Moving Horror Stories

A move to a new home means knowing your best defense against moving day malevolence. Consider the following mortifying situations and heed the lessons learned in each case. Forty-three million people move every year in the U.S.; don’t you want to be one of the happy ones?

Mortifying Move Number One: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

While moving from Tallahassee, Florida, to New York City, Steve MacQueen planned to stop for the night at his sister’s in Gold Hill, North Carolina, which she assured him was “just outside Charlotte.” It turns out Gold Hill is 45 minutes from Charlotte, down a winding, unlit, two-lane highway. The night MacQueen tried to find it, a hellish rain attacked.

“I was driving the truck in a blinding storm,” he remembers. “At some point, I drove through an intersection. Ten miles later, I realized I needed to turn at that intersection, so I went to make a U-turn into what I thought was a driveway.” Unfortunately, he had pulled into a mud-choked construction site, a full foot lower than the road.

“I stupidly kept pumping the gas, getting us deeper into the mud,” MacQueen remembers. “The guy I was traveling with and I unpacked a couple boxes, and flattened them out to use as tracks for the back wheels. About two hours later, the truck finally pulled out. We got to my sister’s house an hour later, around 3 a.m., totally bedraggled and muddy.”

Lesson learned: Plot your trip with a road atlas.

Mortifying Move Number Two: When Good Boxes Go Bad

Amanda Lucier, a student at Westfield State College in Westfield, Massachusetts, recalls a classmate who had to go without tunes for a semester (the horror!) because of faulty labeling. “She broke her stereo because she didn’t label the box ‘Fragile,’” Lucier says. “It ended up smashing when one of her friends dropped it because the box was so heavy. She didn’t know it was something breakable.”

Lesson learned: Label your boxes on the outside with words like “Fragile, Living Room” or “Breakable, Kitchen.” Be wary of being too specific; if you’re moving in a public space like a dorm, boxes marked “CDs,” “Stereo” and “TV” will tempt thieves.

Mortifying Move Number Three: The Ice Man Cometh

If you plan to move yourself, know the weather forecast for your entire route and heed dire predictions. Case in point: When David Dorne and wife Kristi Cameron were moving from Blacksburg, Virginia, on New Year’s Day of 1999, they continued with their plans despite a winter storm watch. Driving a rented truck with their car in tow through an ice storm on Blue Mountain proved to be a chilling experience, recalls Dorne. “As we were descending, the car began to fishtail behind us. Plus, we could barely see the road. Luckily a passing trucker signaled for us to follow him down.” Thankfully, they made it down the mountain and found a motel for the night.

Lesson learned: “The moving lesson we learned,” says Cameron, “is to take weather precautions very seriously.”

Mortifying Move Number Four: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Carrie Cantwell of Atlanta learned that poor planning paired with a pushy homeowner is a lethal combination. It played out this way: Cantwell was closing on her new condominium the same day her former house was closing. Scheduling them so close together turned what should have been a day of celebration into a day of reckoning.

“The second we closed on the house, the buyer said she was going to start moving her stuff in,” says Cantwell. “But all my furniture was still there. I had movers coming that afternoon, so I asked if she could wait until I got my stuff out. She said OK.”

Just a half-hour into closing on her new condo, Cantwell received a call. “I heard the burglar alarm going off in the background—the new owner asked me what my password was so she could turn it off. I gave it to her, but then couldn’t concentrate on the paperwork of the condo I was buying because I knew I had to race home. She told me she and her three brothers, her husband and dad would be back to move her things in a few hours, whether my movers had come or not.”

Sounds ghastly. But in the end, everything worked out; both women got into their new homes and nobody was hurt.

Lesson learned: Schedule your closing to coordinate with, not overlap, your move.