Before you book a vehicle

Tape measure, post to post, at the narrowest point rather than at the top — many old gateways taper inwards. Send the number and a photograph taken from the road looking in.

Tell us where the passing places are and where the nearest turning point is. A driver who knows both before setting off will get in and out; one who does not may spend an hour reversing with traffic behind.

It does when it rains. A loaded vehicle is heavier than anything that normally uses a private track, and gravel over a thin base rutts or gives way. Where the surface is doubtful we stand on the road and shuttle.

The measurement nobody takes and the one that cannot be improvised around. A track wide enough and firm enough can still be closed to a high vehicle by one low branch. Look up before you ring us.

Kent has a great many, especially in the Darent and Medway valleys and under the old railway bridges. Tell us and we route around it or send something smaller — it is exactly what a survey exists to catch.

Common across the Medway towns, Gravesend and the coastal terraces. We establish where the vehicle can legally stand, apply for a suspension where the street needs one, and identify a second option in case the first is taken.

In the controlled zones, yes, and they are applied for in advance. There is no route to arranging one on the morning, whatever the circumstances.

More than people expect. Several of the river and coastal towns run steeply up from the water, and a carry uphill with a loaded sack truck is a materially different job from the same distance on the flat.

Usually the easiest work in the county — a made road, a dropped kerb and a drive. On that stock the volume rather than the access decides the day, and the loft is where the volume hides.

Sometimes, and it depends entirely on the council's restrictions and the time of year. We check before the date rather than arrive and find out, particularly in Thanet during the season.

On an exposed seafront, yes. Sheet material, mattresses, wardrobe doors and anything large and flat become genuinely difficult in a strong onshore wind, and it changes how a load is carried rather than whether it happens.

Good surfaces, long straight roads, and very few alternatives. When one route floods or closes there is often no second way in, so those jobs are planned with the weather in view rather than around it.

Frequently. They run deep and tall behind a narrow frontage, with a basement below and three floors above the door, and the street outside is rarely somewhere a vehicle can linger.

The large vehicle stands on the nearest suitable road and a smaller one runs between it and the house. Everything travels on one vehicle for the journey itself — the shuttle is only the final stretch.

It takes longer, because it means more handling and more journeys, and that is costed into the quotation openly. A firm absorbing it silently will be rushing by the middle of the afternoon.

Where the smaller vehicle still cannot reach, where the ground will not take any vehicle at all, or where the remaining carry would be unsafe. We say so in advance rather than starting and hoping.

You mostly cannot — it depends on the road, not on you. What you can do is tell us early, so it is a planned arrangement with a second vehicle rather than a problem discovered at a gate.

The measured volume, the access at both ends, how much packing you want, whether anything is held, and what the last road requires. On a rural Kent address that final item can be the largest part of the day.

We will talk usefully and we will not put a figure on it. A phone call cannot see a gateway, a turning point, a wet track or a low branch.

Yes, and on rural moves it is a real use of storage rather than a theoretical one. A building site, a flooded track or a winter lane can all make an otherwise fine destination temporarily unreachable.

Across the UK and into Europe by road. Anything leaving Kent northwards or westwards has the same first decision — which crossing, and at what hour — and it is made before the load is built.

As long as the gap runs. Everything is inventoried at collection, and the storage agreement sets out access and the notice we need to bring it back out.