Nobody in this city plans a move around the furniture. They plan it around the curb. The apartment part is mostly solved by muscle and a dolly, while the part that decides whether the day runs long is a stretch of asphalt maybe forty feet long that someone else is probably parked in.
New York also doesn't work the way other cities do here. There's no simple residential moving permit you fill out online and tape to a pole, the way you would in Boston or Chicago. What you get instead is a wall of signs and a street cleaning schedule that rewards anyone who learns to read it properly.
Reading the signs on your block
Start with the pole outside your door and read every sign on it, top to bottom, because the top sign wins. No Standing Anytime means no truck, ever. A hydrant needs fifteen feet of clearance on each side. Bus stops swallow a surprising amount of curb, usually far more than the shelter suggests.
Then find your alternate side parking days. Street cleaning signs give a ninety minute window, and that window matters, because the whole side of the block empties out and stays empty until the sweeper passes. Booking a truck to arrive at the end of that window is the closest thing to a local secret.
Holding the space before the truck arrives
Cones don't hold a legal spot. Neither does a folding chair or your cousin standing in the road looking determined. What actually works is a car, parked the night before by someone willing to sit in it and move when the truck rolls up. It's crude and it's how half this city moves.
If your street is hopeless, look one block over for a commercial loading zone. Many allow standing for a limited period during posted hours, and a legally loading truck is a different animal from a parked one. A zone that's commercial until seven in the evening turns back into regular parking after that, and enforcement notices.
When the truck simply cannot get close
Some blocks are out of reach and no amount of planning fixes them. A narrow lane in Greenwich Village. A dead end in Long Island City with a construction fence across it. In those cases the crew runs a shuttle, moving your things from a big truck to a small one and then to your door.
Tell whoever is quoting the job about it early, because a professional moving company can plan a shuttle when it knows in advance and can't when it finds out at eight in the morning. Send a photo of your block. Mention the one way direction. Mention the bike lane. All of it changes which truck they send.
Routes, bridges and the things trucks are banned from
Box trucks are not allowed on the parkways. The Belt, the Hutch and the Saw Mill all have overpasses built low on purpose, and the bridge strikes that happen every year are almost always rental trucks driven by people who moved themselves. If you're driving your own load, plan a truck route and stick to it.
Tolls and timing matter too. A crew coming from Brooklyn into midtown at half past eight is going to sit, and you're paying for that sitting if you're on an hourly arrangement. Early starts exist for a reason. A seven thirty arrival in Carroll Gardens feels aggressive until you compare it with a ten o'clock one.
What the building adds to the street problem
Curb access is only half of it. Plenty of buildings restrict moves to weekday hours and require the freight elevator to be reserved, so your truck can be legally parked and still waiting. Call the super or the managing agent two weeks out and get the window in writing, then book the truck around the building rather than the other way round.
Loading docks help when they exist, which in most residential neighborhoods they don't. A Queens two family house has a driveway and that's usually enough. A Manhattan prewar building has a service entrance on the side street and a doorman who'll tell you exactly where the truck should sit, if you ask him before the day.
Tickets, neighbors and the rest of the day
A ticket is a real possibility and it's worth deciding in advance who's responsible for one. Ask before you book. Some carriers absorb them, some pass them along, and the answer belongs in writing rather than in a conversation you'll remember differently later. Traffic agents notice a truck sitting in a bus stop.
Talk to your neighbors the week before. Someone will move their car if you ask nicely, and someone else will block you out of spite if you don't. Tape a polite note on the block a few days early. It has no legal force at all and it works more often than it has any right to.
The last hour and the walk through
The truck being legally parked at nine doesn't help much if it's still there at four with a double parked delivery van behind it. Build the exit into the plan. Know where the truck goes next and whether anyone needs to sign anything at the second address before the crew can start carrying boxes inside.
Then do a slow lap of the empty apartment before you hand back the keys. Check behind the door and the top shelf of the coat closet where something always ends up. Once that truck pulls off a New York block, getting it back to your curb is a whole separate negotiation.