Moving The Tiny House

A subject that brings fear and nervousness to anyone out there who has spent countless hours and dollars building their bite dream home and we were no different. For many people when that time comes it may be the first time you have ever towed anything at all so it can be quite scary to have so much riding on the line for a novice.

Rolling Off!

Rolling Off!

 

In my line of work with Tiny House Trailers towing a trailer is something i do half the time i’m working. in a given year i can put on about 15-20k miles towing alone, but when it came to moving our Tiny House that was something i had no experience doing. Sure i have moved long trailers like it and my own personal trailer is a tandem axle (which has a learning curve as it is compared to a single axle trailer) But moving something so large and so Box-Like had me stressed for sure. In all honesty it was one of my biggest fears during the whole building process, was it going to be too heavy? would the weight be distributed evenly? There was just so many variables that it stressed me out so much. If we decided to build a smaller Tiny House say 20ft i would not have thought twice about moving it but since ours was 32ft long built on a Custom 28ft Trailer it has me a tad worried.

 

With all that in mind we decided to get rid of some of that stress and hire a professional mover, preferably someone who has moved a Tiny House before. We started calling around but it was hard to find a company that has good rates and was willing to do it so we went to Coast to Coast Transportation and received a quote to move our Tiny House.  Shortly after we received a message from Chris Friend ([email protected] 321-258-7144) about the shipment. I gave him more info on the house and where it was moving to etc and then Jonathan sent me a bid and it was a great rate plus he was insured up to 100k free so that brought a lot of peace of mind so we booked him on the spot. He was excited to move our house and he has moved many tiny houses before so we felt like we were in great hands.

On the morning of the move we started preparing the house for transit. one of the biggest jobs was to remove the portable deck which i did the previous night but that day we needed to remove breakable items and clear a path through the trees on the long driveway. For 3 hours i trimmed trees and branches up to 14 feet high and wide enough for the Tiny House to Make it through.

We set the time for Chris to show up around noon so we would not have to deal with school traffic and rush hour. Chris showed up early and was helping up prep the trailer for the move, We lowered the stabilizer jacks and backed up his 2002 Ford F350 7.3L 4×4 Dually and hooked him up the the house and away he went!

We laid plywood down for a driveway over the bark

We laid plywood down for a driveway over the bark

 

 

 

Hopefully he will make it through all the trees i trimmed!

Hopefully he will make it through all the trees i trimmed!

Here we go, no turning back now that we are on public roads!

Just clearing fine!

Just clearing fine!

Swinging wide to avoid the power lines
Dodging limbs!
So many branches!
After this point we stopped because there was some low hanging branches that prevented us from moving forward and we had to stop and block traffic on one lane while i went back and grabbed a chainsaw and bigger ladder (Highly recommend bring those!)

Now here is a video clip of the point after we finished trimming the last of the low hanging branches and finally get to get up to speed and enter the freeway. This video is an unedited go pro clip of about 17mins. but the most interesting part is when we are on the freeway and you can see how a little bit of wind can make a tiny house sway at freeway speeds. This was a scary moment for us and it looked much worse when we were following the Tiny House and at this point we were so happy to have hired a professional!

Enjoy…

 

That was some sway huh?

This is why having a experienced driver is worth the money! I asked Chris afterwards if that was common and he said “Yeah, every Tiny House i have towed sways like that. There is no shocks on the trailer and sometimes they can be squirrely on the freeway. After all it is like towing a huge box.”

We were so happy to have that behind us and we do not plan on taking it on the freeway again if we can ever help it!

Yay!!! More trees to trim!

Yay!!! More trees to trim!

 

The rest of the trek went very smoothly with some branches here and there and then we can finally see our final resting place… Then we hit a branch! once last stupid branch holding us back.

 

Stupid Stupid Branch!

Stupid Stupid Branch!

 

We made the whole trip with no issues and no damage then the very last branch makes a dent. A cosmetic dent but still a dent! (We ended up picking of a new piece of roofing material to replace the dented piece) Once again we needed to bring out the big guns (The Chainsaw) and cut this branch down!

Powerman Ray

Powerman Ray

 

My good friend Ray and our MVP for the whole entire build happily hopped up on the ladder and chopped the limb up so we could clear it and make it to our new spot!

 

The Beast That Made It Happen

The Beast That Made It Happen

 

Our New Home!

Our New Home!

 

The Entertaining Abode Has Arrived!

What a relief!  That was money well spent and we could not be more happier to have such a talented and skilled driver like Jonathan and Coast to Coast Transportation move our Tiny House. We would highly recommend to anyone in need to moving anything especially a Tiny House to call Chris Friend at 321-258-7144 ( www.TransportCoasttoCoast.com [email protected] ) He is the master when is comes to moving Tiny Houses and we will use him without a doubt in the future!