Moving trophy collection advise

[Royal27]

It appears johnnyblues is coming down to our part of the world where he will be a little more appreciated! He may take awhile to get use to the heat, but more appreciated as a hunter never the less.

With where Johnny is looking we will be 20-30 minutes away from each other. We will be able to yell at each other without use of the Internet for sure!

 

[sierraone]

Now if there is a shooting range between you two, you have it made!

 

[johnnyblues]

Definitely! Going to have to have Royal and the misses over for good Italian food

 

[johnnyblues]

Havn't done it, but you may need to look into renting, borrowing a fairly large enclosed trailer. I would look at getting lots of pieces of thick plywood to be able to screw your mounts into, and then try the best you can to brace them and strap them in like the pics above. Wish you all the best in your move!

Looks like these guys are in your neck of the woods. They called me this morning. Greensboro North Carolina. Send me a quote today. I'll share it later.

 

[cpr0312]

Yes they are, A taxidermist I used in TX once uses them all the time. He says they make runs out to TX almost weekly and deliver all the way to through the south/east to the clients. They were not making a run when my Aoudad was ready, or that's who would have brought it to me. I forgot about them, hopefully they can help you out!

 

[PARA45]

Hey Johnnyblues, where in GA are you moving to? I live in GA as well, I am currently station at Warner Robins AFB.

The military moved me, and I basically told the packers how I wanted my mounts packed. The pheasants that I have, I loaded them in the U-Haul trailer I was towing, because I didn't think they would survive the move. I placed them in a box with popcorn, and besides the mess of removing the popcorn, every feather was in great shape. Nothing damaged.

Good luck on your move!

 

[johnnyblues]

Hey Johnnyblues, where in GA are you moving to? I live in GA as well, I am currently station at Warner Robins AFB.

The military moved me, and I basically told the packers how I wanted my mounts packed. The pheasants that I have, I loaded them in the U-Haul trailer I was towing, because I didn't think they would survive the move. I placed them in a box with popcorn, and besides the mess of removing the popcorn, every feather was in great shape. Nothing damaged.

Good luck on your move!

Hi , looking into NW Georgia.

 

[johnnyblues]

Ok folks. Trophy transport just quoted me $6500 for the move from New York to Georgia.

 

[Royal27]

Doesn't seem too bad considering 45 animals and a bunch of full mounts etc?

Nothing amount moving is cheap....

Definitely worth checking with some other though. Maybe Wildlife Gallery?

 

[PARA45]

Very nice! Welcome to GA. BTW, Georgia is an extremely gun friendly state and conceal carry license are not hard to get either.

 

[johnnyblues]

I'm going to check elsewhere. $6500 is a bit more than I thought

 

[johnnyblues]

Just called my taxidermist he said he normally does not do moving but he does try to help out his customers with this. When ready he will give me a quote.

 

[thi9elsp]

$6,500 sounds like a lot, but when I sit back and think about it, maybe a reasonable amount. Let's say 2 guys:
1 day travel to NY
2 - 3 days to take trophies down and load into trailer
1 day travel to GA
1 or 2 days to unload and put trophies up
1 day travel back to NC
6 - 8 days at $800 / day for two guys plus hotel, meals, gas, etc.... maybe $1,000 - 1,100 a day would be $6 - 8,000.

 

[johnnyblues]

$6,500 sounds like a lot, but when I sit back and think about it, maybe a reasonable amount. Let's say 2 guys:
1 day travel to NY
2 - 3 days to take trophies down and load into trailer
1 day travel to GA
1 or 2 days to unload and put trophies up
1 day travel back to NC
6 - 8 days at $800 / day for two guys plus hotel, meals, gas, etc.... maybe $1,000 - 1,100 a day would be $6 - 8,000.

I think it's high. They would have one day to travel. One day to load the trailer and one day to Georgia. One day to unload. They would not be hanging trophies on the wall. They would simply unload the trailer and place life size trophies back on pedestals (2) and 2 shoulder mounts on pedestals back together. The rest are all shoulder mounts. I was thinking and hoping to be about $4500 tops. Let's see when ready what my taxidermist will charge.

 

[thi9elsp]

@johnnyblues agreed if that's the case the $4,500 sounds like where i would have expected it to land too. good luck with whomever and with the move.

