When a piece is too heavy, too fragile, or too valuable for a standard crew
Some items have no business on a standard dolly with a standard pair of movers, and LA is full of them — baby grands in Los Feliz music rooms, gun safes bolted into Valley garages, marble-topped antiques carried down from a canyon home. For work like this Pro Express Moving keeps a dedicated specialty crew on hand. Hector Salas, one of our lead crew chiefs, has spent years moving instruments and heavy specialty pieces through the narrow switchback driveways and steep staircases that make these homes gorgeous and brutal to move out of.
Across LA County, movers in LA handles premium moves on a single written flat rate, with nothing sprung on the invoice.
A piano is an engineering problem, not a strength problem. We assess the route first — the turn at the landing, the width of a Spanish-style doorway, the pitch of a hillside walk — then bring the right gear: piano boards, skid plates, proper straps and padded ramps. Uprights, grands and baby grands each move differently, and we plan every one rather than forcing it and hoping.
Specialty work covers far more than pianos:
- Gun safes and heavy gym equipment that need skid plates and a planned, padded path
- Pool tables broken down, the slate handled correctly, then reassembled and leveled at the new home
- Antique armoires, marble tops, large mirrors and framed art, crated and padded for the road
- Oversized or fragile pieces that won’t clear a low arch or staircase whole, taken apart and rebuilt
A specialty move starts on our $419 flat rate and gets priced against the piece itself and the access at each end — an upright on one level is one thing; a baby grand off Laurel Canyon, where the truck stages on the road and we shuttle to the door, is another entirely. When the piano or the safe rides along with a full household move, we’d rather fold it into the hourly crew time — $149/hr for two movers, $209/hr for three — than bill it as a separate job, and $99 down holds the date. These pieces carry $0.60/lb released-value coverage standard, and for a grand piano or an irreplaceable antique we strongly recommend full-value protection — up to $1,000,000 in cargo coverage per shipment is available. Get my free moving quote, tell us what we’re moving and where it sits, and we’ll plan the route before we ever lay hands on it.
What’s included
- A specialty crew led by Hector Salas, equipped with piano boards, skid plates, straps and padded ramps
- Flat-rate specialty moves opening at $419, with piano work quoted by instrument type and the access at both ends
- Hourly crews at $149/hr for two or $209/hr for three when a specialty piece pairs with a full household move
- Full pad-wrapping and crating for safes, gym equipment, antiques, art, and oversized marble or glass
- Disassembly and reassembly of pool tables, armoires and pieces that won't clear a narrow doorway or staircase whole
- Released-value coverage at $0.60/lb standard, full-value strongly recommended on instruments, up to $1,000,000 in cargo coverage per shipment
How we set the price
After a quick walkthrough or video estimate, we write up a single flat rate from the inventory you genuinely have — not from a clock ticking by the hour. Whatever the sheet reads is the entire price, with nothing tacked on afterward.