#5  equipment

This picture is a close up of the left side of the truck shown in the previous pictures, but with the hand truck removed.  Notice the two little pieces of metal tabs on the floor. That's where the blade of the blue hand truck tucks in and holds the hand truck locked in place.  With these tabs it takes literally one second to use your foot down low to pull the blade back out from under the tabs.   To lock the hand truck in position, you just push the hand truck blade back under the tabs.  That's it, and it's locked in place.  Take another look at the red hand truck situated up against the appliance dolly in the picture before this last pictures.  That red hand truck blade is tucked into the same type of metal tab securing locks, enabling it to be removed or locked in position in literally one second. The blade actually slips under the blade of the appliance dolly, into the tabs.

Contrast the one-second removal time required for the previous method vs. the method of securing hand trucks with ratchet straps (as shown above), which could take a minute or two just to release a hand truck, and another minute or two just to stow a hand truck.  That's two to four minutes compared to two to four seconds for both hand trucks.  That makes the ratchet strap method not nearly as professional, skilled or well equipped as the clips method.  When you multiply out all the many little mover tricks that could be used over a hundred items, it all adds up.

You should have six dozen total blankets for a full size job. Preferably a couple dozen of them would be the high-end cotton blankets to far better impress the customer. The blankets should be strapped (or bungeed) in groups, on a floor dolly so that you can release a small section if you want to, and the whole stack can be moved and secured somewhere else quickly and easily if needed.  The mover's rubber bands should be on a movable rack.  It's sometimes exactly what's needed to have a load securing pole. The E-Track tie down strap (the yellow strap in the picture) can be hooked onto the E-track every couple inches, and so can be put in the right place in seconds.  And of course you need a step stool.

On the other side of the truck, here's another load-securing-pole. Here's a short stack of blankets on the wheel well, ready to be used.  In this picture you see a trash box next to the rugs.  These rugs are extremely accessible to grab and put away. If you use them at a house they won't be in the truck any more. The extra floor dolly below them is hooked to the wall in a way that takes only seconds to remove.  Above that is an extra large TV box, containing a regular sized TV box (totaling two tv boxes), and a number of other small and medium boxes inside.

The Black Straps Bag should have a set of black straps, a set of orange straps, and a hump strap (the purple thing).

You should definitely have a door and door jam cover.  These can be kept back on the blankets, or up in the cab.  You should have a clip board holding the color INVOICE receipts. The door and door-jam cover should be placed on only the cleanest of the rugs or surfaces, never on the floor.  The door and door-jam covers should usually be put up on the customer's door not because they are necessarily "needed" but because it makes us look professional and "worth more", and because it can get them out of the way.  You should have a neoprene floor runner, usually also kept up in the cab.

The rugs and runners are time consuming and difficult to clean.  They look BAD if we put down dirty rugs and dirty runners. So keeping them as clean as possible should be a priority.  The trick to reducing how quickly they get dirty is to put the rugs down in order of dirtiest to cleanest as you go deeper into the house, AND FOR THE CREW TO WIPE THEIR FEET as they go.  This cleans and dries the crew's feet by the time they get to the cleaner rugs and clean floor runners.

If you want to send your professionalism into the stratosphere, you need not only to provide a moving truck for your customers, you need extra storage space on the truck for your equipment and supplies.

Storage boxes that go under the truck are a great help.  These storage boxes come in single or double wide, and with doors that open in different directions.

These are pictures of my tool bag, and the way I like it arranged.

I like making a little pocket in my tool bag for my socket set.

I stack up my aluminum tape on top of my extra screws container, and stack my magnetic tray on top of the aluminum tape.  I use a silverware holder as a container to hold my small stretch wrap.  Your extra screws container should contain some lag bolts for mounting TV wall mounts.

 The orange ratchet straps from Harbor Freight have the right size hooks to fit behind the rub railing, but these sets of four ratchet straps come in both the short strap and longer strap versions, which you have to check to see which version you're getting.  When on sale, you can get these sets for $8.

