Man and Van Prices in Watford

How much is going, how easy it is to reach at both ends, and how far apart the two addresses sit. That is genuinely all of it. A two-bed flat on the fourth floor of a Clarendon Road block with a single lift costs more than a two-bed semi in Garston with a driveway, even though the furniture is identical.

We work all three out before quoting, which is why the form asks about floors, lifts and parking. It is not box-ticking. It is the difference between a price that holds and a guess that does not.

Blankets, wrap and straps for the furniture are in the price, along with the labour at both ends. You are not billed separately for the lifting, the stairs, or the time spent protecting things properly.

Boxes, packing materials and a packing service are the exception, quoted separately if you want them.

For a clean run from one address to another we fix the price for the load, so the figure is settled before we pull away and nothing climbs while you watch the minutes.

Some jobs genuinely cannot be pinned down in advance, like emptying a garage where nobody knows what is at the back of it. Those can run by the hour instead. We agree which of the two it is before we start, never halfway through.

Watford is the one town in the county where the van is as likely to hold up the job as the stairs are. Most streets inside the ring road are controlled parking, the newer blocks put their spaces behind a height barrier, and on a Vicarage Road match day the roads around the ground are residents only for hours either side of kick-off.

None of that is a surcharge we spring on you. It is one of the things we ask about up front, because a fifty-metre carry and a five-metre carry are different jobs and the quote should say so before you agree to it.

A sofa bought on Marketplace from a ground-floor flat in Oxhey, delivered to a house in North Watford with a drive, is about as simple as a job gets and sits at the bottom of the single-item price. The same sofa going up to a third-floor flat off Clarendon Road with a lift too small for it is a two-person carry up the stairs, and costs more.

A one-bed flat moving from a block near Watford Junction to a terrace in Garston starts from the flat price above. What pushes it up is the carry: a lift that has to be booked at one end and a permit street with no space outside at the other.

A three-bed semi in Carpenders Park with a drive, moving to Croxley Green, is a full day for two people and lands near the three-bed figure. Add a loft, a garage and a garden shed full of tools, and it becomes a bigger van or a second load, which we would rather hear about at the quote than on the day.

These are illustrations of how the figures move, not quotes. Yours depends on your addresses, your access and your date.

Ringing round four firms for quotes costs you an afternoon and usually ends with four numbers you cannot compare. Putting the starting points in public means you can work out roughly where your move sits before you speak to anyone.

They are starting points, not the quote. The figure we send you is for your move, at your addresses, on your date, and it is the figure you pay.