Moving Advice From The Owner

25 Years of Moving Cincinnati: How to Prepare for Your Move Day the Right Way

By Tony Stringfellow, Owner — Smooth Move Relocation Services

After 25 years of loading trucks, protecting hardwood floors, and getting families into their new homes across Greater Cincinnati, I’ve learned one thing: the smoothest moves are the ones that are prepared for before we ever pull into the driveway. Here’s exactly how to get ready — and the honest answers to the questions customers ask me most.

A move goes one of two ways. Either everything is boxed, labeled, and ready when my crew arrives — and we’re loaded and rolling in no time — or we spend the first hour hunting for tape and packing loose lamps that should have been in a box the night before. This guide is built from real jobs, not a brochure. Follow it and your move day will be faster, safer, and cheaper.

Start by Choosing the Right Moving Company

Before you talk packing or scheduling, choose your mover carefully — it’s the single biggest factor in how your day goes. The moving industry is full of brokers who take your deposit and hand your job off to whoever they can find. You want to know exactly who’s showing up. Ask these questions before you book anyone:

• Are you a moving company or a moving broker? A broker doesn’t own trucks or employ crews — they sell your job to a third party you’ve never spoken to. Book the company that actually does the work.
• Are all your movers payroll (W-2) employees, or do you use subcontractors and day labor? Payroll crews are trained, accountable, and covered under the company’s insurance. Subcontractors and day laborers are a gamble on who walks through your door.
• Are you licensed, and can I verify it? A legitimate mover will hand you their USDOT, MC, and state numbers without hesitation so you can look them up yourself.

For the record, at Smooth Move every mover is a W-2 payroll employee — no brokers, no subcontractors, no day laborers — and our license numbers are at the bottom of this page for you to verify.

Don’t just take a mover’s word for it — you can check any company yourself through the government. Use the FMCSA registered mover search to confirm a company is federally registered and see whether they’re a carrier or a broker, and check the PUCO list of registered Ohio movers to confirm they’re licensed in Ohio. If a company can’t be found on either, that’s a serious red flag.

Schedule Your Move 4 to 6 Weeks Out

Once you have an approximate move date, get on a mover’s calendar four to six weeks ahead. Good crews book up, especially at month-end and during the busy season, and the earlier you schedule the better your pick of dates and times. Booking early also gives you breathing room to pack properly instead of scrambling the night before — and, as you’ll see below, time to handle parking and access details that Cincinnati neighborhoods often require.

Simple Ways to Save Money on Your Move

On an hourly move, the clock is the cost. Anything you can do to cut the time we spend on-site puts money back in your pocket — and some of the biggest time savers are things you can knock out yourself in the days before we arrive. None of this is required, and we’re glad to handle all of it. But if you want to keep the bill down, here’s where the real time goes:

• Break down furniture and put it back together yourself. Bed frames, tables, and modular pieces take real time to disassemble and reassemble. If you take them apart before we arrive and rebuild them after, you’re not paying for that labor on the clock.
• Same goes for exercise equipment and game tables. Treadmills, weight racks, and machines are some of the most time-consuming things we handle — and so are foosball tables, air hockey tables, and poker tables. Disassembling and reassembling them yourself can save a substantial amount of time. Not required, but it’s time off the clock.
• And storage shelves. Metal and wire shelving units are slow to take apart and rebuild. Breaking them down ahead of time and setting them back up yourself keeps that time off your invoice.
• Remove shelves from cabinets and hutches. For furniture with shelves — glass or wood — take the shelves out and remove the little pegs or tabs that hold them, then pack the shelves separately beforehand. Loose shelves rattle and crack in transit, and pulling them on the spot eats time. Doing it ahead protects the glass and keeps the clock down. Not required, but it saves time.
• Consolidate your boxes into one room or the garage. When your packed boxes are gathered in a single spot near the door — on both the load-up and unload ends — instead of scattered across every room and floor, we load and unload dramatically faster. This one is easy and it saves a substantial amount of time.
• Label your furniture and map out the new place. Use masking tape to mark furniture and boxes with the room they go to, and at the unload location either label the doors or hand us a simple diagram of where things go. When we’re unloading and don’t know where a piece belongs, we either have to stop and wait for you or put it in the wrong room — and then it has to be reshuffled, which takes even more time. A few minutes of labeling up front saves a lot of it on the back end.

