EP 9: "Full Truck" with guest, Anthony (Caudelle's Supreme Operations Savant)

Ever wonder what it really takes to load a truck for a full-scale interior installation? In this episode of On the Move: The Art of Interior Installations, Kelly sits down with Anthony, Caudelle’s unflappable Operations Manager and lead art installer, to unpack the strategy, precision, and problem solving that goes into every delivery.

From climbing 713 steps with furniture in tow, to calculating truck weight like a human scale, Anthony shares the gritty details of why loading a truck is more Tetris than brute force. You’ll learn why rugs always go on last (well, almost), how team planning makes or breaks an install, and why “white glove service” is about much more than gloves.

Whether you’re a designer, builder, or just love a good behind-the-scenes story, this episode delivers laughs, lessons, and a peek into the high-stakes world of luxury installations.

 Tune in for:

• The golden rules of truck loading (and what happens when they’re ignored).
• How Anthony defines true white glove service.
• The hidden challenges of weight stations, parking, and cross country installs.

Stay stylish, stay smooth—and as Kelly always says, don’t forget your felt pads.

Thank you for tuning in to On the Move – The Art of Installation. If you’re as passionate about details as we are, hit “subscribe,” and join us for insights, stories, and strategy from the field. If you’re ready to work with a team that moves with purpose, professionalism, and polish. Reach out to us at www.caudelle.com or follow us on, Instagram @caudelle_installation. Check out our BLOG, The “WHITE GLOVE JOURNAL”, where you can find our show notes and updates.

Transcript

KELLY: Welcome back to On The Move, the Art of Movement, the podcast where Installation meets inspiration. I'm Kelly CAUDELLE here at CAUDELLE Interior Installations where we do the heavy lifting, literally, so designers and clients can both shine. Our guest today is CAUDELLE'S Supreme Operations Manager, lead art installer, truck loading savant, an unflappable problem solver.[00:01:00] 

If it's moved, lifted, or leveled around here, he's probably the one that's touched it twice or sometimes three times. Welcome, to on the move, Anthony. 

ANTHONY: Happy to be here. I, he was behind the wheel and up the ladder, so this is a nice change of pace for me. 

KELLY: The change of pace, 'cause I pulled you off of loading a truck for an install.

I'm glad that you're here. So tell us a little bit about the importance of loading a truck correctly. 

ANTHONY: It's important because if it isn't loaded right or tight, there's chance things could fall and move, during transit, which wouldn't be good because that's how things break, get scratched, and people are very unhappy with that.

KELLY: Yeah, they tend to be, if things, get damaged because like we've said before, we inspect everything that comes through the door. Furniture gets pad wrapped and accessories get sometimes pad wrapped or put back in boxes. So we wanna make sure that when it gets to the job site, it's in the same condition it was when it [00:02:00] left here.

Right. That's right. But I think the biggest thing I want to talk to you today about is actually, once you load the truck, everybody can get a picture of what it's like to load a truck. So you pull up at a job site, what do you do then? And I'm going to make you reference the one you just did last week

713 steps up the front. 

ANTHONY: One of the first things we do is we actually go up to the house or building that we're getting ready to unload to, and make sure we find the best place, for us to access it and position the truck as close as possible to take the least steps possible. One of the more recent ones we did, it was 35 steps up.

And then there was also a sec, second story to the house. Sometimes you would go right through the front door, right? The stairs inside the house. Yeah. So there was no way around it. 'cause there's a way around back, but you could barely get a van back there. So our trucks definitely weren't going back 

KELLY: Well, and [00:03:00] I think people need to be, or not people, designers, clients, whomever it is.

Kind of needs to give us that information going in too. Correct? Oh, absolutely. So you're talking about the difference in, let's just say four guys going on a job to eight to 10 guys going on a job. Sure, sure. If you can't get a truck to the back door. And you see what those steps are in front of you.

When you have two, three truckloads of furniture, that's gonna be, quite the haul, huh? Absolutely. Still feeling it week later. Yeah. I I, yeah, I'm sure. But, so tell me this, how do you load a truck? Tell me the process in that. 

ANTHONY: Well, typically. We usually take bigger console table pieces, and put 'em towards the front to where we can touch some in there to where they're all kind of locked together.

And then a lot of times we either go up with more pieces like that or we'll start loading chairs [00:04:00] on top since they're lighter. One thing to look for when you're loading console pieces and stuff is you don't want, mid-century modern, like the little skinny legs you never want on the bottom, upside down on the top and strapped in.

It's just a lot of that, a lot of Tetris, just making sure it's not gonna shift and you can wedge stuff in there and boxes as you go along. One of the most important things is always put your rugs on last so they can come off first. Otherwise you're touching all your furniture at least two or three times through your eyes.

