Moving Mishaps: Loading the Trailer

Consider this the next time you rent a trailer for moving.

I own saloon door, you know the swinging doors that lead into the saloon on every western movie ever.  Yes, I own a set, they were an impulse buy from Good Will in college.  However, I am also a renter so I can not just mount them to the doorway in an apartment.  So, I have mounted them to a fuax door frame that slides into the existing door frame.  This allows me to hang the door without damaging the rental unit

However they can pose a problem in moving as well as renting.In a move home from Graduate school, my brother, who formerly worked for a moving company, packed them into the trailer.  This seems like a pretty good deal right?  Wrong.  While he was very helpful in getting the trailer packed, he overlooked a couple things.  The trailer had an overhead roll door that opened UP, and my saloon doors, attached to their frame, were packed simply on top of the load in the trailer.  The door rolled shut no problem so it didn’t seem like an issue till we got to our destination and wanted to unpack into the storage space.

During the 7 hour drive the saloon doors had shifted.  They no longer sat flat on top of the load but were wedged at an angle.  This became a problem when we tried to roll the trailer door up, they acted as a door jam from the inside.  We could only open the door about 12 inches, so we could see stuff but that was about it.  Along that 12 inch window into the trailer there were a couple of plastic totes that were taller than the opening and had no room to maneuver out, there was a coffee table that was set on end and had no space to move and there was a pile of kitchen chairs interspersed with smaller boxes and other items.  None of the things we could reach could be moved but more than an inch or two in any direction.

Standing in the storage space in December in Minnesota was not the best time for such a dilemma   As we froze my Father turned and asked how attached I was to my kitchen chairs.  The answer was “not very,” they had been free and were in pretty rough shape anyway, plus it was -15 degrees and the wind was howling… I wasn’t that attached to anything at that point.

He liked that answer and proceeded to find the hack saw in the tool box that was in the truck…  It took another 20 minutes to saw through the chairs, being careful not to damage anything else.  Once the chairs were in smaller pieces we were able to remove them from the trailer along with the other smaller objects packed in and around them.  This opened a 12×12 inch space into the trailer, which my little brother (17) was able to crawl into and stand up in order to reach the saloon doors and pull the frame out of the way.  While he remained holding the saloon doors down we opened the trailer’s overhead door and proceeded to unpack as quickly as we could.

It worked out okay.  All my things got into storage (minus my kitchen chairs) and eventually to my new apartment when I started my job, and the chair pieces made good firewood when things did finally thaw out.

But consider this story the next time you are packing a moving truck or trailer.  Things shift and move while driving down the interstate/highway, so if you have saloon doors or other tall/long items it is better to fit them in along the side or put something on top of them to keep them from wedging the door shut.

What sort of unexpected moving mishaps have you encountered?  Comment below and help fellow movers out.

Also check out our other Moving Tips and Renters Tips for great information.