These are the questions Trish gets on intake calls and the questions Marcus gets when he picks up the desk line after 5 p.m. We have written the answers the way we would actually answer them on the phone — specific to Chicago, specific to the May 1 / October 1 lease-day reality, specific to the lake-effect winter discipline, and specific to the binding flat that the figure on your walkthrough actually represents. If your question is not on this page, call the Milwaukee Avenue desk and Marcus or Trish will give you the same answer in person.
Is Waley Movers an actual Chicago moving company, or a broker that hands the job to someone else?
Yes — Waley Movers is a fully licensed and insured Illinois household-goods carrier registered with the Illinois Commerce Commission, holding our own federal operating authority for interstate work. We own nine trucks parked at the Milwaukee Avenue yard, every mover on a job is on the Waley W-2 payroll, and the crew that loads at the Chicago curb is the crew that unloads on the other end. We do not subcontract, we do not relay through a yard out of state and we do not hand the job to a partner carrier.
How do you actually handle a Logan Square or Wicker Park three-flat with the narrow center stairs?
Tony Pawlak runs the inner-Chicago three-flat work and has been doing it since 2015. Corner pads go on the spindles and the original banister rails, masonite goes on the hardwood treads and the lobby tile, hump straps come out for every queen-size mattress that has to make the second-floor turn, and a walk-board comes off the truck for any bay-window piece that will not clear the doorframe the straight way. We pre-walk the alley loading lane and time the load against the parking-dibs reality on your block.
What does Waley actually do for a May 1 or October 1 lease-day move?
Trish Sullivan locks your freight-elevator slot with property management seventy-two hours ahead, pulls the Streets & San moving-truck permit at both curbs, drops your COI to management before the day-of email goes out, and books the crew start time against the actual minute the truck can pull up. We map the morning around CTA bus shutoff windows on Damen, Western, Ashland, Milwaukee or wherever your block sits, and Marcus runs the dispatch board himself those two mornings.
What happens if it snows on move-day, or if there is ice on the back stairs?
We walk the alley, the side street and the back stairs before sunrise on a winter move-day, drop salt-grit runners on the lobby tile and the lobby stoop, lay hump pads on the back stairs, and warm the truck and the moving pads before the first wrap goes on a sofa. We do not run cold-load shifts and Reggie Brooks signs off on the climate read before household goods leave the unit.
How much does a typical Chicago move with Waley cost?
Local in-town moves bill at $185 an hour for a two-mover crew with a 26-foot truck, with a $215 deposit at booking and a one-hour minimum after arrival. Small studios and one-bedroom walk-ups land on flat figures from $545. Binding out-of-state long-distance work starts at $2,990 and is locked the day you sign. Piano, gun-safe and antique-hutch specialty lifts start at $455. The figure Eddy writes is the figure on the final invoice.
Will the same crew that loads in Chicago drive the truck to Indianapolis or Milwaukee?
Yes. On every out-of-state job we run, the Waley crew that loads at the Chicago curb is the crew that unloads at the destination. No relay yard, no interlined carrier, no transfer to a partner truck in Indiana or Wisconsin. Reggie Brooks leads our long-haul work and drives the Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, St. Louis, Minneapolis and Cincinnati lanes himself.
Do you handle the COI for downtown Loop and Streeterville highrise buildings?
Yes — Janelle and Trish handle the property-management Certificate of Insurance request as a matter of course for any Loop, West Loop, South Loop, River North, Streeterville or Edgewater highrise that asks. We turn the COI around the same business day on most management groups and we keep the standing certificate at the limits Chicago downtown towers actually require.
Is the Milwaukee Avenue storage facility climate controlled?
Yes. The Waley short-term storage is an indoor heated bay off the Kennedy Expressway, kept above the dewpoint year-round, with daily, weekly and monthly billing. We use it for the closing-slipped Lincoln Park townhouse, the Lakeview lease gap, the Hyde Park renovation pause and for the Florida-snowbird southbound households wintering out of Andersonville, Edgewater and Rogers Park.
Can Eddy do the walkthrough in Spanish?
Yes. Eddy Ramirez is from Pilsen and the binding figure he writes for Pilsen, Little Village, Brighton Park, Belmont Cragin and Cicero clients is written and reviewed in Spanish if that is the language of the household. Trish takes the first call in English; the walkthrough switches to whichever language the conversation calls for.
What if I have a piano, a gun safe or a great-grandmother heirloom hutch?
Specialty lifts at Waley start at $455 and run as a separate line on the binding flat. We use walk-boards, e-track straps, stair-climbing dollies and a heated padded truck for uprights, baby grands, parlor grands, gun safes and antique armoires. Marcus crosses every specialty quote himself and the crew chief on the truck has done the piece type before.
Can a Waley two-mover crew just load my rented Penske, U-Haul, POD or moving container?
Yes. Labor-only loading and unloading hands run at $115 an hour for a two-mover Waley W-2 crew, with a two-hour minimum and no equipment minimum on our side. We bring the pads, the straps, the dollies and the masonite; you bring the truck or the container at the curb. Common on Wicker Park, Logan Square and South Loop interstate self-moves where you want a Chicago crew on the load end only.
How far in advance should I book Waley for a May 1 or October 1 move?
The two Chicago lease-day mornings book solid faster than the rest of the calendar. We start filling those dispatch slots in February for May 1 and in July for October 1, and the desirable hour windows on the freight elevators in the Loop highrises and the parking permit windows on the Logan Square and Wicker Park corridors are gone two to three weeks out. For any other date in the calendar, ten days to two weeks is comfortable, and we will tell you honestly if a same-week slot is possible.