KELLY: Well, anyways, and you know, funny you should say that because. We run into that, more often than not that, especially on our cross country installs or, or you know, outta state installs. You have limited truck space, and you have the rugs on last. The problem is you have 14, 15, 20 foot rugs

that you have to put on the end. It doesn't always work that way, does it? 

ANTHONY: Yeah, of course. They're usually going on halfway during the load and then you're just packing stuff around. Right, [00:05:00] right. And 

KELLY: you know, and. De definitely one of the rules here is always rugs off first.

Rugs need to go down before furniture does, but the problem with that is, like you said, let's say we're doing a full. Club install or a house install that have, you know, anywhere from 10 to 15 rugs. Mm-hmm. You're talking about a whole corner of the truck. So it's not like you can go, oh, let's wait till then and we got three feet of space left.

ANTHONY: And you're gonna load to where not all the rugs are on one side. 'cause then your truck Exactly. 

KELLY: Yeah. I forgot about that. Right. Strapping stuff down. It's one thing to. Have a tight load, have it all in there, and you can put a load bar, you can put a strap, whatever.

Using the rugs for an example is, okay, you've, you've just created a huge un square space mm-hmm. On there. So now you have to fill in that space to make it square again. Obviously there's a lot of [00:06:00] thought process that goes into that. Oh yeah. It takes. Many hours, hour or two to unload people.

But I'm glad you said that because, it's funny how, and, and I'm not gonna say all, but, but most jobs, and I'm going to refer to the larger projects that have multiple trucks, we pretty much figure it takes, two hours to unload a truck, and that's pretty much putting every item where it needs to be.

Mm-hmm. Most case pieces are obviously gonna be placed, centered, where they go. Yep. But there may be a few things that don't get exactly, placed but what people don't understand is. The hours that it takes. 

ANTHONY: Yeah. To load a truck many hours, like four hours probably for like a, a real, real pat truck.

Even the best, I mean, it's gonna take four hours 

KELLY: probably. Well, and okay. How longer? Well, and you've, you gotta think about it this way. [00:07:00] Okay. This project has been accumulating over, gosh. I mean, so sometimes a year. Yeah. Right, right, right. Sometimes a year. So it can't be on the very back, or excuse me, the very front of the warehouse.

It's in different locations. All of this furniture has been put back in its, specific area and labeled you have to bring it all to the front. You may have hundreds of chairs. Hundreds of stack chairs.

You may have, pallets and pallets of tables, umbrellas. Oh yeah. Umbrellas. Yeah. To let everybody know we just did, three projects back to back, that had a hundred plus. Umbrellas and bases. You gotta remember each one of those table bases or umbrella bases is a hundred pounds a piece.

So you're moving what? Tons of 

ANTHONY: weight. And that's, that's another thing to think of. If you got multiple trucks, you don't want all the umbrella, your old fuel. [00:08:00] You know, be overweight. So you gotta spread that throughout the trucks too, 

KELLY: right. And, that's a great point because you have to think about, even if you're going to Florida, everybody thinks, oh, that's all downhill.

Well, no it's not. So you do a away station. Right. Well, exactly. You know, and you ha you have Thanks. Thanks for saying that. Yep. That's a huge point is when we're loading trucks. You know, you have to think in your head, okay. Let's say you get, a 26 GVW truck. Well, you're only allowed, 14,000 pounds

usually. And so, okay, sure. We're loading hundreds of stack chairs or hundreds of dining chairs. That's no big deal. But you start bringing in umbrella bases. Table bases, tabletops. I mean, we get in tops here that, you know, each freight weighs seven, 800 pounds. Easy.

So, you know, you've gotta load the truck. Thinking about that. Designers, please [00:09:00] think about this whenever you're, wondering why it takes so long to load trucks or why we ask for so many days to load a truck is because you're basically mentally calculating weight mm-hmm.

As you're loading the truck. And you load too much on one side. That's dangerous. That's the last thing anybody, wants to do is be in a dangerous truck. Or cause a dangerous situation. And then also, just like you mentioned, you pull into a way station.

Mm-hmm. You're overweight. Guess what? You're shut down till you empty that weight off your truck. You're not moving until that weight comes off that truck.

ANTHONY: Yeah. 

KELLY: So, you know, there's zero margin for error. How would you react if, you're headed to a job site? You and your guys have loaded multiple trucks and you get a phone call. Hey, I'm at the way station, I'm overweight.

Whatcha gonna do after you freak out? 

ANTHONY: I'd be very disappointed in myself going like, I know we, luckily we [00:10:00] don't run into that issue, but if it were to happen, then we're sending another truck right away. 

