Yes. A moving crew can pack your whole home, or just the rooms you don’t want to touch.
Yes. Movers pack for you. You can hand over the whole house, or just the rooms you don’t want to touch, like the kitchen and the glass. The same crew packs the boxes and loads them, on the same clock. Here’s the part people miss. Anything loose when the truck backs in gets boxed. So the question isn’t whether the crew packs. It’s who packs what, and when.
It starts with a walk-through. The crew goes room to room, opens the closets, looks in the garage, and counts what has to go in a carton before anyone pulls a strip of tape.
Boxes arrive flat and get made up on site, and the cartons have real names. A dish pack, sometimes called a barrel, takes plates and stemware. Book boxes take the heavy small stuff. Wardrobes take hanging clothes. Picture and mirror cartons take frames and glass on edge. Mattress bags and TV boxes cover what scuffs on a stair turn. That carton set is the standard one in the Canadian Association of Movers safe packing guide, packed out with clean white newsprint.
Labels carry the room and the contents, marked on two sides, not the top, so they still read when boxes are stacked three high. The bottom seam gets three strips of tape, with two more run perpendicular. That’s the association’s method, and it’s why a box holds at the far end.
The order is deliberate. Top of the house down, breakables in the middle, kitchen last so you can still make coffee. Furniture and appliances get pad wrapped and stretch wrapped whichever tier you buy.
A full pack is every room, every single item in the residence, attic to basement. You pre-pack nothing. The crew brings the cartons, the paper, the tape and the wrap, and works through the house until the shelves are bare. It stops at two things: the goods that can’t legally ride on a truck, and the bag you need on night one. Who buys it: a hard key-handover date, a big house and a short window, or a job that runs right up to move day.
Partial packing lets you pick the rooms or the categories and handle the rest yourself. The same rooms come up over and over. The kitchen. Glassware and dishes. Art and mirrors. The garage. The closets.
Here’s the real reason to hand over the fragile rooms even if you box your own books. The federal Office of Consumer Affairs says a mover generally isn’t liable for loss or damage to goods packed by the owner, and that special care items like glass and marble packed by the owner travel at owner’s risk. The boxes you tape are on you. The ones the crew packs are on the crew.
Five things decide it, and none of them are about how much you enjoy packing.
Scope gets set on a walk-through, not guessed over the phone, and that’s how our Surrey packing service works on every job we book. The Canadian Association of Movers adds one thing worth knowing. China and glassware are typically only covered when the mover packs and unpacks them.
Three buckets come off the shelf and go on the counter instead of into a carton.
Things that burn or sit under pressure. Propane tanks, gas cans, paint and thinner, aerosols, pool chemicals, fire extinguishers. Canada’s Transportation of Dangerous Goods Regulations govern what a truck can legally haul, so this isn’t a policy a crew can bend on the day.
Things alive or that spoil. Plants, open food, whatever is in the fridge. Truck boxes get hot, and food draws pests.
Things you can’t replace. Documents, cash, jewellery, the small sentimental pieces.
As the crew boxes a room, that material gets set aside in the open where you can see it. You get told what came out and why.
The association’s advice is blunt. Don’t box jewellery, valuables, money or important papers, and don’t count on mover liability for documents, currency, precious stones or sentimental items.
Keep one bag with you. Passports, medication, keys, chargers, the laptop, a change of clothes, and whatever the kids need at bedtime. It rides in your car.
Packing is time-based, the same as every move we do. You pay for the actual hours the crew works, billed in 30-minute increments after the minimum charge, broken down up front before anybody starts. We don’t do flat-rate quotes. Packing hours and moving hours are the same clock and the same crew, so packing isn’t a separate fee bolted onto the bill.
Crew size times hours on the clock, plus travel time, is the bill. A bigger crew costs more per hour and finishes in fewer hours, so a full pack isn’t automatically the more expensive choice.
A small suite usually fits the pack and the load inside one booking. A full house is normally packed the day before, because a truck loading sealed boxes moves faster than a truck waiting on a kitchen.
Consumer Protection BC states that it does not oversee moving companies. Movers are not a regulated industry here, so what’s written down before the crew starts is your real protection. Get the scope and the rate structure in writing, and ask whether the company is insured.
You don’t have to be finished. The Canadian Association of Movers puts it plainly. Movers won’t move loose items, they box them and charge for the packing. Anything still sitting out gets packed either way. The only choice is who does it.
They load and ride like any other box. The catch is coverage. The federal Office of Consumer Affairs says a mover generally isn’t liable for goods packed by the owner, and special care items packed by the owner move at owner’s risk. Get the coverage terms in writing first.
Hanging clothes go into wardrobe boxes so they arrive on the hanger. A loaded dresser is a call the crew makes when they see the piece. The usual handling is to pull the drawers, leave the clothes in, and wrap each one.
Be there at the start. Ten minutes walking the rooms sets the scope and flags what you’re carrying yourself. After that you can go, as long as you stay reachable. Anything you change on the day gets written down first.
Yes, and plenty of families do it that way. Storage rooms, spare bedrooms and closets go first. The kitchen and the beds go last, so you can still cook and sleep the night before. Your first-night bag stays out of every carton.
We’ll break the hours down before anybody starts. Six years in Surrey, our own crews on every job, no subcontractors, and the people who pack your kitchen are the ones who load it.
Local Movers Ltd · 8567 164 St, Surrey, BC V4N 3K4 · (778) 242-2877 · Open Mon-Sun
