The Facts (and Myths) About Safely Transporting Your Flat Screen TV

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My friend Arnie is the kind of person who does everything full-tilt. So it was no surprise when he told me he was getting a massive new flatscreen TV for his Super Bowl party. But there was a problem. He had no idea how he was going to get that beast all the way home from the store in one piece.

“Can I lay it down flat in my truck?” he asked. “Or is the liquid plasma stuff inside the screen gonna get all messed up and totally destroy my new baby?”

If you’re planning on getting a new flatscreen TV during all the great Black Friday deals, you might be wondering the same. It’s a question I get all the time. The short answer? “No, you can’t lay it down. And no, the plasma won’t mess up your TV.” 

The long answer is below, along with some other tips about getting your new TV home in one piece.


Transporting Flat Screens: Opinions vs. Facts

a man looks at different types of TVs in a store

Here are a few common opinions I found about moving a flatscreen TV, from typically credible places:

  • “Never lay a TV flat when transporting it. I speak from experience.” (avforums)
  • “There’s no real issue with transporting LCD’s laying down. They don’t have a pane of glass like plasmas do.” (MacForums)
  • “Manufacturers recommend storing the TV upright, rather than flat or on its side (Techwalla)

While there’s definitely an agreement that transporting flatscreen TVs horizontally can lead to damage, there’s some anecdotal advice that says this only applies to certain types of televisions. But is that really true?

First, let’s look at the two basic types of flat screens.

  1. Plasma screens consist of a double layer of glass holding millions of tiny cells containing microscopic fluorescent ‘lamps’ that produce an image. It’s a similar sort of technology that light bulbs use. Older models of flat screens are more likely to be this plasma type.
  2. LCD (liquid crystal display) screens contain millions of pixels, made of sub-pixels that are like windows with shades that let in different amounts of red, green, or blue light. These produce light in varying percentages to form the picture we see.

(Note: A third type, the LED (light-emitting diode) display, is basically an LCD screen, but with LED backlighting.)

If you want to read up on some finer points between TV types, here’s a handy guide.

 

“Whether you’re picking up a used flat screen TV or buying one new, be sure to set it vertically in your vehicle, right side up, with sufficient padding on all sides to keep it firmly and safely in place.”

 

So, despite what my pal Arnie was afraid of, there’s nothing inside either type of TV that’s going to get ruined, or settle at the bottom of your screen. As long as it remains properly vertical, your TV will be just fine no matter how many years it stands on your table, hangs on your wall, or sits in the moving truck if you’re moving long distance.

But, when it comes to keeping your flat screen safe, it doesn’t really matter which type it is. Both are susceptible to damage if transported or stored improperly. 

But why is it bad to lay a flatscreen TV down flat? a broken tv that's cracked down the center

Because flatscreen TVs are designed to sit upright. More specifically, your TV is constructed to fully support that screen when it is vertical, but not at all when it’s horizontal. If you lay your TV down, the absence of support in the middle of the screen can cause cracking or distortion around the edges if left that way over time. 

It’s fine to lay your TV down temporarily — like to attach accessories or clean it — but if you drive down the road with your TV laid flat you’re risking serious damage. A few bumps and jolts are all it takes for that screen to start sagging in the middle and cracking or warping under its own weight. 

This is why glass-delivery trucks have those vertical racks on the sides, and why we movers always load mirrors and picture frames vertically.

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Transport your flatscreen TV the right way

Whether you’re picking up a used flatscreen TV or buying one new, be sure to set it vertically in your vehicle, right side up, with sufficient padding on all sides to keep it firmly and safely in place.

If you are buying a used flat screen from someone who doesn’t have the original packaging anymore, take the time to protect it properly. A few thick blankets might work in a pinch, but if you can, packing your TV like it’s a mirror applies just as well.

Your TV, your wallet, and all your friends at your Super Bowl party will be glad you did.

The Price (and Risks) of Moving Sports Stars

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Do you know who Dabo Swinney is? University of Clemson football fans sure do.

Dabo Swinney, for the uninitiated, is the one-time berated but now revered head coach of the Clemson Tigers college football squad. He brought a national title to the South Carolina college in 2016, pulls in an annual salary of over $5 million, and just moved into a swanky new home that, as his moving company noted, looks like a “castle”. He is what we’ll call a “moving sports star”.

As Tiger Moving assistant manager Zavh Klein reports, the 15,000 square foot house has dozens of rooms, multiple living rooms, multiple master bedrooms, a theater, a basketball court, a personal gym and, we can imagine, a whole lot more. The move-in required several days, a number of trucks and about a dozen crew members.

In case you’re wondering, the Swinney move, Klein says, was the largest private residence move the company has ever done. To use sports parlance, that’s just par for the course when it comes to relocating the things of sports stars.

Moving a Sports Icon

To say that there’s a lot of money in sports moving is a fantastic understatement. Athletes and coaches alike work hard for their millions, but doesn’t it seem pretty ridiculous at times the life of luxury participating in a game can bring? And right down to being catered to when it comes time to move to a new team and a new house.

“Plenty of perks come with being a professional athlete,” the L.A. Times explains. “But permanence is not among them. Players are traded, dropped and picked back up again with the same swift, unsentimental nature of moving pawns in a chess match.”

Poor things?

