Pianos, organs and the hard-to-move
The name on the truck is no accident — specialty work is where this company started, and it still lands squarely on Curtis Bollinger. A typical week for him means grands and upright pianos, console and pipe organs pulled from church sanctuaries, gun safes ranging 600 to north of 1,400 lbs, slate pool tables, and the occasional antique highboy or framed gallery piece. The calls we field most are pianos and organs leaving York row homes and country churches, where easing one down a stairwell is nothing like rolling it onto a ramp.
Since no specialty piece slots onto a by-the-hour rate, we quote each as a flat job — sizing up the instrument, which floor it rests on, whether a ramp or a stairwell is involved, and how loading works at the curb or the sanctuary doors. Each load is protected as high as $1,000,000; the released-value floor sits at sixty cents a pound, with a full nine months to file any claim.
Rough flat prices for specialty pieces
| Piece | Crew | Flat price |
|---|---|---|
| Upright piano, ground floor or ramp access | 3 movers | $220 – $380 |
| Upright hauled up a row-home stairwell | 3 movers | $360 – $560 |
| Console or spinet organ, ground floor | 2–3 movers | $200 – $340 |
| Baby grand, legs and lyre off and crated | 3–4 movers | $380 – $620 |
| Grand piano or church organ across York County | 4 movers | $500 – $900 |
Should a tricky job run long and the three-mover specialty team roll over to $190/hr, you still owe nothing beyond the flat figure you signed.
Why stairs turn a piano into a project
Bringing a baby grand down three storeys of a York row home starts with pulling the legs and lyre at the top, and from there it’s a careful, inch-by-inch descent — skid boards beneath, straps cinched, pausing on every landing. A sanctuary organ rides skid boards over the chancel steps; a 1,200-pound safe rolls onto laid plywood. Where it fits, we set the heavy piece on a day of its own — otherwise it rides along with your residential or long-distance job.
Where every dollar of your Felton, PA flat price goes
- Each piano padded and strapped to a piano board on a four-wheel dolly
- Grands broken down — legs, lyre and pedals off — and crated to fit
- Skid boards, ramps and stair-climbing dollies for row-home flights and church steps
- Gun safes up to about 1,500 lbs on a rated safe dolly over plywood pathways
- Slate pool tables taken apart on request, then re-leveled with the felt checked
- A full-value protection option, capped at $1,000,000 per shipment
So where does the price land?
The clock starts at $140/hr for two movers with the truck — or settle the whole thing with one signed York-area flat rate spelled out on a single page
Baked into that rate: the furniture blankets, the hand trucks, the rolls of stretch film, and the patient carries a Dallastown condo or a Red Lion walk-up calls for — along with any COI a York apartment tower or a suburban HOA needs on file before load-day. Add a third mover and the rate steps up to $190 an hour.
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