What should you do when you carefully pack all of your belongings into a truck for a cross country move and the driver promptly drives under a bridge that’s a couple feet shorter than said truck? That’s the question that one couple is asking after their move from Boston to Oakland, CA went horribly awry. They shared their story with a Boston alumni email list and one user posted it to LiveJournal. Their letter, plus a gallery of photos generously donated by eyewitness (and Flickr user) K a t m, inside.

Hello all,

This is my first time posting to this list and I’m hoping that someone will be able to help! My husband and I contracted with a moving company, Broadway Express, to drive our belongings from Boston to Oakland, CA. Yesterday, after the truck was packed by local professional movers, the Broadway Express driver drove down Mt. Vernon Street, turned onto Storrow Drive and promptly hit the Longfellow Bridge (11′ clearance and a 13′ 6″ truck), shearing off the entire top and sides of the truck and distributing our belongings across the road. We have the standard moving insurance offered by this company, which is $0.60/lb. In retrospect, we should probably have tried to get better coverage, but who would have thought that the truck driver would try to scrape the top 2.5 feet off of his vehicle?

My question for the list is: does anyone have experience in dealing with a total moving disaster? How can we maximize our reimbursement? Most of the furniture was damaged and a good deal was totally destroyed. The moving company claims that we need to pay for the move in order to file a claim, so they have already charged my credit card. This was our first experience using professional movers and I can’t say I enjoyed it.

Thank you in advance for any advice and let me know if you’d like to see pictures — I have a ton.

Best,
Unfortunate People

Has anything like this ever happened to you? Any advice for these people?

Don’t hire Broadway Express as your moving company [Universal Hub]

More info on the bridge crash [LiveJournal]
(Photos: K a t m )

GALLERY







END

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