It is not the drive
People worry about the distance and the distance is the reliable part. A motorway is a motorway. What varies — enormously — is what happens when the vehicle arrives.
Every difficult long move we have done has been difficult at the far end, and almost always because something there was assumed rather than established.
Six things to establish
Before anybody loads anything:
- Where a vehicle can legally and physically stand, at the address rather than on the road.
- Whether anybody has to give permission — a council, a managing agent, a concierge.
- Whether the property is smaller, and by how much.
- What the final approach is actually like, particularly anywhere rural.
- Who will be there to receive it.
- Whether there is a gap between the two ends.
If you have not seen it, somebody should
Buying or renting at a distance is completely normal now, and plenty of people move into a property they have seen once or only online. That is fine — it just means the access question has not been answered by anybody.
Ask the agent for photographs of the street and the frontage, not only the rooms. Ask what the parking arrangement is. Ask whether a large vehicle has ever delivered there.
Do not trust a route planner for the last part
Going east, and into rural Wales, this is the single most common surprise. A planner will confidently route a lorry down a lane it should not be on, and it will be perfectly correct about the distance while being completely wrong about the road.
We check the final approach ourselves. Where it will not take a large vehicle, we shuttle in with a smaller one and that goes in the quote.
And be there, if you possibly can
On a long move the crew arrives having already done the distance. An empty house and an unanswered phone at that point is a genuinely bad situation for everybody.
If you cannot be there, nominate somebody in writing beforehand with a number they will answer.