Having been brought up in the removals industry it truly is in my blood and have seen some good company’s and some blatently awful ones!
I have started at the bottom doing the crappiest of jobs and worked my way up. I now currently run a small removal company in the New Forest but owe my knowledge to not only my old man but several large removal company’s, some good, some bad.
The bad is a well known nationwide company who I joined at 21 with a brand new HGV, but the manager had a habit of ‘forgetting jobs’! I was tipping 7 containers in Clacton when I received a phone call, asking could I go to Germany on a ‘rush’ job. No problems says I, when? which was met with the reply you need to be in JHQ Monchengladbach asap as the job should have been delivered this morning, so I rush back, swop trailers down to the tunnel and eventually park at Jabbekke at 03.30, couple of hours kip, up and arrive at JHQ mid morning to a mouthful from the customer for being late 
I’m normally a mellow bloke but I bit back big style explaining not too eloquently what I had been through to get his stuff here and that his anger should be directed in another direction, mainly my office and would he like to brrow my phone to vent his anger 
Strangely enough we got on after that
I have been very fortunate to do mainly Euro work and wouldn’t have changed that for anything. I completely agree with what everyone has said and found it a much nicer way of life. I spent 13 week doing a unit move from Germany to St Ives in Cornwall, 2 hours to load the truck and about an hour and a half to unload it, I don’t know how I coped, it was hard work!!!
The best job I ever completed was a private job for a former vice president of Volvo Trucks. We spent a week packing and loading 2 x 45’ trailers and dragged them over to Sweden to houses that he already owned. These houses were like his own private museums containing all sorts of Volvo prototypes from loading shovels to army equipment to trucks all of which he showed and demonstrated to us. The bloke was fantastic, tipped well, fed us etc. We later moved his various houses throughout Europe, each time he asked for the same crew and each house had different stories to tell. The only negative was the fact we used Scania Tractor units 