Moving in Sundsvall – from the stairwells of Stenstan out to Alnö and Njurunda
We are based at Ortviksvägen 61B and we drive in Sundsvall every week: Stenstan, Skönsberg, Granloholm, out across the Alnö bridge and south towards Njurunda. It shows in the planning. We know which stairwells have no lift, where the van is allowed to stand, and which side of the street the date-parking rule applies to on the day you move. You get a fixed price before the job starts, the RUT tax deduction is taken straight off the invoice, and the same company handles both the move and the move-out cleaning.
What we bring to the job
Stenstan: 1890s doorways, winding stairs and rarely a lift
After the fire of 25 June 1888, a new town plan was adopted in 1890 requiring the centre to be rebuilt in stone. In just a few years, essentially 1888 to 1894, around 600 stone buildings went up in neo-renaissance, neo-gothic and art nouveau, and between 1891 and 1895 Sundsvall was the town that built more than any other in Sweden. That is why Stenstan feels so complete compared with most Swedish town centres. It is also why a move here looks the way it does. The lift requirement in Swedish building rules applies to new construction with more than two storeys. The buildings in Stenstan predate it and are exempt. In practice we often meet a street door with a raised threshold, a staircase winding around a narrow well, and a stairwell where two people carrying a coffee table have to take turns backing up. We never guess the measurements from the office. We ask which floor you are on, whether there is a lift, how wide the doorway is, and whether we can get in from the courtyard side. Those answers decide three things in the quote: how many of us come, whether we bring lifting straps and equipment, and whether anything has to go out through a window rather than down the stairs. Large wardrobes, turn-of-the-century tables and beds with fixed bases are the pieces that most often have to be taken apart in the old flat and reassembled in the new one. That takes time, and the time belongs in the price before we start rather than on the invoice afterwards. Up in Stenhamaren, on the slope of Södra stadsberget, it is the opposite: wooden houses with their own stairs. A shorter carry, but a steeper climb up to the van. Tell us which of the two it is when you get in touch and the time estimate will be right from the start.
Parking and loading in the centre: date parking, the pedestrian street and permits
In built-up Sundsvall, date parking applies everywhere unless a sign says otherwise. On odd-numbered dates you park on the side with even house numbers, on even dates on the side with odd numbers, and the rule runs from 00.00 to 16.00. After four in the afternoon you may stand on either side if the street is wide enough. It sounds like a technicality until a removal van stands on the wrong side one February morning and blocks snow clearing for the whole block. Storgatan between Strandgatan and Nybrogatan is a pedestrian street all year round, winter included. Driving and parking there are normally forbidden, but the exemption covers exactly what we do: transporting goods or residents to and from an address on the pedestrian street. It is done at walking pace and under supervision, and we keep the loading short out of consideration for the people around us. So if you live on the pedestrian street, you do not have to carry your belongings to the nearest side street. Just say so when you book and we will schedule the time when the street is quietest. If the van has to stand where parking is otherwise not allowed, an exemption from the local traffic regulations can be applied for at the municipality. It costs 970 kronor, must be applied for at least five working days in advance, and is granted only when genuinely necessary. If a vehicle or a container needs to stay on the street for more than half a day, that requires police permission rather than a municipal exemption. Add the street-cleaning days and night cleaning that bring temporary parking bans to individual streets in the centre, and you can see why we settle the loading spot when you book, not on the morning itself.
Alnö, Njurunda, Matfors and the rest of the municipality
Most of our jobs lie outside the stone-town blocks, and the municipality is large. Alnö is reached over the Alnö bridge, 1,042 metres long and opened in 1964. It is the island's only fixed link to the mainland. The island is big too: 65 square kilometres and some fifteen kilometres long, so an address in Vi, where most of the island's nearly 9,000 permanent residents live, and one in Ankarsvik some six kilometres further south are two different jobs. The Swedish Transport Administration is working on the bridge in stages until 2028, and since there is no alternative way in, we check that work before we schedule the day. Summers are tighter still, because the island's population roughly doubles once the summer houses fill up. Njurunda to the south is not the villa suburb many people picture. Much of central Kvissleby was demolished during the 1960s and rebuilt as a residential area of apartment blocks, both rented and tenant-owned, and today just over 5,000 people live there. That means stairwells, a shared courtyard and a loading point that sometimes has to be agreed with the neighbours, rather than a driveway at the door. Out towards Bergafjärden, Björkön and Lörudden it is the opposite: narrow roads for the last stretch and a good deal of holiday housing. Matfors lies about twenty kilometres west, on the river Ljungan. It is a mill village where the sawmill was founded in 1793 and the paper mill ran from 1919 to 1990, and the housing reflects that mix: old mill dwellings, self-built homes, villas and farms. The E14 passes north of the village and county roads 544 and 568 lead in. There is no railway station, so everything moves by road. Beyond that we drive regularly to Sundsbruk between Birsta and the E4, to Kvissleby, Bergsåker, Skönsberg and Granloholm, and further out to Stöde, Indal and Liden, where the last stretch is often a private road.
