[pianotech] How NOT to move a grand piano

[David Ilvedson]

I found some answers at http://www.company7.com/bosendorfer/april2007_275drop.html

For some months after raising the funds the Adies travelled to a specialist piano auctioneer in London with the hope of buying a Bösendorfer Concert Grand Piano. But the tragedy is all the more galling since the Musikmess Frankfurt held on 12-15 March 2007 distracted many resellers away from the London auction. The Musikmess is an international trade fair for musical instruments, music software and computer hardware, sheet music and accessories. By both events coinciding, Musikmess lowered attendance and diminished the pool of potential bidders at the auction thereby moderating the final selling price of the ten year young Bösendorfer Model 275 Concert Grand Piano: the Music Gods smiled on the Two Moors Festival if only briefly. Sean McIlvoy, the auctioneer explained "this was a charity with limited funds and for them it was a great buy."

But as the piano was being unloaded from the lorry fate intervened! Mr. Haigh, the G&R Removals foreman on the scene explained how the accident happened: "I was trying to put the piano on to the tail lift, going through the normal process for pianos, the next thing I know it's in the ditch." He said the usual way to remove a piano is to put it in a transport shoe or shoey, a frame that fits along the length of the piano's body but "As we lowered the tail lift, it must have just clipped what we call the shoey and sent it over to one side. I don't understand why it happened." 

continuing...

Click on the images to see an enlarged views (78,336 and 111,063 bytes)

      The members of the community must have imagined the grand prize of pianos was within their grasp, as the G & R lorry containing their Bösendorfer rolled up outside the concert hall at the Adies' home at Barkham, near South Molton. To the author of this article, who has observed several moves of the even larger "Bösendorfer Imperial" piano, the G&R movers rolled the piano out of the truck bed and onto the hydraulic elevating liftgate and then either 1. the liftgate failed or was lowered prematurely, or 2. the G&R movers failed to rotate the piano ninety (90) degrees so that the piano would be orthogonal to the truck and thereby not overhand the truck bed. As the piano was lowered it is obvious (in the image above right) the piano has been maneuvered into an unmanageable orientation.

      Mr. Adie commented "The lift on the back of the lorry was not the most stable of platforms and the nine foot instrument was too long to fit on the platform, so the men jolted it around a bit and thought it was free of the vehicle. But it wasn't, and it bounced on the drive, landing on its side. It kept going and because it was a bank with steps it flicked over and landed on its lid. There was one hell of a crash and all its notes went at once. It fell about thirteen feet in all."

      Not content with simply smashing into the floor, the instrument bounced off the gravel and hurtled over a bank before clattering onto a set of granite steps.

      Brian Haigh recalled observing the piano tip and then relentlessly start its plunge off the liftgate: "I was just gutted, absolutely gobsmacked. I couldn't believe it had gone over. I couldn't talk for five minutes."

      Mrs Adie said: "I only took before and after shots because I was too dumbstruck to capture the moment when it fell. A Bösendorfer is to a pianist what a Stradivarius is to a string player, and we are all numb with shock."



David Ilvedson, RPT
Pacifica, CA  94044

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Ron Nossaman" <rnossaman at cox.net>
To: pianotech at ptg.org
Received: 4/11/2010 1:53:57 PM
Subject: Re: [pianotech] How NOT to move a grand piano


>William Truitt wrote:
>> I accept your premise about the two feet in the truck, judging from the
>> pictures.  Even if it did "just clip", that still begs the question - Why
>> wasn't somebody watching? 

>They probably were, just not in the right spot at the right 
>time, like we all have done thousands of times. They just got 
>unlucky and didn't get away with this one.


>>And why didn't they spin it sideways on the gate,
>> as virtually everyone has suggested?  To borrow a phrase from Forrest Gump,
>> "Stupid is, as stupid does."

>That's starting to look like a possibility. What makes you 
>think they didn't? Where are the pictures of the piano in 
>place and the gate lowering? I went looking for them. I see 
>the truck arriving. I see them setting the dolly, using the 
>gate to lift, and I see them wheeling the piano on the dolly, 
>out onto the gate. Then I see the piano on the ground. The 
>picture of them with the piano in place on the dolly and the 
>gate going down is curiously missing. Why? There are pictures 
>of the reaction of the crew immediately after the dump, and 
>further pictures of onlookers and the rescue attempt with the 
>front loader, so the photographer was apparently documenting 
>as much of the process as possible.



>> If he doesn't understand why it happened, I definitely wouldn't hire them
>> for the next move, bad luck or no.  But judging from the worldwide
>> publicity, they are probably getting fewer calls anyway.

>I'm sure that's true, which is why I think it would be nice to 
>see the real sequence of events in the photos. This, 
>naturally, is better press, whatever damage it does.
>Ron N