When one move isn’t one move: how split deliveries and storage work together

Sometimes a house move isn’t just A to B. The van fills up in one drive, and by the time everything is unloaded it has been to three addresses. A moving house with storage in the middle. Furniture peeling off to a family member on the way. A studio’s worth of kit heading into a container while the main house lands somewhere new. We see it often enough across Cornwall, Devon and Somerset that it deserves its own conversation, because a split move needs planning that a straight-through move does not.

Three recent examples, all from the last few weeks, all shaped differently.

One family were downsizing. Most of the house went to their new place, and the wife’s studio, easels, storage racks, half-finished canvases, went into a container at our Truro depot while they decided what the new space could hold. That decision does not need to happen on moving day. It can wait a month, or six.

Another move started in Bristol and finished in Devon, but with a stop in the middle. The buyers were between homes for a fortnight, so the bulk of the household went straight into storage at Exeter and a smaller load came out to a rented flat: enough to live on until completion on the new place. Two deliveries out of one collection.

The third was a family heading to Gibraltar. Most of their belongings were going into international shipping, but a set of furniture pieces were promised to a sister in Sparkford, so the crew ran those across to Somerset first thing before the rest of the load carried on to the container.

None of these are unusual. All three needed the plan sorted before the truck was loaded, because once things are on the van, changing your mind costs time.

Completion dates rarely line up. That is the honest truth of English house buying. You exchange, and a fortnight later you are moving, and the chain slips, and suddenly you need somewhere for your life to sit for ten days.

Sometimes it is longer. A build overruns. A renovation on the new place is not finished. A relocation happens ahead of the family joining. The house is empty and ready, but the destination isn’t. Container storage at our Truro and Exeter depots is designed for exactly this window. Your belongings are loaded into a wooden container at the property, sealed, and stored until you say when. Nothing is handled twice, because the container is your unit from the moment it is loaded until it comes back out for delivery.

For families who already know the gap is coming, flag it on the very first call. It changes the shape of the day and the paperwork behind it.

The other half of the picture is the multi-drop move. One collection, more than one delivery point.

The commonest version is furniture going to a relative. A dining table promised to a daughter. A sofa the grandchildren will use. Sometimes it is the reverse: a house being cleared and pieces going to two or three siblings around the county before the rest is delivered or stored. Sometimes it is a business element, tools or stock heading to a workshop while the household goes home.

The mechanics matter here. We need the addresses in advance, in order, with a contact at each one. We need to know what is going where before the crew starts wrapping, because items are labelled and loaded in reverse order of drop-off. Last on, first off. That is how the van stays sensible and nothing gets lost between stops.

There is also the honest bit about access. If drop three is down a lane the 18-tonner cannot reach, we plan a shuttle from the outset. Better to know on the survey than on the day.

This is the part that changes most on a split move. A single-address move can sometimes be handled off the instant guide price and a phone conversation. A split move almost never can.

Arrange a survey to get your quote, and tell us the full shape of it on the call. Every address, every stop, roughly what is going to each one, whether anything is going into storage and for how long, whether anything is heading overseas after that. The surveyor uses that to work out the crew size, the vehicle, the running order, the labelling system, and whether it is one day’s work or two. It also affects insurance cover, which is not the same for items in transit, items in storage, and items on an onward international leg.

Video surveys handle split moves fine. You can walk us round each part of the house that matters and talk us through what is going where. If part of the move is at another address already, a phone video of that room works too. The formal quote comes back once we have the whole picture.

Most split moves we handle have a South West leg. That is the rule of what we do, and it happens to be what makes split moves workable: one crew, one company, one set of paperwork covering the whole thing.

Across Cornwall, we run split moves from our Truro depot, often with storage in the middle for families waiting on a completion or a build. In Devon, our Exeter facility covers the same pattern across the county and along the M5, including the Bristol-to-Devon moves that so often need a fortnight of storage in between. And across Somerset, we handle the drop-and-carry-on moves like the Sparkford delivery: a stop for a family member, then the load carries on to its main destination or into the shipping office for an international leg.

If your move is going to be more than one move, tell us early. The plan is the thing that makes a split day feel like a single job, and a good plan starts with a proper survey.