Man and Van Hire in Central London

The typical booking is a studio or one bedroom flat, a set of furniture bought online, a few desks and chairs, or a load going into storage. Anything from a handful of large items up to roughly a small flat's worth. Above that it becomes a removals job and we would quote it as one rather than pretend a single van will manage it in a trip.

The service is deliberately flexible about what it is. People book us to shift a room within the same house before a decorator arrives, to take a marketplace wardrobe across three postcodes, or to clear a hallway of furniture into a storage unit. If it fits in a van and needs carrying, it is a man and van job.

A ground floor collection of a few boxes is one person. A three seater sofa going to a third floor walk-up is two, and attempting it with one is how furniture and walls get damaged. We decide from what you tell us about the floor, the staircase and the items, and the price you are quoted reflects the crew we are actually sending.

This is the single most common place cheap quotes go wrong. A one person price for a two person job looks better on the phone and costs more by the end of the afternoon, either in time or in damage. We would rather quote the real number up front.

Hourly rates create an incentive that is exactly backwards. In a city where a shared goods lift can eat forty minutes on its own, where the concierge is at lunch, and where Victoria Street does not move at four in the afternoon, every structural delay lands on the customer's bill.

On a fixed price those delays land on us, which is where they belong, and it gives us a direct reason to check the access properly before the day rather than discovering it on the morning. You agree a figure and that is the figure, including fuel, mileage, the Congestion Charge and the ULEZ.

Several Central London addresses cannot take a Luton at all. The cobbled mews in Belgravia and Kensington, the narrow lanes off Shad Thames with overhead walkways, basement loading bays with a two metre height limit, and the railway arches running through SE1 all rule out a box van.

Where that applies we bring a smaller vehicle and do an extra run. It is in the price from the start rather than sprung on you when the van stops at a width restriction. Tell us the street and we will work it out before you book.

We hold back some capacity each week for jobs booked at a few days' notice, because a good share of man and van work is by nature last minute. Same-week bookings are usually possible and same-day sometimes is.

Evenings and weekends are available and are often the better choice in the centre, since the streets are usable and managed buildings are quieter. They are in higher demand than a Tuesday morning, so they need booking a little further ahead.