How to move a workshop

[William C Rogers]

Well sometime this year I will be moving my workshop. I am building a new house and pole barn. My current pole barn is 30 x 56. The new one will be 30 x 40. I intend to have a small separate room for the twin dust collector I have. My real question is how do people move their workshops. I have quite a bit of equipment and wood. The heaviest is a Mini-Max FS35 about 700 pounds. It is on wheels. But I have a lot of other big and nice major tools. My thinking is a POD and pack it myself. Are there other options?

Thanks

Bill

[Tom Clark FL]

Hi Bill,

After 40 years in FL we were ready for a climate change. We moved to NM in March. Moving my 40x60 shop myself 1600 miles was not an option. The new shop was 36x60 - but this time it was divided into three rooms and very heavily insulated.

After talking to many commercial movers we used Mayflower. The mover said moving the shop and equipment was not a problem. Only two heavy machines, a mill and lathe (about 2200 pounds each). They arranged for a rental fork truck at both ends. I had a machinery pry bar so I was able to roll the machines into place once they got them off of their truck. All the small machines such as table and band saws were moved with hand trucks and furniture dollies. The move included 24 shop cabinets I had built over 25 years. All was moved with no major damage - just a few scratches here and there.

Total cost for the shop move was about $7K. They used a crew of five guys (gorillas?) who made the move seem simple. I just sat back and keep an eye on them. They were good…

[Keith Westfall]

Tom, nice to see some airplanes in your shop! I'm just getting into that hobby a bit as well - your shop looks like a nice workplace...

klw

[jeff . whitaker]

Tom, nice to see some airplanes in your shop! I'm just getting into that hobby a bit as well - your shop looks like a nice workplace...

klw

and you just THOUGHT wood working was expensive!! RC is a VERY slippery slope!!

[Jim Andrew]

William, how far are you moving? If it is just a few miles away, would be fairly simple, but hundreds of miles?

[Jim Becker]

and you just THOUGHT wood working was expensive!! RC is a VERY slippery slope!!

Heh...heh...try horses. ;)

On the OP's question, it's certainly possible to use a "Pods" type arrangement to move tools. A friend of mine did that recently on a long move from PA to Idaho. He happened to use the U-Haul version of the service for all their household goods as well as his shop. His FS35 went in just fine as did the other heavy tools...the "Pod" isn't very far off the ground so a simple ramp suffices to load. Care must be taken to secure things well, however! Now in my friend's case, loading out of his shop was much more of a challenge...it was a second floor shop and a rental forklift was required to get the big stuff down...:)

The downside to the "Pods" type move is that "you" have to load and unload at both ends...that's real work.

[Keith Westfall]

and you just THOUGHT wood working was expensive!! RC is a VERY slippery slope!!

Oh Great! Just what I needed to hear... :(

[Jim Andrew]

A friend of mine has a lot of horses. He says you might as well just take money and burn it. His wife likes the horses.

[Shawn Russell]

I moved my shop from Indiana to Atlanta. I rented a half trailer through upack. I moved all of equipment onto pallets and built boxes around them. The trucks come with a ramp but I rented a lift, much faster and safer. I put my machinery at the front of the trailer and loaded furniture at the rear. They come and hook the trailer up and deliver to wherever you want. They will also store the trailer if you need it. One of the best moving experiences I had. This was back in 2009 so I would check their reviews now, but back then it was about 600 bucks for the trailer plus 30 days storage. The trailer was 28 feet which I was the only one with access to. You can rent a percentage of the trailer, but I did not like that thought.

Cheers

[Jim Becker]

A friend of mine has a lot of horses. He says you might as well just take money and burn it. His wife likes the horses.

Naa...you feed the money in the front end of the horse and it comes out the back, um...transformed... :D

[Greg Portland]

Well sometime this year I will be moving my workshop. I am building a new house and pole barn. My current pole barn is 30 x 56. The new one will be 30 x 40. I intend to have a small separate room for the twin dust collector I have. My real question is how do people move their workshops. I have quite a bit of equipment and wood. The heaviest is a Mini-Max FS35 about 700 pounds. It is on wheels. But I have a lot of other big and nice major tools. My thinking is a POD and pack it myself. Are there other options?

Thanks

Bill
How far is the move? Local trucking companies are shockingly cheap if you're also paying to move everything in your home. I had a 20x30' shop that was packed with equipment and it cost me $300 extra to move everything in the shop. Note that I packed and boxed everything... this was picking up the equipment and dropping it off. IMO, it was worth every penny. I filled and saran-wrapped my existing cabinets so there was not a lot of extra small items floating around (maybe 5-6 large boxes of stuff). The drive between houses was ~10-15m.

A very important note is that most trucking insurance policies will not cover replacement costs of your equipment unless a supplemental policy is purchased. Your home owners -may- be cheaper; it's worth shopping around.

