Packers and movers are companies that move a household or an office to a new home or a new city: they survey the goods, pack them, carry them by truck and unpack them at the other end. In India, "packers and movers" is the everyday name for a removals company. More and more of them now take bookings, give quotes and track the truck through a website or an app.
Most people move home only a few times in their lives, so they do not know what a move should cost. The price depends on three things: how much there is to move, how far it must go, and how many floors must be climbed without a lift at each end. In the past, an executive from the company visited the home to see the goods and give a quote. Prices for the same move varied widely, and arguments over the final bill were common.
The software makes this step clearer. The customer lists the goods in an app, room by room, or shows them to the company on a video call, which is called a video survey. The software turns the list into a volume, the space the goods will take in a truck, and then into a quote.
Consider a family moving their two-bedroom flat from Lucknow to Pune. They list a double bed, a single bed, a sofa, a fridge, a washing machine, a television, 25 cartons of books and kitchenware, and two bicycles. The software calculates about 450 cubic feet, about a third of a large container truck. It offers two choices. A shared truck, which also carries the goods of two other families on the same route, costs ₹48,000 and takes eight to ten days. A dedicated truck costs ₹82,000 and takes five days. The family chooses the shared truck, and adds transit insurance for ₹1,800, which pays for damage on the way. GST is added to the bill. On packing day, a team of four wraps the furniture and photographs each item's condition in the app. The truck's location appears in the app throughout the trip. In Pune, the team unpacks and sets up the beds, and the family checks each item against the photographs.
For the long-distance leg, many movers do not own trucks. They book space on a truck through a digital freight marketplace, or find an owner whose truck is going the right way on a trucking app for owners. For a move within one city, a mini-truck booked through intra-city logistics is often enough. Packers and movers are one of the delivery networks described under last-mile delivery, even though what they deliver is a whole household.