Posted by Moving K Style
One of the joys of living overseas is to see how other countries do things differently than in your home country. Sometimes they do it better, other times it is just different. We recently moved and so we’re able to observe moving K style.
I must have moved about 25 times over the years. In the States, of Thailand, Korea, India, Barbados, and Spain.
The best movers are in Korea. The worst movers were in the U.S., Thailand, Indian, Barbados and Spain were in between.
A little-known factoid is that in the U.S. most movers are ex-cons. The moving companies have long hired ex-cons because they need big muscular men and women to do what is a physically demanding job. And they have found that ex-cons are good employees because they have a powerful incentive to be good employees. After all, they don’t want to go back to prison, and the moving companies pay fairly well, particularly from the point of view of ex-cons who don’t have a lot of other options for high-paying jobs. Because moving companies will hire ex-cons, ex-cons get jobs through the ex-con grapevine so to speak.
In any event, here in Korea, they move things via large cranes that go all the way up to 30 floors as most people live in apartment buildings. We were moving from a five-story building in Yeongjong International City to the 17th floor of a 20th-story Hyundai apartment complex in Gimpo overlooking the locally famous Venice canal in Gimpo, where there are over 200 restaurants within a one-mile walk down the canal and on the side streets next to the canal.
They pack everything into pallets that they raise up or down via the cranes. See pictures below.
They are fast and efficient. They employ big muscular dudes to move the heavy stuff and woman to do the packing and move the smaller stuff. Some things they move via elevators as well.
They take one day to do it coming at 8 am, moving to the new place by 2 pm, and finishing up by 6 pm with a crew of eight or so people.
In the U.S. they take three days, and I have never seen the use of moving cranes. They use elevators or stairs. For our international moves they took 3 days to accomplish it, packing up the HHE goods (items we need right away) the first day, then everything else the second day.
Overseas, they took three days per their contract with the USG but I suspect they only need two days for local customers.
The cost was quite reasonable. About $2,000. Most of my moves over the years were USG paid so I have no idea what the cost would be, but I did move a few years on my dime and it was about 1,000 dollars and took two days.
https://www.youtube.com › watch?v=CPJRr78uBBs
How Korean move from apartment – YouTube
Our neighbors were moving out and they called for movers and packers service. This is how it works due to the tiny size of the apartments.
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