[Greg Portland]

Heh...heh...try horses. ;)

On the OP's question, it's certainly possible to use a "Pods" type arrangement to move tools. A friend of mine did that recently on a long move from PA to Idaho. He happened to use the U-Haul version of the service for all their household goods as well as his shop. His FS35 went in just fine as did the other heavy tools...the "Pod" isn't very far off the ground so a simple ramp suffices to load. Care must be taken to secure things well, however! Now in my friend's case, loading out of his shop was much more of a challenge...it was a second floor shop and a rental forklift was required to get the big stuff down...:)

The downside to the "Pods" type move is that "you" have to load and unload at both ends...that's real work.
Pods has a maximum weight/sq.ft. limitation. This was an issue when I moved (a lot) of books.

[William C Rogers]

The move will be about 180 miles. Scheduling is my biggest problem. I am "going" to build a house and a workshop. They won't give me a permit for the workshop until I start the house unless it is agriculture. I thought about telling I was going to have a goat farm Same deal as horses, but they eat less), but with 2 1/2 acres I didn't think they would buy it. So I will need to sell this house to start the next one and workshop. If everything would fall in place I would just have a moving company do it with the house items. But my guess it won't. I am also using the equipment right to make my cabinets and still working. So I am guessing I will have a month to pack, but may need storage before the final move.

Greg, thanks for the trucking company thought as I hadn't considered it.

[george newbury]

We are retired and moving about 820 miles. From a suburban home with 2 each 10x15 sheds to a rural house with 5,500 sq feet in 4 almost contiguous shops. About once a month we load up a vehicle and drive a load down, stay a few weeks and drive back. I've also taken down a 26' moving van and an enclosed trailer.

My wife and I pack and unpack everything ourselves. There is no one to blame but ourselves. She misplaced a valuable bag of figurine boxes and blamed it on me, for 6 months until she found it, but so far neither of uss have stolen any of the stuff from ourselves.

My father used commercial movers twice and lost a small fortune in broken furniture and stolen chinese carvings.

Due to family obligations at both ends we don't plan on finishing the "move" for several years.
The biggest problem is needing something that's at the other site.

I strongly urge the OP to figure out how to get some temporary secure shelter built, perhaps a 10x9x40 shipping container, to allow storage of items "ferried" to the new site.

[John Lifer]

Moved 450 miles about 3 yrs ago. As I kept house/shop I moved over a 2 yr period. Still have the shop and moved my large equipment only this year. Loaded and moved and unloaded with very minimal help from my wife and daughter, (read move a cart under a load a couple of times) 5x10 ft single axle trailer held my Delta 14" BS, my PM2000 TS, Delta 45-450 lathe, Delta 6x48 sander, and about 200 bf of lumber in one load, And a 5th wheel hitch!. Truck was full of other shop items.
250472

I had a small 400lb HF hoist in old shop and nothing but hydraulic motorcycle lift here. It can be done, but it isn't easy if time is an issue.

[Eric Porter]

Bill,
I made a similar move, will be 6 yrs. ago on the 15th of this month. Moved from Spartanburg, SC to upper East TN. I was changing jobs so the company paid for the move and movers packed, and moved all the household contents. I wasn't comfortable with them handling the shop because I have a number of large machines, tool boxes, etc. To move the shop I ended up renting a truck from Ryder because they were the only local company with liftgate trucks. The funny thing is that they would not rent a liftgate truck to an "individual". So I simply told them I was moving some machines for my new employer, which was true as because the company was paying for the move. All of my large equipment was on mobile bases so it was easy to roll them up on the liftgate, raise to the truck floor, roll them in the truck and tie them down. Same was true of the tool boxes. The rest of the shop contents were packed around the big tools as there was ample space in the truck. Turned out to be the most enjoyable part of the move.

Eric

[Jim Andrew]

One thing I'd like to point out, when SAIA delivered my new Grizzly planer and shaper, they had them tied to the side of the truck. So they couldn't fall over. When the guy backed in the yard, he got off to the side of the driveway, and I could hear some shifting going on. But everything was ok. Lot of value in tieing things up when you are moving.

[Thomas Canfield]

I moved (300 miles) my shop a little over a year ago using a POD plus moving 3+ truckloads (about 1500# each) in my pickup, and then the remainder with the household goods. I used a POD to give me the time to load at my leisure (2 weeks) and knew that things in it would need to be stored for a couple of months while having a new shop built. I made Excel spreadsheet to list my shop inventory, approximate weight, and volume to help determine what would go in the POD (7500# limit), pickup, or moving van. It would have been some cheaper probably if I could have just had the mover load and move everything, but going to storage would have required double handling, storage costs, etc, plus having everything dumped in the shop to deal with all at once. Moving companies and POD will not handle flamable material (paints, etc) and that was a reason for pickup plus I had to make several trips prior to the move to check on remodel progress on new home and find contrator for new shop. I was able to pick up a bunch(over 50) of the 6 gal size milk/water boxes at the local grocery store that were very handy for packing since they were uniform size and substantial, did not require assembly, and FREE. I was able to unload the POD in 2 days, but it took months to get things mostly situated, and still more to do a year later. Good Luck.