To be clear: taking furniture apart and putting it back together isn’t required, and neither is consolidating your boxes — we’ll do every bit of it for you. But if saving money matters to you, these are the moves that make the biggest dent.

Packing: The Part That Makes or Breaks Your Move

Ninety percent of a smooth move comes down to how well things are packed before we arrive. Movers move fast when belongings are contained. We slow way down — and your clock runs longer — when we’re working around loose, unpacked items. For a full breakdown of how to pack room by room, see our packing services and tips page.

Everything goes in a box or a bin with a lid

All your smaller items, electronics, dishes, fragile pieces, lamps, and lampshades need to be packed in a box or a sealed plastic bin. If it fits in a box, it shouldn’t be sitting loose. Loose items don’t stack, don’t travel safely, and turn a two-hour load into a four-hour one.

Keep boxes under 50 pounds

A manageable box is a safe box. Keep each one at roughly 50 pounds or less. It protects your belongings from crushing under their own weight and it protects everyone’s backs. A good rule: books and heavy items go in small boxes, light bulky items like bedding go in big ones.

Use standard-size moving boxes

Whenever you can, use standard moving boxes in consistent sizes. Uniform boxes stack square and tight, which means a more stable load, less shifting on the road, and more of your belongings fitting on the truck. When you mix in odd, mismatched boxes, the load won’t pack as tightly and it’s more likely to shift. It’s also worth buying sturdy boxes rather than relying on free used ones — used boxes have already been through a move or two, and they tear and collapse far more easily when it matters most.

Empty your drawers and cabinets

Dressers, desks, and cabinets should be emptied of loose contents unless we’ve cleared it with you in advance. Full drawers make furniture dangerously heavy and unbalanced on stairs, and things shift and break in transit.

TVs need a TV box

If we’re transporting your television, it has to be in a proper TV box — not wrapped in a blanket. A blanket doesn’t protect a screen from pressure. If you no longer have the original carton, TV boxes are inexpensive and available at most home improvement stores.

What You Need When Loading a Truck or Pod

Whether we’re loading our truck or you’re filling a pod or rental, a load is only as good as the materials protecting it. If you’re renting or loading a container yourself, here’s what to have on hand — and what to ask any mover about before you book:

• Stretch wrap for furniture. Ask your moving company whether they offer stretch wrapping — some charge extra for it. We stretch-wrap furniture for free. It keeps drawers and doors closed, holds upholstery clean, and protects finishes in transit.
• Moving pads on load day. Even stretch-wrapped furniture needs proper padding. Stretch wrap holds a piece together but it won’t stop a hard corner from denting the piece next to it. Have moving pads (furniture blankets) ready the day of load-up so everything is cushioned, not just wrapped.
• Proper tie-backs for your load. A load needs to be secured so it doesn’t shift on the road. That can be as simple as rope or ratchet straps used at each tier to tie the load back against the walls of the truck or pod. An unsecured load is how things topple and break in transit.

Sizing Your Storage Unit or Truck: Go Bigger

When you’re renting a storage unit or picking a truck size for load-up, always err on the side of more space than you think you need. People almost always underestimate how much they own once it’s boxed and packed. Coming up short is a real problem: you end up cramming things in too tight, leaving items behind, or making a second trip — and with storage, running out of room can mean stacking things unsafely or renting a second unit at a worse rate. A little extra space costs a little more up front, but it lets you load safely, keep aisles clear in a storage unit, and get everything in one trip. Having more space is always better than not having enough.

The Appliance Rule Every Customer Should Know

Protecting Your Floors

We bring professional floor runners and lay them down in the main traffic lanes of your home. But runners can’t cover every square foot of every room, and in wet or winter weather I strongly recommend adding your own protection in the areas that matter to you.

Simple options that work:

• Carpet remnants or rugs you already own
• Flattened cardboard sheets across high-traffic paths
• A painter’s tarp or plastic sheeting
• Extra mats or towels right at the entry points

Anything beyond our standard runners is the customer’s to provide, and we’re not liable for moisture, scratches, or flooring damage in areas that weren’t protected. A little prep here saves a lot of heartache on brand-new floors.