The town between the mountains: the bridge, the toll and the route
Sundsvall is known as the town between the mountains. Norra stadsberget rises 165 metres with a steep southern slope down towards the town, and Södra berget reaches 240 metres just south-east of the centre. What you notice as a customer is that the route between two addresses is rarely straight, and that the gradient up to the door matters more for the timing than the number of kilometres. The E4 crosses the bay on the Sundsvall bridge, 2,109 metres including approaches and opened in December 2014. Each crossing carries an infrastructure charge, around the clock, every day: nine kronor for a car or light van, twenty kronor for a lorry over 3.5 tonnes. A camera reads the plate and the invoice comes from the Swedish Transport Agency. It is small money in the scheme of things, but it is exactly the kind of item that turns up later as an add-on when a company charges by the hour plus expenses. With us it sits inside the fixed price. You will not get an invoice for twenty kronor after the fact. If the move goes south, the old E4 route through Stockvik, Kvissleby and Njurundabommen still exists as a local road. It is toll-free but slower. The old road through those villages had twelve sets of traffic lights and 58 level crossings, which is the whole reason the bridge was built. Which route we take depends on the load, the time of day and whether we are running several trips. Two crossings with a heavy vehicle is forty kronor, but half an hour more behind the wheel costs considerably more than that. The simple part: we account for it when we give you the price, so you never have to think about tolls or detours. The same principle applies whether it is a household move within town, an office move across the bay, or storage between two homes.
What a move actually costs in Sundsvall
The question we get most often is what a moving company in Sundsvall costs. The answer depends on three things: how much there is to move, what the carry looks like at both ends, and whether the cleaning is included. Here are the ranges from our price page. A one to two room flat usually lands between 2,000 and 5,000 kronor for the move itself. A house or a home of four rooms and up normally runs between 6,000 and 15,000 kronor. The cleaning is priced separately, by floor area and condition. If you would rather pay by the hour than take a package, a van with a crew costs roughly 500 to 900 kronor an hour. On the cleaning side, basic cleaning starts at 595 kronor after the RUT deduction, move-out cleaning at 895 kronor and move-out cleaning plus at 1,495 kronor, all after RUT. For larger or more demanding jobs we set a fixed price after a quote. The RUT deduction is 50 per cent of the labour cost, with a ceiling of 75,000 kronor per person and year that you share with any ROT deduction. We take it straight off the invoice, so you are never out of pocket waiting for the tax authority. If you are looking for a cheap moving company in Sundsvall, the honest answer is that we do not compete on having the lowest hourly rate. We set a fixed price before the job starts, and that price holds even if the stairwell turns out to take longer than we expected. What makes a move expensive is rarely the hourly rate. It is overtime, extra trips, and a move-out cleaning that fails inspection and has to be done again.
Winter moves in Medelpad, and the spring that follows
Winter does not look the same across the whole municipality. Down by the bay the snow rarely stays long; up towards Sidsjö, Granloholm and Bergsåker it does, and west towards Stöde and Liden it is several degrees colder again. What causes trouble is rarely the temperature but the gradient: a driveway that is perfectly passable in September can be impossible to reverse up with a full load in February. A move booked in November can therefore meet a completely different approach from the one you described on the phone. So we do three things in winter. We arrive half an hour before the agreed time and prepare the stretch between the door and the van, so nobody carries snow and grit into a stairwell that is about to be inspected. We cover floors and stair treads, because wet is more dangerous than cold, both for backs and for parquet. And we read the wind forecast before the start time is fixed: the Transport Administration closes the Sundsvall bridge in strong gusts, and a loaded van has a large flank to catch them with. If it turns into that sort of day we move the job to the next one, and the fixed price follows you to the new date. Spring brings the next thing: the thaw. Road owners can temporarily lower the permitted gross weight on gravel roads and private roads, often to four or twelve tonnes, and those are exactly the roads leading to houses in Indal, Liden and Stöde. Mention the road when you get in touch, so we know whether to bring a smaller vehicle or tranship at the nearest public road. And it is not only winter that interferes. The heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Medelpad over 24 hours, 133.5 millimetres, fell in Sidsjö on an August day in 2001.
What we do in Sundsvall
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Sundsvall
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For a one to two room flat the move usually falls between 2,000 and 5,000 kronor. For a house or four rooms and up, the range is 6,000 to 15,000 kronor. The move-out cleaning is priced separately and starts at 895 kronor after RUT. By the hour, a van with a crew costs roughly 500 to 900 kronor. You get a fixed price before we start.
No. RUT is 50 per cent of the labour cost and we deduct it directly on the invoice, so you only pay the net amount. The ceiling is 75,000 kronor per person and year, shared with any ROT deduction. If there are two adults in the household the deduction can be split between you. We handle the application to the tax authority.
We settle the loading spot when you book. The date-parking rule in town decides which side of the street applies before 16.00, and on the pedestrian section of Storgatan we are allowed to drive at walking pace precisely in order to carry belongings to and from an address there. If we need a spot where parking is otherwise not allowed, an exemption can be applied for at the municipality, but it has to be applied for at least five working days ahead.
It affects the time, and therefore the price, but it is not something we add afterwards. Tell us the floor, whether there is a lift, how wide the doorway is and whether the stairs wind, and we build it into the fixed price from the start. In many Stenstan buildings the stairwell is the limiting factor, and in that case we would rather send one extra person than run into overtime.
Yes, the whole municipality is in our area, and we also take jobs elsewhere in Sweden. Two things are worth mentioning when you ask for a quote: for Alnö we check the Transport Administration's ongoing work on the Alnö bridge, since it is the island's only way in, and if you live on a private or gravel road in Indal, Liden or Stöde we check the weight restrictions during the spring thaw and bring a smaller vehicle if needed.
Yes, we move all year round. The stretch between the door and the van is prepared before the lifting starts, and floors and stair treads are covered. The one thing we do not gamble with is strong wind, since the Transport Administration closes the Sundsvall bridge in heavy gusts and a loaded van catches them. If that sort of day comes up we move the date, and your fixed price applies to the new one.
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