It's a useful technique to separate your ratchet straps into the short strap and long strap categories, so that when you need to use straps on one way load-only jobs you can use up and get rid of the short ones & dirtiest ones.

16) Sometimes a ratchet strap is too short. When that's the case, make or use a pre-made "ratchet strap extension", which is a hook and length of line with loops tied in every foot or so, for the full ratchet strap to hook onto.

The items listed in the "Standard Equipment Set" are the minimum required set to have in order to get regular referrals from AGMC.  Less than this, and your booking rate is increased.   The ACE equipmet set is what is needed to BE EXPERTLY PREPAIRED to CONSISTENTLY do a top quality moving job, not just the minimum requirement.    Each of these things you don't have, or don't have organized and situated in a good way presents an additional RISK that you would be providing a less that top quality service and have an additional problem on a job.  Those risks add up. 

So yes you could do moving work with less than all this equipment, but your service would be less than it could be, and we should at least know and recognize where we're at on this scale; 100% best prepared, 90%, 50%, or 5% prepared.  Knowing gives you more control of your job quality, more control of your income, more understanding of why you're getting what jobs you get, and more credit (and so more jobs) when you are better prepared than your competitors.

You should be doing your own evaluation of how much of the shown "ACE" equipment set you have.  If you go down this list, including the uniform, the tool set, and everything else, what % of these things do you provide on your jobs, IN YOUR OWN EVALUATION?   Can you name which items you are missing?   If you don't even know, what does that say about your service?

If you are trying to be a regular Lead receiving jobs through AGMC, you're supposed to once a week do a video call with AGMC to show your equipment set, or text pictures of your equipment set, or otherwise show AGMC what you've got, so AGMC can evaluate and keep track of the equipment you provide on your jobs. 

The trick to making it easy to maintain your equipment organization is to do three steps.   First, take the time to get everything perfect, exactly the way you want it, all organized and clean, and photo document exactly the way you have it.

Step two is to TEACH your crew AND SHOW THEM WHERE EVERYTHING GOES BEFORE THE JOB BEGINS.   Step three is to not pay them at the end of the job until they've helped put everything back the way its supposed to go.  It's the crew that's supposed to be doing the bulk of work to get everything put back at the end of the job.  You're messing up if you're trying to do it by yourself. But step three doesn't work without steps 1 & 2.

In order for the crew to know where equipment is supposed to be put away, they need to either have it memorized, or they need to study the equipment layout before the job, or they need to reference a photo record of the equipment storage layout.  If it's this 24' U-Haul shown in this website page, the crew can just look at these pictures on their phone.  No crewman should receive their pay for that job until AFTER they have helped to put everything back in its correct designated place, folded or placed nicely the way it was before the job began. 

 If there's a tool missing, the replacement cost should come out of the crew's pay, right then and there, deducted from the crew's pay that day.  That's the deal. If there's no repercussions from missing tools, far more tools will become missing. 

If you don't already have one, borrow Phil's six foot ramp.  It's not just the standard ramp from Harbor Freight; it's reinforced with extra aluminum bars underneath, welded on by a machine shop, and able to handle up to 2,000 lbs.

There's a twelve foot folding ramp, with an adjustable height mid-support brace. It's great for a three, four or five step porch, when the truck ramp won't reach.

It folds up to half the length and half the width.  The brace folds up inside the upper bar.

The Spa Sled can slide a hot tub or any heavy thing across grass, gravel or pavement, without plywood boards.  This is the most stable way of moving a hot tub across these surfaces because it causes the widest base of support at the lowest elevation of carry, while not allowing any unwanted "rolling away". 

 The ground elevation of carry is also the best for getting under low overhangs and the easiest to tip the hot tub up and down.  All of these things together make this the best overall way to move a hot tub over these surfaces.

Borrow Phil's heavy lifters.  They can carry things up to 1400 lbs., like big gun safes, heavy pianos and crazy heavy shop equipment.  They have wide flat bottom wheels for not leaving groves in wood floors.