Winter and Bad-Weather Moves in Cincinnati

Cincinnati winters are real, and a snowy move day is a safety situation for everyone. Here’s what has to happen before we arrive when the weather turns:

• Clear and treat your surfaces. Driveways, sidewalks, steps, porches, and walkways must be shoveled and salted at least 20–30 minutes before we arrive.
• Give the truck safe access. Make sure our truck can reach your home by driveway or legal street parking. Blocked or unsafe access can cause delays or a reschedule.
• Clear the outdoor items. Knock snow and ice off patio furniture, grills, and benches so we’re not tracking water and ice into the truck and your home.
• Expect a safety-first pace. If snow or ice keeps coming, we may pause until surfaces are safe. Winter moving is slower by necessity and can add to total move time.

A Word on New Driveways

If you’re moving into new construction or a home with a freshly poured driveway, know this ahead of time: builders often don’t want a loaded moving truck on a new driveway. Fresh concrete and asphalt can take weeks to fully cure, and the weight of a loaded box truck can crack or leave impressions in a surface that looks solid but isn’t. Check with your builder about their curing timeline before move day. If the driveway is off-limits, let us know in advance so we can plan for a longer carry from legal street parking — that’s easy to work around when we know about it early, and a scramble if we find out when we pull up.

Moving in Cincinnati’s Tight Neighborhoods

A lot of Cincinnati’s best neighborhoods come with narrow, crowded streets — think Clifton, Hyde Park, and the older parts of town with one-way streets and no driveways. A 26-foot truck needs room to park close to your door, and in these neighborhoods that space isn’t guaranteed. A little planning here makes an enormous difference to how fast your move goes:

• Reserve your parking spot. For tight or one-way streets, contact the City of Cincinnati about temporary “No Parking” signs so neighbors don’t fill the spot you’ll need for the truck on move day. This is one of the most overlooked steps and one of the most valuable.
• Give your neighbors a heads-up. Let the folks next door know you’re moving and roughly when. Most people are happy to keep a spot clear if they know it’s coming.
• Schedule on a weekday. When neighbors are at work, the street is emptier and parking is far easier to secure. A Tuesday move in Hyde Park is a very different experience than a Saturday one.
• Tell us about the access. Narrow streets, one-ways, stairs, or a long walk from where we can park — the more we know when you book, the better we plan the crew and the truck position.

Items We Legally and Safely Cannot Move

There are things no reputable, licensed mover will put on a truck. Please plan to transport these yourself:

Flammable and hazardous materials

• Gasoline, propane tanks, and fuel sources — including fuel left in lawn mowers, snow blowers, and generators
• Paints, thinners, varnishes, and solvents
• Chemicals, pesticides, and fertilizers
• Fireworks, explosives, and ammunition

Firearms

We don’t move guns or firearms of any kind — pistols, rifles, or shotguns. Between insurance restrictions, federal transport laws, and company liability, firearms must be transported by the legal owner.

Perishables and living things

• Live plants, indoor or outdoor
• Perishable or opened food

High-value and personal items

For your own security, keep these with you: cash, jewelry, important documents, medications, and prescriptions. These should never ride in the truck.

Prepping Grills, Garbage Cans, and Yard Gear

Outdoor items are some of the messiest and most overlooked things on move day. A little prep keeps grease, ash, and grime off the rest of your belongings and the truck:

• Gas grills: Remove the propane tank entirely — we can’t transport it (it goes with the flammables list above). The grill itself can travel once the tank is off.
• Charcoal grills: Remove the grease pan and make sure the grill is completely empty of ash and charcoal. Leftover ash and grease will spill and smear onto everything around it in transit.
• Garbage cans: If you’re moving a garbage can, spray it out and clean it thoroughly first so it’s not fouling the truck. A clean can also doubles as a great way to consolidate rakes, shovels, brooms, and other long-handled yard tools — stand them up inside and you’ve turned a pile of awkward items into one easy thing to carry.

Getting the House Ready the Morning of the Move

A couple of things the morning of make a real difference in how fast and safely the day goes — and they’re easy to line up in advance.

