Inside-Chicago jobs are the spine of the Waley book. Most of what we run is a Logan Square three-flat going to a Wicker Park three-flat, a Lakeview courtyard unit sliding two blocks over for a better landlord, or a Lincoln Park brownstone owner upgrading two stories down the same row. Same crew, same trucks, same Milwaukee Avenue yard signing in at 6 a.m. The work is the alley, the back stair, the salt grit on the threshold mat, and the Streets & San cone we put down at 5:30 in the morning so nobody parks where the truck is supposed to live for the next four hours.
Built around Chicago’s lease cycle and lake-effect calendar
The Chicago Apartment Lease law turns May 1 and October 1 into the two heaviest move-days of the year — in no other US city are leases coordinated this hard, and every landlord on the North Side flips the same Monday. Trish books our crews against that calendar months out, plus the in-between weeks that are actually cheaper for renters who can flex three days either side. From December through March the rule changes again: Marcus does a predawn route walk on every greystone alley before the truck rolls so a frozen plow bank isn’t the thing that costs you the freight-elevator window.
What an in-town day looks like from the curb
The $185-an-hour two-mover Waley crew clocks in when the box truck stops at your curb — not when it leaves the yard — and stops the meter the minute the last carton is on the kitchen counter. Tony Pawlak runs the inner-Chicago board out of Logan Square and Reggie Brooks runs the South Side board out of Bronzeville, so the chief on your job knows the building before he’s in it. If the figure should be a flat instead of an hourly, Eddy Ramirez writes the binding small-job flat from $545 after a fifteen-minute video walkthrough and Marcus signs it before it leaves the office. No add-ons stacked onto the invoice at curb three.
What's Covered
- Two W-2 Waley movers with the 26-foot box truck at $185/hr, blankets, four-wheel dollies, hand trucks, e-track straps and the standard tool roll already on the meter
- Streets & San moving-truck permit pulled at the 311 portal seventy-two hours before lease-day so the cone is on the curb at 5:30 a.m.
- Center-stair banister wraps, corner pads and masonite floor runners on every 1900s greystone and three-flat carry route before the first box lifts
- Bed-frame, dining-table and IKEA-bunk disassembly and reassembly built into the hourly with the right Allen-key roll on the truck
- Salt-grit floor matting, predawn alley walks and shoveled dolly paths from the first snow in December through the March thaw, with no winter surcharge added
- Binding small-job flats from $545 written by Eddy after a video walkthrough and countersigned by Marcus before the email goes out
What's the Cost?
Two uniformed W-2 Waley movers and the 26-ft straight truck run a posted Logan Square hourly of $185 an hour; if your room count slots cleanly into a half-day — studio, junior one-bedroom, or a tight in-building swap — Eddy will quote it as a locked flat instead, starting at $545 all-in.
Everything the day calls for is folded into that hourly figure: the two W-2 movers themselves, the 26-ft Waley truck, quilted blankets, masonite floor runners, two-wheel and four-wheel dollies, ratchet straps, walk-boards, and the lake-effect winter mats we put down off the porch in any month with salt on the sidewalk. Fuel adders, third-floor stair charges, long-carry charges from the alley to the door — none of those line items show up on a Waley invoice, period.
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