Slices of Life: How Parisiens Move Furniture

Most residential buildings in Paris are at least five stories. Elevators tend to be tiny, barely big enough for two people and a bag of groceries--if a building has an elevator at all.

To get furniture in and about of the floors above 0 (in France, the rez de chaussee, or ground floor, is numbered 0, and the higher floors are numbered by counting the flights of steps to reach them), movers use trucks with hydraulic lifts to take things in and out of double windows. Basically, take stuff from the moving truck's lift gate to a platform truck, send it up and take it right into the apartment.


Sure it takes two trucks, but probably smaller crews who certainly put less strain on their bodies than if they were wrestling furniture and boxes up stairs and in and out of elevators.

We could have used this type of French (Euro?) ingenuity on our last move in San Francisco. Our beloved sectional couch could fit through the size of the front door, but could not make it around a bend in a stairwell. I'm convinced it went to a good home.

At least these guys benefited from America's dependence on manual labor to move furniture.


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