Arrange for kids and pets

Have a plan for children and pets before we arrive. A babysitter, a pet sitter, or dropping them at a family member’s place for the day is ideal. Kids and pets running loose during a move create genuine safety hazards — we’re carrying heavy furniture through doorways and down stairs — and they slow us down. If we have to stop to get a dog out of the room we’re working in, or shuffle a child from room to room as we clear the house, that’s time added to your move. Getting them settled somewhere safe protects everyone and keeps the day moving.

Clear the driveway and garage of vehicles

Have your cars out of the driveway and garage before we get there — ideally 15 to 20 minutes before our estimated arrival time. Doing it ahead means we’re not standing around waiting for you to move vehicles so we can back the truck in and start loading. One tip when you pull your car out: don’t park it right beside the driveway. Give the truck room to back in cleanly, because a car parked tight to the driveway entrance can make it hard for us to get positioned.

Parking, Access, and Building Rules

If you’re moving into or out of an apartment, condo, or office building, you’re responsible for arranging parking permits, HOA permissions, and elevator reservations ahead of time. Extra time from restricted access, long carries, or waiting on an elevator becomes part of the move — so locking this down early keeps your bill down. One planning tip from experience: in tight streets, buildings with elevators, or HOA neighborhoods, a weekday move is often smoother and easier to schedule around than a busy weekend.

Your Final Move-Day Checklist

• All items are packed, labeled, and sealed in boxes or containers
• Water and gas appliances are disconnected by you or a qualified professional
• Walkways, steps, and driveways are clear, salted, and safe
• Patio furniture, grills, and outdoor items are free of snow and ice
• Indoor pathways are clear of clutter and trip hazards, and children and pets are settled safely away for the day
• Cars are out of the driveway and garage 15–20 minutes before arrival, parked clear of the driveway so the truck can back in
• A “first-night” box is set aside to travel with you — toiletries, medications, chargers, basic tools, and a change of clothes

Working With Smooth Move Relocation Services

Here’s how we operate, so you know exactly what to expect when you hire us.

Licensed, insured, and verifiable

We’re a fully licensed and insured Cincinnati moving company operating under USDOT #1878284, MC #781353, and Ohio PUCO #00604903 — all publicly verifiable through the FMCSA and PUCO. Every mover on our crew is a W-2 payroll employee. We don’t use brokers, subcontractors, or day laborers, so the people who show up are our own trained, insured team.

Free in-home estimates

We provide free in-home estimates — an actual walkthrough of your home, not a virtual call or a form-based guess off an inventory list. This is the most accurate way to quote a move, and it protects you from the surprise charges that come with sight-unseen estimates.

Long-distance moves, handled entirely by our own crew

This is one of the biggest differences between Smooth Move and a lot of the companies you’ll compare us to. On a long-distance move, Smooth Move uses only Smooth Move employees. My people load the truck, my people drive the truck, and my people unload the truck. There are no moving brokers involved and no hand-offs to a third party you’ve never met.

Just as important: your furniture is the only furniture on our truck. We do not combine loads. That means there’s no chance of your belongings getting mixed in with another family’s shipment, which is exactly how items get misplaced, lost, or delivered to the wrong address.

When several parties are involved — brokers, multiple carriers, combined loads — too many hands touch your belongings, and things get misplaced, especially when loads are combined and shuffled at transfer points. Smooth Move strongly recommends against that model. Keeping one crew and one load from your door to your destination simply eliminates a whole category of problems before they can happen. Learn more about how we handle long-distance moving.

Hourly and flat-rate pricing

We offer both hourly and flat-rate pricing depending on what fits your move best. Local moves are often billed hourly, while full-pack and long-distance moves are frequently quoted as a flat rate. We’ll walk you through which structure makes the most sense for your situation during your in-home estimate.

Payment terms

Payment is due upon completion of the move. We accept cash and check for local moves; long-distance moves are paid by bank cashier’s check. Card payments are welcome and carry a 5% processing fee. We’ll go over all of this up front so there are no surprises on move day.

A final walk-through, every time

We don’t consider a move done until we’ve walked it with you. At your old home, we do a final walk-through to make sure everything is out of the house — nothing left in a closet, basement, or garage. At your new place, we walk through again to confirm everything is where you want it before we leave. That way we both know we got everything and everything is in place when we pull away.

Frequently Asked Questions