When you call a transport company to make a booking, one of the first questions you need to answer is: How many hours do you need to book man and a van London for your move? It’s a complicated question. There are many factors to consider. Most transport companies require you to select a minimum number of hours. On exceeding the pre-booked hours, you are charged per additional hour. Charges for the extra hours can be exorbitant.

Customer care teams can help you estimate how long it will take. Man and Van London does so as well. However, like them, we can only provide you with an approximate time. We haven’t seen the pickup location or the drop location or your consignment.

I have for these reasons highlighted factors that should help you determine how long to book your man with a van for. These are:

Distance and time of the day:

Consult Google maps to determine the travel time it will take. Remember to account for rush hour traffic, whether it’s a weekday or weekend, and any other circumstances such as repair works and road blocks, that could impact the time.

Floors:

The floor your consignment is to be collected from and the floor it is to be delivered to makes a significant difference to the time it will take. Each flight of stairs translates to 15 – 20 minutes extra. Elevators help, but they too mean approximately an additional 15 minutes.

Also, if your consignment is large, it is recommended to opt for additional help. A driver and a helper will be able to carry your goods more efficiently if they need to be carried from or sent to a floor other than the ground floor. Man and a Van London offers porters for situations such as these.

Preparedness:

Are you going to be ready for the move? If not, please allow additional time for dismantling, assembling and packing your goods.

Man with Van London’s drivers are happy to help you pack. They bring along packing material if you request it. Further, all our vans come fully equipped with removal blankets, loading platforms, straps and trolleys that make loading and unloading goods simple and efficient.

Distance from van to door:

You must try to reserve the closet parking space to the exit door of the pick-up and drop location. This will saves time.

Plan the van’s parking in advance by calling the council to request a ‘parking suspension’.

Size of your consignment:

A full Luton van take approximately 1 hour to be loaded by a driver and a helper. Alone a driver takes about 1.5 – 2 hours. A smaller transit van takes about 45 minutes for two to load, and 1.5 hours for one to load.

Students transferring a single room of goods should be able to complete the shift in under 2 hours.

Office moves:

Shifting offices requires additional preparation and planning. Have your team dismantle desks, cabinets etc, and your engineers remove your computers and other electrical equipment beforehand.

A small 5 employee office that doesn’t have any large desks or cabinets should take about 4 hours to shift by one man in a Luton. An office with 5-20 employees, requires approximately 9 hours for 2 people to shift in 2 vans. Offices with over 20 staff require all day and at least 3 people and 3 vans.

Also, remember that congestion charges are to be borne by customers when vans enter central London.

Local and International moves:

While for local moves vans should be pre-booked for a certain number of hours, for international moves, this must not be the case. A comprehensive quote with no time boundation should cover the international move.

Man With Van Greater London does just that. Our vans arrive at the pickup location, collect the consignment and leave right away. It takes us 20-30 hours delivery time to transport goods to anywhere in Europe. For destinations such as France and Holland, we only take between 10-15 hours. Now that’s speedy! Do remember to have someone ready for our vans at the destination.

So, returning to the initial question: how many hours to book man and a van for your move? The answer is simple. Call Man and a van London and request an evaluation. We will send someone from our team to the locations FREE OF CHARGE to estimate the time the move will take. Based on our estimation, we will prepare a quote. We will only charge you the amount on the quote – even if the actual shifting takes much longer.

If, however, you do not wish to have us visit the locations beforehand, our charges for additional hours are very reasonable – only £25 for each additional hour.  

We like to make it easy for you to decide. Choose Man and Van London!

Happy shifting!