 

[edward]

ive done it,not fun.ill never do it again,ill die here.best of luck j.b.once its over youll look back and say,piece of cake!a few glasses of wine doesnt hurt.just kidding,it will go smoothly.

 

[johnnyblues]

Ya few glasses of wine never hurts. Lol. Thanks

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

This is an interesting subject, I've not been in this spot before. But I hope to be someday as I will not retire in Phoenix. So I ran some numbers in your case @johnnyblues presuming your home is Seaford, NY and will be in Atlanta, GA. It's a bit of mish mash between if you did it yourself and hiring it out.

Distance one way = 900 miles, roundtrip 1800miles.

If you rented a truck and did a roundtrip this is how I figure the cost:

$25 / day rental plus $0.55 / mile : 4 days X $25/day + 1800 miles X $0.55 / mile = $1090

Gas assuming 10mpg : 1800 miles / 10mpg X $2 / gal = $360

Now if you were to hire this job out and two guys came to your place to pickup and deliver and takes two 8 hour days for load / unload, and 30 hours of travel to cover 1800 miles, and finally assuming $20 / hour for each of the workers then:

Labor Cost = (2 X 8 hours + 2 X 30 hours ) X $20 / hour = $1520

Now because these two guys are on the road, I'm doubting they'd both sleep in a truck. I guess it's possible that they're trading places but assume they have 3 nights in a hotel plus some sort of budget for meals. So I'll throw in $500 for this.

Adding up all of these costs:
$1520 + $500 + $360 + $1090 = $3470

Now what I've found in life is that when I estimate things that I usually miss a few pennies and nickels along the way and as a result the cost is always a bit higher than I anticipated, so I add a 10% buffer on top and this gets me a bit closer. If I do that with the $3470 number, that takes it closer to $3800. This seems reasonable to do as I know without question I'm not taking into account things like toll roads, insurance, other fixed business costs and who knows what else.

If I'm relatively close then I'd say $4500 is a bit low to expect for this job. Having said that I think I could save a bunch of money renting a truck and spending one full day loading it up and then make the drive myself. I'd go ahead and pay the one way trip charge to U-Haul and not do a roundtrip. The system they have is great, but its not rocket science. You could do a lot of prep before hand to reduce the time you actually have the truck in your driveway just being loaded. All you really need is some lumber, a bunch of bolts, a saw and a drill, and one extra set of hands (maybe two) and you could do this. Once you get to GA, you just unscrew the bolts one animal at a time and offload and your done.

What would be more appealing to me for paying the transport company is not having to deal with the jolly good time of negotiating the truck through the traffic of NYC / Philly / Baltimore / Washington D.C. and whatever other cities you go through along the way. 900 miles is a long way in such a vehicle and I truly doubt you could average 60mph as I assumed in my calculations.

 

[johnnyblues]

Phil, I appreciate you taking so much time to calculate the move. I agree $6500 is an awful lot of money to move my collection. I wonder though since I'm not an expert by no means in moving these trophies I can't help but think I may cause some damage to some trophies. That could run into the thousands for repairs with shipping etc. As time nears my taxidermist said we would also quote me a price only because I'm a customer. Now if his price to move is anything like his taxidermy prices he should be real close to trophy transports prices. Unfortunately.

 

[PHOENIX PHIL]

Phil, I appreciate you taking so much time to calculate the move. I agree $6500 is an awful lot of money to move my collection. I wonder though since I'm not an expert by no means in moving these trophies I can't help but think I may cause some damage to some trophies. That could run into the thousands for repairs with shipping etc. As time nears my taxidermist said we would also quote me a price only because I'm a customer. Now if his price to move is anything like his taxidermy prices he should be real close to trophy transports prices. Unfortunately.

No problem, like I said this is something I see down the road for myself. I guess what it boils down to is what price do you put on peace of mind?

I just drove one way about 1100 miles to Texas to take my son to college. I rented a car trailer on which we took his car. It certainly cost me more than if I were to have just let him hit the road in the car by himself. But sending my 18 year old out on his own to make that long drive through the west TX desert and for that long a distance wasn't something I was terribly thrilled about.