on the trip was going to be $7500 and wanted me to agree to pay that. At that point, since I did not have any documented specifics in the quote (my fault) and that he had all of our stuff loaded, there was nothing I could do but agree and pay him. Wait, there's more.
The driver arrived as scheduled. However, the moving crew that was supposed to meet us early that morning to unload before it got hot (Arizona, August) never showed up. After trying to get someone to find a crew for us to unload (both the driver and myself are old with bad backs), the driver and I drove around our small town and found several young guys willing to unload. Luckily, the driver had the money to pay the original crew so I did not have to pay them out of my pocket. However, it was noon and over 100 degrees before we started unloading. Wait, there's more.
We found the truck was packed very poorly. All of the glass shelves in a curio cabinet were broken and most of the furniture was marred from rubbing on things. Thankfully, the grandfather clock came through unscathed. I have yet to pursue compensation for the broken and damaged items since I don't even want to talk to Marvin again.
In hindsight, some of this was my fault for not getting things documented with the quote or even recording the walk-through with Marvin. However, Marvin is very personable and seemingly trustworthy. I also let my guard down since the daughter of a friend of mine is a friend of Marvin. read more