The moving frenzy that accompanies graduation is over for another year, but U-M Moving and Trucking Garage Senior Supervisor Thomas Heller and his crews still are taking 6-8 orders a day to move desks or file cabinets, offices or entire departments, laboratories or machine shops, even elevator power plants.
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And because the unit competes with other local movers, there’s incentive to be the best at their jobs. Heller said that while other movers typically advertise a four-hour minimum move, “We’ll break down in a half hour, one hour, whatever it takes.” In the past four years, Moving and Trucking has received more than 40 Silver Arrow Awards through Plant Operations Congratulating and Recognizing Efforts program for outstanding service.
Last week, crews removed two 7,000-pound air conditioning units from the roof of the Paton Accounting Center at the Ross School of Business. “The building’s getting knocked down,” explains Heller, a 1978 Dexter High School graduate, who has two grown daughters and has been on the job five years. Most days, he runs four-to-five crews ranging in size from two-to-six workers.
“Every day we do prep work for carpet laying and painting, and anything in between,” Heller says, from behind his desk in the Plant Receiving building near Michigan Stadium. “We do all the forklift work and build all the scaffold for the trades. We had one go 56 feet in the air,” he says, to accommodate a small crane to lift items that couldn’t fit in an elevator.
Asked what it takes to do well at this sort of work, Heller says, “You’ve got to have a strong back. In a lot of buildings, they don’t want you to disrupt their staff. Make sure nothing’s broken and people are happy; don’t scratch a wall.”
To support Commencement, Moving and Trucking’s tasks included setting up Michigan Stadium. “That’s real busy; we help set up the stages, run the fork lifts, we carry all the backdrops and move the School of Music (instruments and support gear).”
The Moving and Trucking fleet consists of seven 20-foot vans, two 16-foot stake trucks, a semi-tractor and trailer and a lowboy which is used to move and store big machinery and equipment. Three forklifts are available to handle weights of 5,000, 10,000 and 15,000 pounds.
Keeping up with changing technology may draw more attention in some University units, but Heller must also keep up with changes. “Moving equipment doesn’t change that fast, but equipment now is more safety oriented. You have to make sure you have a protective harness tied to something,” he says.
While a typical workday runs from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., “Quite often we work later,” Heller says, to accommodate job requests. Weekend work is not uncommon. “We have a lot of big weekend jobs.
“We’ve pulled cable for underground high voltage; we pretty much help everybody. When a window breaks, we build a scaffold and a platform to change the windows. Sometimes you have to drill in an anchor to the buildings.”
Other current jobs on Heller’s plate include removing an old cooling tower on top of Taubman Library, and moving a new garbage compacter to the Legal Research Building.
Moving and Trucking provides scaffold rental at $1.00 per section per day. They have 2000 chairs available at 30 cents per day for each chair. Plant Receiving also is managed by Moving and Trucking, and temporarily can provide storage for equipment, furniture and more.
“Every day is different,” Heller says.
