Business Report Correspondent

A root canal. A visit from the IRS. A Denver Nuggets game. These are a few things that might be less enjoyable than moving.

There’s an old saying about the three most stressful things in life being death, divorce and moving. It may be an exaggeration, but not much. With your life reduced to a pile of boxes and bare walls and worries about phone, cable and utility connections, to name a few, how couldn’t moving be stressful?

To take the bite out of a move, whether it’s across town or across the country, Paul Wetzelberger, co-owner of Boulder Valley Transfer, has several suggestions. The first thing to remember is not to pick a moving company solely on price. Moving is, “from top to bottom, a service industry,” Wetzelberger says. “If money is the most important thing, then a lot of times the move is not going to be as nice as maybe you would have liked it.”

Wetzelberger has owned Boulder Valley Transfer with Chris Klatt for five years, and he says the moving industry is plagued by low-cost, low-service operators. Check out a company’s reputation before casting your lot with them, he says. Check references and make some calls to recent customers.

“Make sure you’re comparing apples to apples” when comparing moving companies, adds Greg Woods, a relocation specialist with Erie-based Right Move Moving & Storage. Different moving companies offer different levels of service.

Woods says his company, which also has offices in Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, offers basic to elaborate kinds of moving services. The most inexpensive, the Bronze service, has movers whose sole task is to move items from point A to point B.

From there, you can go all the way up to the Platinum Service, Woods says. With that offering, the company hooks customers up with a move counselor, who can handle details like getting phone and utilities switched, addresses changed and connect you with a massage therapist to handle the stress of the day. At this level of service, movers not only load and unload the truck, they pack and unpack items and will even hang pictures in the customer’s new home.

Careful consideration should be given when deciding which moving company to use, as costs can be quite high. Wetzelberger says to move a family of four from a 2,500-square-foot house in Los Angeles to Boulder would cost between $6,000 and $8,000. Woods put the figure between $5,000 and $10,000.

Costs vary, of course, depending on how much stuff you have to move and how delicate it is. “You can have a 2,000-square-foot home that two men can move in a day,” Wetzelberger says, adding that the same size house can take six men. It depends on how much stuff the customer has and how organized they are.

Which brings to mind another important element to a successful move. Before deciding on a mover, get an in-home estimate of the charges. Wetzelberger says anything larger than a room full of furniture necessitates a meeting with the mover and an in-house estimate. “I would be very skeptical if somebody tells you that they can give you an estimate over the phone,” he said.

One helpful resource for would-be movers can be found at the Real Estate Buyer’s Agent Council Web site at www.rebac.net/movtips.htm. The site features links to online resources addressing what to do before the move and after the move. There also is one especially encouraging article on the tax deductibility of some moving expenses.