Richmond is the dependable deep-south run, out of Delaware and clear down the I-95 corridor into central Virginia. Plan around 200 miles: I-95 south through Maryland past Baltimore and around Washington, over the Potomac into Virginia, then down past Fredericksburg into the capital, somewhere near three and a quarter hours of seat time. The crew loads at the yard in the morning, clears the D.C. squeeze, and most homes come off the truck by evening around the Fan, Church Hill, Short Pump, or out toward the West End. Crossing two states puts the job on our interstate authority, with the figure locked flat and written before we pull out.
Two hundred miles of mostly open interstate, with the Washington corridor setting the rhythm, not the distance. The stretch around the Beltway and the Potomac crossing can crawl for an hour at the wrong time of day, so the lead times the run to slip the worst of it while the flat figure rides untouched. With a piano aboard, the crew skids and blankets a grand or upright and holds it level the full 200 miles, because central Virginia’s humid summers run just as hard on an instrument as the Delaware swings, and a haul this long is no place to hurry a piano. On the Richmond side, a few Fan District rowhouses and downtown towers expect a filed certificate and a held service elevator before a truck reaches the curb, all of which the office pins down at the address days ahead.
Not one piece of this slips out of Lewis hands. The folks sealing cartons and loading back in Delaware are the exact ones setting them down at your Richmond door, sharing one truck across both state lines. We sign the run over to no outside hauler, list it on no board, and pass it to nobody fresh at the Virginia line. The bulky and the graceless are simply the work, so a concert grand at a flat rate, a church organ, or a garage of awkward kit makes for a calm day. If the dates pull apart, the load waits in climate-controlled storage, somewhere around $110 to $270 a month depending on the unit. The move carries $1M of cargo coverage on a nine-month claim window, with released value at $0.60 a pound and 1 to 3% full-value protection on offer.
Pulling south to Richmond for a job, a Fan District place, or a slower pace than the corridor up here? Shoot over both addresses, let Spencer know which building and floor receive you, settle on a date, and back comes a real price with the Washington corridor already counted.