Ikem Chukumerije, with his clients, Duane Brown of the Houston Texans and his wife Devi. LA TImes

To help them cope, athlete relocation specialists have been popping up all over these days. Ikem Chukumerije, the founder of Athlete Relocation, counts NFL and NBA players among his recent clients. “My clients tell me exactly what they need,” he says, “and I walk them through how it’ll happen, and then we make it happen.” Their going rate to move sports stars can stretch to as much as $25,000.

The Dingman Group has performed over five hundred sports-related moves this year, outsourcing the various aspects of each relocation to a nationwide network of service professionals to provide for “every aspect of a player’s move — from boxing up household goods to making sure an athlete’s car is waiting for him or her in the stadium parking lot of the new city.”

With this level of dedicated service, and plenty of money to pay for it, you’d think athletes and coaches would have nothing to worry about when it comes to moving. 

Well, think again.

Even the Rich Can Be Victims

Last year, the Washington Post reported on this ugly move from D.C. to Minnesota. The customer, who we might also call a victim, was Bruce Boudreau, a long-time NHL head coach. “We’re basically getting half-broken furniture,” Boudreau told the Post. “We lost five big-screen TVs, a bubble hockey game, popcorn makers, tables. My wife used to run a business; they called her the Chocolate Lady. The chocolate fountain was destroyed. So much stuff, pictures, lots of pictures, all the frames destroyed.”

And that’s not all, sports fans.

Bruce Broudreau. Citypages.com

Boudreau also reports that his safe went missing in the course of his move. Inside the safe were his two Canadian Hockey League championship rings, his American Hockey League Hall of Fame ring, an engraved Rolex, and his irreplaceable collection of Spiderman comics.

The Star Tribune goes further into the ugliness, telling us how Boudreau and his wife had to sleep on the floor, not knowing when their stuff would arrive, how they found out three weeks after the fact that one of the three trucks moving their stuff got into an accident which destroyed everything being carried, how a bunch of boxes had mold on them; how he and his wife are still trying to figure out what all has gone missing; and how police investigations so far have gone nowhere.

I know I make a lot of money,” Boudreau says, putting it all in perspective. “But I can’t get my ’72 and ’75 Memorial Cup rings replaced.”

And neither can mixed martial arts fighter Chris Reilly get his world championship belts back – at least not yet. According to NBC4 in Los Angeles, Reilly stored some of his belongings when he moved. While those belongings were in storage, the storage and moving company apparently moved. After a drawn-out process, Reilly did recover some of his things, but not his belts – one that he won and others that the world champions he trained had given to him.

“I do still have the memories,” Reilly said. “The accomplishments are still mine.”

Doesn’t seem like quite enough though, for him or for Brandon Spikes, another victim who seems to have had his Super Bowl ring stolen by someone employed by the moving company he hired two years ago.

Brandon Spikes. CBS News

Courthouse News reports that Spikes originally thought he lost the ring, but when it turned up for sale online the story began to become clear to him. The buyer was assured by the online seller that the sale of the ring was legitimate, as it was given as payment to a moving company for their services. But the registered seller of the ring to the online dealer was not the moving company Spikes had hired, but in fact, one of the individual movers. Spikes showed proof that he paid his moving company the usual way – with money – and not by handing over his ring.

The ring fell into the hands of the authorities as stolen property. Presumably, it made its way back into Spikes’s possession.

Not so for another NFL player, Steve Wallace, who had not one but three Super Bowl rings go missing during a move in 2014. He also ended up with a bunch of moldy furniture, which the moving company said was a result of a tree branch puncturing the truck Wallace’s belongings were stored on.

“When you’re out there on that field working your butt off to have nice things it’s very, very disappointing,” Wallace told WSB-TV. To add insult to thievery, the moving company president simply said that “…jewelry should never be packed and (that) the case of the rings is a police matter.” Of course, he maintains no one from his company is responsible.

Another former athlete, Chicago Bears linebacker Otis Wilson, may not have lost his Super Bowl ring from 1985, but he does tell CBS Chicago that he lost a bunch of memorabilia during a 2012 move. This includes four game balls from his NFL career.

The Politics of Sports Moving

We suspect there have been many more professional athletes and coaches who have lost valuable, irreplaceable things to the kinds of movers that give the rest of us a bad name. But with this last story about moving related sports dram, there may be no one “worse” than the people we found in southern California.

These moving rogues haven’t messed with just one athlete, nor have they acted alone. Rather, they’ve banded with a whole cadre of moving companies to target one football team, bent on interrupting their move from San Diego to Los Angeles. Their sinister anti-move movement can be found right here.

From their website, “…we shall unite as a perfect union of professional movers in agreeance to not aid the San Diego Chargers’ move to Los Angeles.”

And who are the original instigators of this heinous act? The main perpetrators? The low-down troublemakers?

You may recognize their name, down there at the bottom of the page: HireAHelper.

Yes, the world of sports is, for some, a world of money and fame. But behind the glamour and the glittering stories are accounts of the same kinds of things you and I go through.

Just with a lot more zeroes at the end.

6 Things You Need to Do If You’re Moving to Chicago

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So you’re moving to Chicago? First off, welcome! We are so excited that you’re settling down in The Windy City. As lifelong Chicagoans, we may be a bit biased, but we happen to think this Midwest city is the best there is. There’s just no place like sweet home Chicago!

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