These crank the item up to one foot off the ground for easy clearance over the truck ramp top.  They can lower as low as you want off the floor to get barely under low overheads.  They have wide flat-bottom wheels so they won't indent into wood floors.  They also weigh only 36 lbs. ea.

Borrow Phil's other trailer (besides the green one).  This red one is in brand spanking new condition (absolutely reliable for long hauls), and is rated for 1800 lbs.

Plywood planks to roll things over.  Even useful to protect slate floors.

You should have some basic furniture repair materials on hand, but if the repair is beyond you, call AGMC to see if Phil can fix the problem.

If the job needs a bulldozer, forklift or crane to do it safely and professionally, we can get one.  If it feels dangerous or like a big struggle, it's being done wrong.

The rugs get dirty, and so the Lead needs to wash them occasionally in a washing machine.  You can cut down the frequency of needing to wash them by A LOT if you place them on the customer's floor in order of dirtiest to cleanest, letting the dirtiest rugs pick up the bulk of new dirt, and by having the crew wipe their feet on the rugs when it's wet outside. The door and door jam cover are much harder to wash, and so should just never be put down on the floor of the truck or on anything else dirty.

The neoprene floor runners are a lot of work to clean, but when you do, this is a good technique.  But the real way to maintain these runners is to prevent them from getting dirty in the first place by always putting down a lot of rugs in a row before getting to the runner.  Also make sure the crew is wiping their feet on the rugs well (when wet outside) to clean their feet before reaching the runner.

Ratchet straps, the black straps, orange straps, the various other straps and all other equipment that's made of FABRIC should never touch the floor of the truck, period.  This is because they get filthy quick any time they touch the truck floor, and for the most part they can't be washed.  They look like "garbage" equipment when they get dirty, nearly ruining the equipment for our purposes.  When they're kept clean, they are impressive, they make us look like pros and so make us money. Always keep fabric straps off the truck floor. 

Maintaining the equipment also means cleaning the wheels of hand trucks, replacing or adding cushioning on a hand truck, straightening out ratchet straps, buying more tape, mattress bags, rope, carpet protection film, & felt pads, etc.  If you're using the same truck regularly, you need to be cleaning it, inside and out, and maintaining it mechanically. The Lead's job of getting everything ready takes time, and so the Lead needs to schedule time enough for this into his schedule.

If you are lent (or rented) a moving truck with a certain set of moving equipment in a certain state of cleanliness, condition and organization, maintain at least that exact equipment set, and KEEP IT in that state of cleanliness, condition and organization.  If you break or loose something, fix it or replace it.  Don't let the lender's door cover or fabric equipment be found on the floor of the truck, which might as well be in a mud puddle.

Put things back the way they were originally lent to you. If you use the lender's supplies, replace them. If you don't, at least understand that your value as a mover will plummet in the lender's eyes, and any continued lending will be on shaky grounds at best. 

This picture conveys that this truck equipment is ready for a job, that it's an "ACE" equipment set, that it's all here in the truck (nothing missing), and that the truck floor is clean.   By either doing a video call to AGMC, or by texting a few current pictures of your equipment status to AGMC, this allows AGMC to SELL YOUR SERVICE as being ready to do a professional job, and tell the customer knowingly that you are well prepared to do a big four bedroom house job.  If you do not send AGMC pictures or do a video call at least weekly, your equipment status is considered "unsure/unknown" and that influences the jobs you sell.

Also, if equipment has been lent to you, a weekly video call lets the lender know his property is being taken care of.  That's why, if you want the bigger jobs, take 30 seconds to  inform AGMC of your equipment status daily or at least weekly, and show that you are prepared for the bigger jobs.  If you don't take this 30 seconds to earn the bigger jobs, don't take 60 seconds to complain that you aren't getting the bigger jobs.  If you are not well equipped & organized, and your stuff is in shambles, then don't take the 30 seconds to do a video call, because AGMC already assumes that's likely the case when you don't text your pictures or do the video calls.  Just expect jobs accordingly.