Loading and Unloading Help Cardiff

Cardiff moves a lot. At the 2021 census, 13.0% of Cardiff residents had moved within the UK in the previous year, against 8.3% across Wales, and the Welsh Government's latest dwelling estimates give Cardiff the highest share of privately rented homes of any council in Wales, at 17%.

Hiring the van is the easy part. Thrifty, which has a Cardiff branch, rents to drivers aged 22 or over who have held a full licence for at least 12 months, and limits drivers aged 22 to 24 to small vans. Hourly vans can be booked at IKEA's stores. What the hire desk does not supply is two people to carry a wardrobe down three flights.

The Health and Safety Executive's guide to manual handling is clear that the regulations do not set specific weight limits, and that its guideline figures are not safe limits for lifting and carrying. The highest figures in its lifting filter are 25kg for men and 16kg for women, for a load held close to the body between knuckle and elbow height. Further from the body, or above the shoulder, the figures drop sharply. The guide is HSE's manual handling brief.

Team lifting does not simply add up. HSE's fuller guidance suggests a team should count on about 85% of the total of its members' individual capabilities, and that one person should plan and take charge of the lift. A fridge freezer or a washing machine is a two person job by any of those measures, which is most of what loading help is for.

Hire firms size their vans by what they hold. Enterprise describes its extra large van as up to 14 cubic metres, about 60 medium boxes or a two bed home, and its Luton as up to 17.3 cubic metres, about 70 medium boxes or a three bed home.

How the van is loaded matters as much as its size. Heavy items go low and towards the front, white goods stay upright, and soft things fill the gaps so nothing shifts on a Cardiff speed hump. Our van size guide covers the load floors and payloads, and why a hired Luton cannot go to a Vale of Glamorgan tip afterwards.

A storage container or pod delivered to the road outside your home is not just parked. Under section 171 of the Highways Act 1980, which applies in Wales, a person may temporarily deposit building materials, rubbish or other things in a street only with the consent of the highway authority, and that consent can come with conditions. In Cardiff the highway authority is the council, and its process is on its website. The law is on legislation.gov.uk.

Once it is in place, a container is loaded much like a van, except the door is at street level and there is no tail lift. We load from the back forward, heavy to the floor, and strap the load so it does not move when the container is lifted onto its lorry.

Unloading into a storage unit is one of the commonest jobs. If you have hired the van, we meet you at the facility and do the carrying. If you would rather we bring the van as well, that is our self-storage removals service, which runs the whole job end to end.

Either way, the time on the day goes on the corridor from the loading bay to the unit, so tell us the unit's floor and how far it is from the lift.

Loading help is quoted on the people and the hours the job needs, and agreed before the day. Tell us the size of the van or container, what is going in it, and the floors and distances at each end, and we will say how many of us it takes and what it costs.

If the job turns out to need a van after all, a man and van is priced on our published rates.