Man and van in Whickham

Why a local van makes the difference

Whickham is where the van lives. Most mornings it starts somewhere off the Front Street, and on a good day we can be at your door within ten minutes of the phone going down. That matters more than it sounds: it means we can come and look at a job properly before quoting it, rather than guessing from a description and adding a margin for the unknown. If you are moving within NE16, there is a fair chance we have already carried a sofa up the same stairs.

We are two experienced movers with a clean van, and every job gets both of us. There is no version of this where one person turns up and asks you to take the other end of the wardrobe. The price is agreed before we lift a thing, in writing if you want it, and it does not change on the day unless you add to the job.

The streets we know

Whickham is not one kind of housing and it does not present one kind of move. The older terraces around Front Street and Rectory Lane have narrow staircases with a turn at the top that defeats a lot of three-seater sofas — we have learned which ones come apart and which ones go in through a window, and we will tell you which yours is before the day rather than during it. The bigger semis up towards Fellside and Sunniside usually have driveway parking and a straight run to the door, which makes for a quick, cheap move.

Then there is the hill. Anyone who lives here knows that Whickham Bank and Swalwell Bank do not behave in bad weather, and that a long wheelbase van has opinions about some of the back lanes. We plan around it. In icy weather we will sometimes suggest shuttling from a bigger road rather than risk a van on a slope with your furniture in the back, and we will say so when we quote, not when we arrive.

What we do around here

Full house moves are the bulk of it — people moving up within the village, families coming out from Newcastle for the schools, and older residents downsizing into the bungalows and flats. We do a lot of the last of those, and they need patience more than muscle. There is no rush from us and no sighing at the door.

Alongside the removals, we clear a lot of houses. Whickham has a settled population and, sadly, that means bereavement clearances are a regular part of the work. We handle those quietly: unmarked bags, no clutter on the pavement, anything usable to charity, and paperwork and photographs set aside for the family rather than binned. As a licensed waste carrier we can show you exactly where everything went.

The rest is single items and waste. Marketplace sofas collected from Gateshead and carried up to a first floor in Whickham. Garden waste after a hedge has come down. Builders waste from a kitchen rip-out where the trades did not include disposal. Tip runs for the garage that has been on the list since Christmas.

How it works

Ring, text or send the quote form. Tell us the postcodes, which floor, whether there is parking and anything heavy or awkward — a piano, an American fridge, a shed that needs dismantling. Photos help but they are not essential, and for anything big we will happily come and look. You get one number back, usually the same day.

On the day we turn up when we said. Everything that needs wrapping gets wrapped, furniture that needs dismantling comes apart, and it all goes back together at the other end in the room you point at. Packaging leaves with us. If you would rather stay out of the way with a cup of tea, that is completely fine.

What affects the price

We do not publish a rate card, because a rate card would either overcharge the easy jobs or catch you out on the hard ones. What we do instead is look at four things: how much there is, how far it is going, how far we have to carry it at each end, and whether anything needs taking apart or taking away. A two-bedroom flat with parking outside and a lift is a very different afternoon to the same amount of furniture up two flights with the van a hundred yards down the road, and the price should reflect that rather than pretending they are the same job.

Once we have looked at those four things you get one number. It includes the van, both movers, blankets, straps, the trolley and the fuel. It does not go up because the job ran an hour longer than we thought, because that is our problem to estimate, not yours to pay for. The only thing that changes a fixed price is you adding to the job on the day — an extra wardrobe, a shed that has suddenly joined the move — and even then we will tell you what the difference is before it goes in the van.

Why people in Whickham use us

Most of our work here comes from people who have used us before or who have been told about us by a neighbour. That is a good discipline to work under. If we damage something or turn up late in a village this size, we hear about it, and so does everyone else. It is the main reason we quote honestly and turn down jobs we cannot do properly rather than squeezing them in.

We are not a national franchise with a call centre and a rotating cast of drivers. You speak to the person who will be carrying your sofa, the same two of us do the quote and the job, and the van you saw parked on the Front Street is the van that turns up. For a lot of people that is the whole point.