KELLY: Right. And then what does that do?

I mean, when you look at it? Mm-hmm. Okay. We've loaded the truck. And I'm not saying you, I'm saying we, we've loaded a truck wrong. We've cost our company money. Mm-hmm. We've cost our company manpower. Mm-hmm. And now we're probably not going to make it to the job on time. 

ANTHONY: Correct.

KELLY: When I say zero margin for error, that's pretty much what, you want to error on the side of caution always. And I mean that applies to anything I've already said my description of white glove. What is your description of a white glove installation?

ANTHONY: I don't think it has a whole lot to do with the gloves. Exactly. Thank you. If that's the only thing he got going for you is to color your gloves, I think it first starts with, having a team of guys or women, who care about what they're doing.

We all care when we go into someone's house, we care about [00:11:00] the stuff that's already in their house as we're carrying new furniture in we always make sure that it's right where they want it before we leave. We don't always work with. You know, designers and stuff like that, sometimes you're just going to homeowner's houses.

It really comes down to being aware of everything that's in there, being aware of what you're doing, treating people with respect and making sure that, when you leave, the piece is where it needs to be. If there's some dust on it wipe it off real quick, if it's a,

velvet couch or whatever, you know, like you actually take your hand and you grab the lines in to where it's all going the same direction. I mean, they're gonna mess it up three seconds after you What 

KELLY: it going over 

ANTHONY: one, when you leave, it looks, as if it just came off, the showroom floor 

KELLY: Well, exactly. And I mean, you touched on it all. You know, and opinion wise, I'm. A very firm believer that white gloves, yes, they're absolutely necessary. 

ANTHONY: Mm-hmm. 

KELLY: If you have white furniture, we run into this situation all the time, and I'm kind of getting off script a little bit, but I don't care.

Uh, well, we're bringing [00:12:00] up real life situations. I'm gonna use an example that you and I did not too long ago. Do you remember we went to that house to deliver a bed and she wanted us to wear white gloves and booties. The booties? Yeah. What happened?

As soon as I put on the booties and we started walking in the house. Yeah. Started slipping. I started slip and fall Hardwoods. And I, I politely said, ma'am, you can look at my shoes. I'll take 'em off. When we go outside, but we have to wear shoes look, I understand the concept of booties.

But people need to also understand this isn't a construction site. We're not walking around in, saw dust or stuff. You know, we, we, we check our shoes before we go into a house years ago, and I'm a firm believer of not using booties, I had a guy with me was walk.

I was walking backwards. I made the turn, giving him room to turn, and as soon as he kind of pivoted his legs slid out from under [00:13:00] him. Console hits the floor, cracks the leg, and dance the floor. And all of that could be avoided just because she was worried about her floor.

Yeah. And we're going to talk about that on next episodes coming down, talking about artwork training at all the same is you can't be worried about something being too expensive that you're, overthinking what it is. We have to treat everything. The same way. Sure. But I guess to kinda wrap it up, if you were going to go to a job site and let's say none of the, office personnel were here tell me what you would need to. Do the job, 

ANTHONY: Well, if there's some plans drawn up, but where pieces are gonna be placed, obviously that's helpful as well as if artwork's getting hung up. You know, a lot of the people we work with are good [00:14:00] about giving us drawings that are like to scale with dimensions.

You know, how off the floor, how high off. Off the console or wherever it is that we're hanging it above. It's always good to know where we can park our trucks. That might be like number one, because like, you know, I mean, you've been to the job in Miami, you know, it, it's like we had a guy drive around for an hour and a half while we were in there working because we could, there's nowhere we could put the truck because they didn't line up a spot for us.

KELLY: Just some advice, to wrap this up. I think it's great advice for any delivery person, any installer, any art hanger, anything. Always remember. Ask your client to secure parking for you. Yes. This is extremely important in cities.

I mean, look, you know, you. You're always gonna, run into situations, New York City, Chicago, Miami, I mean any, [00:15:00] any metropolitan area. You're gonna run into a problem with parking. You've got to get your client to secure your parking.

There's still construction going on. Yep. So they're not gonna let you leave your truck at the loading dock. You can't be in their way. They're trying to finish and we're probably in a month too early. Yeah. But that's just, something that I think will help anybody making deliveries, whether you're a mover, whether you're an installer, whether you're an art hanger.

Get as much information as you can and, go from there. Now we are gonna wrap this up today. Anthony, thank you so much for being here I am not sure. We'll talk to you again on another day. Well, I was glad to be here. All right folks.

Well, thanks for listening to The Art of Movement. If you like today's episode, leave us a review and if you're a designer looking for a logistics dream team, give us an email? Until next time, stay stylish, stay smooth, and don't forget your felt pads.