Pool Table Moving in Raleigh, NC Slate removed and releveled

The published handling charge, and what it excludes

Item 10 of Maximum Rate Tariff No. 2 sets a handling charge of $128.25 for a pool table with a slate top that is at least 42 inches wide, at least 84 inches long, and weighs more than 400 pounds. Then it says something crucial: that charge does not include disassembly or reassembly of the pool table, and where the carrier performs that work, Item 4 labor charges apply. Item 4 is $41.85 per crew member per hour during regular hours, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday excluding legal holidays, and $51.40 per crew member per hour outside those hours or at any hour on a weekend or legal holiday. So a slate table quote has at least two components, and a quote that shows only one of them is incomplete. The handling charge applies once per shipment for the item, in addition to any flight carry charges.

Four hundred pounds is why it comes apart

Rule 35(B) states that the services covered by the tariff do not include handling, loading or unloading any single article weighing 400 pounds or more, that above that weight the extra handling is furnished by the shipper or by the carrier at bulky article charges when it has the additional personnel and equipment, and that bracing or blocking material not part of the vehicle's regular equipment must be furnished by the shipper. A three-piece slate bed on a seven, eight or nine foot table is well past that threshold as an assembled unit, which is exactly why the correct method is to reduce it to components that a crew can carry. Individual slates on a standard table commonly run in the low hundreds of pounds each, and each one travels flat and separately supported rather than on edge.

The order of operations, and where tables get ruined

Disassembly follows a fixed sequence and skipping a step is what breaks a table. Rails and pockets come off first, with the bolts counted, bagged and labeled by position. The cloth comes off the slate next, which for a stapled cloth means removing staples rather than pulling. Then the slate itself is unbolted and unwaxed at the seams and lifted flat, one piece at a time, onto padded support. The frame and legs come apart last. Reassembly reverses it, and it ends with the part that decides whether the table plays: leveling the frame, shimming under the legs and at the slate seams, and checking across the bed in several directions before the cloth goes back on. Every seam gets refilled and sanded flush. A table assembled without releveling looks finished and rolls wrong.

Flight carries are counted, not estimated

Basement and bonus-room installations are the norm, so the stair charges matter. Inside a building the maximum flight carry is $33.55 for the first flight and $16.85 for each additional flight, where the first flight means at least eight steps, additional flights are complete floors above or below it, and an elevator counts as one flight. Outside, the first flight is 8 but not more than 20 steps at $32.15, with each step over twenty adding sixty cents. Those charges apply each time the service is rendered, so a table that comes up from a basement at origin and goes down to a basement at destination is two carry events. Count the steps at both ends before anyone quotes.

Raleigh's older houses limit the route more than the weight

The Oakwood historic district was developed primarily during the fifty-year period from 1880 to 1930, is described as Raleigh's only intact 19th century neighborhood, and mixes larger two-story homes with one-story cottages. Original stair runs, tight landings and period door widths are the practical constraint, and a single slate that measures roughly a third of the table's length still needs a straight path and two or three people around it. Boylan Heights, developed beginning in 1907 and designated a district in 1984, has typical frontages of 30 to 50 feet, an average lot depth of 130 feet, front setbacks of 15 to 30 feet, and a street that curves through six blocks, which means the truck often stands farther from the door than the plan assumed and the slate carry gets longer.

Schedule the work in the morning

A slate on a driveway in an afternoon storm is the avoidable failure. The National Weather Service office in Raleigh documented 4,150 severe weather reports and 284 tornadoes across its county warning area between 1950 and 2005, and found severe report frequency peaking in the late afternoon with the highest concentration between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. local time. The Storm Prediction Center's climatology for the Raleigh radar area gives a primary severe season of April 13 through August 29 and an average of 65 severe report days a year. Slate and cloth both dislike sudden rain, and a table is in pieces for hours, so the whole operation belongs in a morning slot from spring through the end of August.

What to confirm before booking

Table size and slate configuration, one piece or three. Whether the crew disassembles, transports, reassembles and relevels, and whether that labor is billed separately from the handling charge. Whether new cloth is being installed or the existing cloth reused, since a stapled cloth sometimes survives removal and a glued one usually does not. The stair and carry count at both addresses. And the destination floor, because a leveled table on a framed floor over a crawl space needs the leveling checked again a few weeks after the floor settles under the load.