Never use Willamette Express
TLDR - Do not use Willamette Express under any circumstances, most especially if Spencer is your estimator/agent. The entire purpose of hiring movers is to reduce stress and give you back time. Willamette Express and Spencer saw that the opposite occurred. My experience with Willamette Express was, without hesitation, the single worst customer experience I have had. We were sent to them through a nation-wide logistics firm. We had the local agent Spencer out to our home to see the site and provide a moving estimate for the home as well as an off-site facility. Our home was on a small access road with wires, so we knew a shuttle truck would be required to get items to the semi and specifically requested it. We paid for packing services as well. We engaged them in March for a move to be executed at the end of May. My move was a 2300 mile move, and I had several questions. Each time I spoke with Spencer, he was dismissive, disengaged, and generally disinterested in offering assistance or reassurance. I asked about the claims process for any damages, if it would be worthwhile to take before photos, etc. His only response was there is a website for any claims. At no point did they reach out to provide updates to schedule, process, arrival, etc. The entire point of packers/movers is to save time and reduce stress when dealing with all the other moving pieces of a cross-country move. Not only did Willamette and Spencer utterly fail at that, they only served to ratchet up and escalate stress and consume more time instead of saving a single second. The day prior to the truck arriving, the packers arrived to pack. They were polite and fast, but it became clear that the speed was due to the atrocious state of the packing. What we did not know is the depth of the failures. One box had (I am not making this up) a pizza stone laying on top of a sledgehammer among a number of other yard tools with absolutely ZERO paper or padding. A computer monitor was packed in a box that wouldn’t even MOSTLY close, and also had zero paper or padding. Several thousand dollars worth of speakers were thrown into a box with ZERO paper or packing. They are, predictably, gouged and cosmetically ruined. The driver called the day before loading to confirm the details. He had not been told about the site. He had not been told about the need for a shuttle truck. He had not been told about the off-site storage. The loaders ended up needing to re-pack several boxes. They would have re-packed several more, but we were not aware of the specific condition of each packed/sealed box until arriving at our new home. Spencer was called on-site to remediate the issue and bring more materials but tried to drop off a couple of boxes and leave. Once forced inside to speak with the driver and myself, he was dismissive, showed no interest in helping, and left as soon as he could. He called back later at my request. I told him the packing situation was being handled by the lo