Pianos, safes and the hard-to-handle
Alongside our regular loads, our Hopkins County crew handles the pieces a by-the-hour rate can’t cover — upright and console pianos, gun safes from 600 up past 1,400 lbs, slate pool tables, farmhouse antiques and the odd framed gallery piece. Travis Wells runs these jobs, because easing a piano down a Madisonville stairwell is a different animal from rolling one onto a ramp.
Since no specialty piece drops onto an hourly rate, we quote each as a flat job — sizing up the item, which floor it sits on, whether a ramp or a stairwell is in play, and how the curb loads. Each piece is covered up to $1,000,000; released value is $0.60 a pound, with a full nine months to file.
Rough flat prices for specialty pieces
| Piece | Crew | Flat price |
|---|---|---|
| Upright piano, ground floor or ramp | 3 movers | $210 – $360 |
| Upright hauled up a stair flight | 3 movers | $340 – $540 |
| Gun safe up to about 1,400 lbs | 3 movers | $260 – $480 |
| Slate pool table, broken down and re-leveled | 3 movers | $300 – $560 |
| Baby grand, legs and lyre off and padded | 3–4 movers | $380 – $640 |
Should a tricky piece run long and the three-mover team roll to $178/hr, you still owe nothing past the flat figure you signed.
What makes a staircase the hard part
Take a baby grand down a two-story flight and the work begins up top — legs and lyre come off first, then the case goes down one careful step at a time on skid boards, strapped tight, resting at each landing. A safe near 1,200 pounds is eased down over sheets of plywood laid across the floor. When the schedule allows, the heavy item gets its own dedicated day; otherwise we fold it into your long-distance or residential run.
What the flat price includes on a Manitou, KY move
- Every piano blanket-wrapped, belted onto a piano skid, and rolled out on a four-wheel dolly
- Grand pianos come apart — legs, lyre and pedals off — and get padded down to a size that clears the doorways
- Skid boards, ramps and stair-climbing dollies handle stair flights and porch steps
- Gun safes as heavy as roughly 1,400 lbs ride a rated safe dolly over plywood we lay down
- Slate pool tables can be dismantled, then re-leveled with the felt inspected, on request
- A full-value protection option caps out at $1,000,000 per shipment
So — what will it come to?
Two movers and the truck run $128/hr on the meter — or set the whole job on one signed Hopkins County flat rate written out across a single page
That rate already carries the furniture blankets, the hand trucks, the rolls of shrink film and the slow, careful carries a small-town condo or an Earlington walk-up demands — along with any COI a Madisonville apartment block or a rural HOA needs filed before load-day. A third mover brings it to $178 an hour.
Lock my exact Manitou price
