I've moved with local muscle a few times, and had ...

I've moved with local muscle a few times, and had friends who moved with them both personally and for business. Before my last encounter, I would have given them a very positive review, but this last experience was awful.

I recently had to move from Portland, Maine, to St. Paul, Minnesota after living in Maine for six years. During my time in Maine, as in all other places I have lived, I strove to support local businesses. I had moved once previously with Local Muscle and that had gone fine: at that time, I had moved about a half a mile between apartments inside Portland, and I had packed my belongings myself.

This time I found myself with a larger workload at my job, and since the last move I had also developed rheumatoid arthritis, which unfortunately meant I couldn't pack my own stuff because my hands don't work well enough anymore for me to do that kind of repetitive gripping and lifting. Fine, right? I can hire people to do that, put money into the local economy, not have to take as much time off work, and it'll be less stressful. I called Local Muscle and arranged a date for this, and also a date to load my truck.

On the appointed date, four young men showed up to pack all my worldly belongings. Three of them told me they had never packed anyone's stuff before. They seemed to have no idea that it doesn't work to put a bunch of heavy stuff in a large box because then you'll have to lift the box. They had to be told to wrap my dishes in paper - they were originally going to put them in a box in a pile. Books were bent. Some of my framed artwork was wrapped appropriately and some was just shoved in boxes at odd angles.

The next day four young men came to load the truck. Several of them had also never done this. I had hired another company to do the driving, because doing that with Local Muscle was cost prohibitive. No problem, right? The driver of the truck gave me some recommendations, including getting moving blankets and ratchet straps, which I did. Local Muscle used the blankets, but had to be told to put one under my mattress so it didn't get totally trashed by the vibrations of the truck. They wrapped my TV well, but failed to secure my dresser, my sewing machine, a few of my bookcases, parts of my bed, or most of the boxes. This means everything slid around like crazy on the road. Some of my stuff was damaged and some was destroyed. They ignored the ratchet straps almost completely, despite my request that they use them to secure things.

When truck arrived in St. Paul, it became apparent that things were worse than a little overconfidence. In addition to not securing things, they had packed heavy boxes on top of light ones, making all imbalances worse and crushing some of the lighter boxes.

Let me offer some detail: I had one bookcase completely destroyed; another was half destroyed; my dresser was seriously scraped up and one of the handles was broken off and broken in half; my grandmother's silver bowl was dented; three of my framed artworks had the glass shattered because Local Muscle just shoved a bunch of picture frames into a box with no padding at all; a photo a close friend had professionally framed now has a big dent in the frame; some of my tubes of paint ruptured; something went through my mirror and it was shattered so badly it wasn't even a good halloween joke; a number of my books were bent and damaged; a number of DVD cases were cracked; and a bunch of my bedding is stained because hey, soft stuff doesn't need to go in boxes or bags, right?

Overall I feel that Local Muscle was extremely careless with my belongings and the people they sent to help me move didn't know what they were doing. To add insult to injury, Local Muscle has refused to return my calls or emails. DO NOT HIRE.