Had a third-floor walk-up this morning and we wrapped the dresser box with two blankets and hard corner guards, then assembled with a 4mm hex to avoid chewing up the cams. For those doing similar routes, do you schedule an extra 10–15 minutes per piece for safe handling and careful assembly, or is there a smarter way you build that buffer without blowing the window?
I stopped doing “10–15 minutes per piece” and just pad the stop by 9 minutes per flight for anything wider than about 24 in., since the 4mm hex assembly is predictable and that buffer covers the tight-corner carries without blowing the window. Do your third‑floor runs usually mean two big items or a whole room set?
I build the cushion around turns, not pieces — first corner gets the big allowance, each extra gets a little — and I prep on the truck: pre-thread cam dowels, rubber-band the 4mm to a panel, and painter’s-tape foam on stair noses so corners glide like Tetris. @levi_cla63’s flight-based idea is close; do you log it by tight corners/landings instead of items?
Quick win from my walk-ups: I carry a pre-folded coroplast corner chute (two 18×36 panels hinged with gaff tape) and tape it to the tight landing so the box rides a blanket sling around without chewing edges; I budget a single buffer for each chute deploy rather than per item — @hernandez36, do you log it that way or by flights?
I’ve had better luck budgeting by turn complexity and snapping on ‘pipe-foam corners’ — 1-in. insulation slit lengthwise with blue-tape pull tabs — so edges are protected in seconds and come off clean at the truck. Building on @chajohn’s chute, a quick cardboard footprint gauge for the box lets you test the landing first (the “pivot?” check) before hauling; do you pre-make a couple common sizes?