Specialty & fragile items · interstate
Heavy, fragile, or worth more than it weighs: specialty items are where handling either got planned or gets improvised on your staircase. Our rule is simple: every such piece is named on the survey, its handling decided before move day, and its cost written down where you can read it.
The mechanism
Every specialty-item horror story shares a root cause: the item was never really in the plan. The crew found out at the door, the handling was invented on the spot, and the charge appeared at the curb. The fix isn’t heroics. It’s paperwork done in the right order.
What the default coverage pays
$0.60 / lb
Released value is the federal default, and it settles by weight rather than by what the thing is worth. A 25 lb television is fifteen dollars, not eight hundred. That arithmetic is the whole reason a specialty item has to be named on the survey before it is on the truck.
On the video survey you point the camera at the piece. From there it gets a name on the inventory, a weight class, an access plan for both ends covering stairs, elevators and door clearances, and a handling decision: padded and boarded, or crated. Each of those lands on the written estimate as its own entry. The 2026 market range for bulky-item handling runs $175 to $400; crating is priced per piece. What you should never accept, from us or anyone, is a specialty item that’s absent from the paperwork and present on the truck.
Handling ranges are 2026 industry cost surveys (piano, safe, sectional, and similar items beyond standard handling), not our rate sheet. Your item’s exact figure is set on the survey and written down.
This is a planning range, not an estimate. Your exact price is put in writing after a video or in-home survey, as federal law requires. That written estimate is either binding or non-binding.
The $0.60 problem, squared
Released-value coverage, the free and federally mandated default, pays $0.60 per pound per item. For a couch, that’s bad. For a light, valuable piece, it approaches insult.
$0.60/lb · 500-lb piano → $300
Run the same math on a 20-pound painting and the default settles at $12. This is why Full Value Protection, which repairs, replaces, or pays current market value, is the option worth reading closely on exactly this page. And one convention the industry rarely volunteers: items of extraordinary value, the standard threshold being anything over $100 per pound, must be declared in writing to be covered at full value. Declare the piece before it rides.
Valuation mechanics are federal interstate rules and industry-standard tariff conventions, explained in full on the long-distance page. Ask for your exact Full Value Protection rate and deductible options on the survey call, in writing.
The usual suspects
The problem isn’t just mass. It’s mass that can’t be tilted casually, through turns that weren’t designed for it. The survey maps the path at both ends before anyone lifts anything; the piano travels padded and boarded, the standard handling for the instrument.
A residential safe is a moving problem; a commercial-scale one is a rigging problem, a different set of equipment and a different trade. Which side of that line yours sits on is decided on the survey, out loud, and if it needs a rigging outfit we say so instead of finding out on your floor.
The honest answer to “can you move it?” is sometimes “not us.”
This is where crating earns its cost: framed art, mirrors, sculpture, marble and glass tops. Each piece is named on the survey and gets its own call, crate or pad or both, priced per piece on the written estimate, with the valuation declared before it rides.
Scope, plainly
Conservation handling, climate-managed dedicated transport, condition reports: that is a fine-art logistics trade, not a household-goods crew with a nicer crate. If your piece needs it, we’ll say so on the survey, and you should hire that specialist.
A safe or machine beyond what a residential crew and its equipment safely handle needs a rigging outfit with hoists, engineered floor protection, sometimes a crane. That call gets made on the survey, not at your curb with the truck idling.
Anyone pricing a piano over the phone without seeing the stairs is guessing with your instrument. Specialty items are exactly where sight-unseen numbers fail. The survey names the piece, or the number means nothing.
Straight answers
Yes, as part of an interstate move, with each item named on the video survey first. That call is where the real questions get answered: the item's weight class, the stairs and doorways at both ends, whether it needs a crate or a board, and what the handling adds to the written estimate.
And the boundary, stated plainly: if a piece needs a specialist beyond a moving crew, whether that is museum-grade art handling or structural rigging for a commercial-scale safe, that gets said on the survey call, not discovered at your curb.
Usually no. Most pianos travel padded and boarded, not crated. That's the standard handling for uprights, with grands prepped further before loading. Crating earns its cost where a pad can't do the job: glass, stone tops, framed art, sculpture. Which treatment your piece needs is exactly what the survey decides, item by item.
As named entries on the same written estimate as the move, before loading day. The 2026 market range for bulky-item handling runs $175 to $400 for a piano, safe, oversized sectional and similar, with crating priced per piece on the survey. Nothing about a specialty item should ever be a move-day surprise; that is the entire point of naming it up front.
Take this seriously, because the default is a trap for exactly these items. Released-value coverage pays $0.60 per pound, on weight and not on worth, which is the worst possible math for a light, valuable piece. Full Value Protection covers repair, replacement, or current market value.
One more industry-standard rule worth knowing: items of extraordinary value, and the convention is anything above $100 per pound, must be declared in writing to be covered at full value. Declare the piece, get the declaration on paper, and keep a copy.
Ready when you are
You’re calling the licensed carrier, not a broker’s sales floor. Weekdays and weekends, out of Oakland Park, FL.
No name, no number, no email. The range shows first. That part you can test yourself in the next sixty seconds.