Wheaton Moving Partner Olympia Moving and StorageCoordinating the timing of deliveries for interstate moves is often the trickiest part of the relocation process.  Many moving newbies often imagine the truck and crew driving directly from their origin home to their new home.

When your moving consultant gives you the estimate for your interstate move, the delivery date will always be listed as a delivery spread.  The truck will arrive at your destination address between these dates.  Delivery spreads can range from 1 to 14 days for interstate moves.  This is standard practice across the industry.

Your moving company cannot guarantee a delivery date because there are almost always multiple customers’ shipments on each truck.   Moving would be much more expensive for both the customer and the moving company if a driver was bringing just one customer’s things from Virginia to California.  If a driver also picks up a customer going from Virginia to Arizona and another from Arkansas to New Mexico, the move is much more cost effective for everyone.

However, the timeline of moving can be unpredictable.  Between the day you book your move and your delivery day, the vanline could add more customers to your drivers’ itinerary, or the pick up or drop off of another customer’s items could take more time than expected.  Therefore, it is very difficult to know the exact day of the driver’s arrival in advance.

There are many factors that affect the length of your delivery spread, the most common being:

  • The distance between your old and new addresses (the more the miles, the longer the spread)
  • The time of year (delivery spreads tend to be longer and more unpredictable in the busy summer months)
  • The weight of your shipment (the more things you’re moving, the shorter the spread)

The driver will call you 1-2 days in advance to let you know the exact date of your delivery.  Meanwhile, your moving coordinator will do their best to keep you updated on the delivery date.   However, even the coordinator often does not know the exact day of delivery, even after the crew has picked everything up from your former home.

The best way to control your delivery date is by changing the date you can control:  the loading date.  If you change the loading date, the dates of the delivery spread will also change correspondingly.  However, it is not advised to change your loading date after you book your move.

It is also a good idea to remain flexible during the delivery spread dates so you are free to accept the delivery on any of those days.  If there are any days in the delivery spread that you will be unavailable to meet the movers for whatever reason, always make a back up plan at the time of booking for someone else to meet the truck on those days.

Click here to read more tips for interstate moving.