Safeway Moving Founder Outlines Questions to Ask Before Booking a Mover

Founder Boris Svirsky explains the deposit trap, driveway price hikes and bill of lading tactics, plus four questions to ask any mover before booking.

MIAMI, FL, UNITED STATES, October 15, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Safeway Moving, a veteran-owned interstate moving carrier serving all 48 contiguous states, is urging families planning a long-distance move to slow down before they sign anything. In a consumer guide published on the company’s website, founder Boris Svirsky breaks down how moving brokers manipulate the rules in their favor, and the warning signs that separate a real carrier from a company that plans to raise the price in the driveway.

Many consumers do not realize that the company that books their move may not be the company that performs it. A moving broker does not own trucks or employ movers. It sells the job to a separate carrier, takes a cut, and steps back. Svirsky is careful to note that most brokers are not bad actors and would prefer their customers have a good move. The problem, he explains, is the math behind the booking.

A low quote wins the customer. A large share of that quote is then collected up front as a deposit, often 40 to 50 percent in Svirsky’s experience, leaving a balance that is too small to cover the real cost of moving a household across the country. The carrier that accepts that job has to recover the difference somewhere, and too often it happens on moving day, when a foreman reviews the inventory and revises the contract before the truck is loaded.

The guide outlines several tactics consumers should watch for. Some movers bill by how much space a shipment takes up on the truck, which means a sloppily loaded truck can turn 1,000 cubic feet of belongings into 1,200 on the invoice. Inventory tags can be applied more than once to the same item, inflating the count. Straps and gaps can create hidden dead space so the truck appears fuller than it is. Federal regulations require movers to inventory each item in a shipment and assign it an identification number, so Svirsky encourages consumers to ask exactly how items are tagged and counted.

The most important point in the guide involves the bill of lading, the contract that makes the move official. According to Svirsky, consumers are increasingly being sent a bill of lading on the same day they book, sometimes within an hour of receiving an estimate, along with friendly pressure to sign quickly to lock in their dates. Signing it can close the window to cancel without penalty. In some broker arrangements, customers may even be asked to sign a blank bill of lading, or one belonging to a carrier they have never heard of.

“Do not sign anything on booking day,” said Boris Svirsky, Founder and CEO of Safeway Moving. “Read every document, and ask directly whose bill of lading you are signing and who is actually going to show up at your door. If nobody can answer that plainly, you already have your answer.”

Svirsky recommends asking every mover four questions before booking: How do you make sure my items do not go missing? How do you make sure my belongings arrive in a reasonable window, and do you perform your own delivery? How do you keep things from being damaged, and how are new crew members trained? And what exactly happens if the price changes? A reputable company should be able to answer each one clearly without steering the conversation back to price.

“A real carrier can talk to you about its tracking, its crews and its delivery,” Svirsky added. “If every answer comes back to how cheap the quote is, that is the warning sign.”

Consumers can also check any mover’s USDOT number in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s public database before booking, and compare quotes against a realistic starting point. Safeway Moving’s free moving cost calculator prices interstate moves by cubic feet and distance, making it easier to recognize a quote that is too low to be real.

Founded by a U.S. Army veteran, Safeway Moving is a licensed interstate moving company headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In more than 20 years of operation, the company has completed more than 18,000 moves and logged over 9 million miles across all 48 contiguous states, maintaining a 98% customer satisfaction rate. Safeway Moving was named the #1 Best National Moving Company and the #1 Best Storage Container Company in Newsweek’s Readers’ Choice Awards 2026. The company operates under USDOT 3756000 and MC 1335229.

Boris Svirsky
Safeway Moving
+1 929-351-3921
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Written By: EIN Presswire