1-28) There is also a phenomena that you will either use to your advantage or it will work to your disadvantage, and it is this.  Imaging you are walking down a set of stairs while carrying a bare night-stand and trying to keep that nightstand exactly one quarter inch away from the stairway railing the whole way as you step down the stairs. It is a jagged hard exposed edge that you are trying to keep exactly one quarter inch away from the wooden railing as you make your steps downs the stairs.  If your body motion (as you step down the steps) varies a quarter inch to the left you will gouge the sharp edge into the railing.  This scenario makes it very hard (near impossible) to not have any variant sideways movement of the night-stand.  

1-29) Now imagine scenario number two.  This is the exact same scenario as the previous scenario #1, with you carrying the night-stand down the stairs trying to keep the night-stand exactly a quarter inch away from the railing the whole way as you walk down the stairs.  The only difference in scenario number two is that you first fill that quarter inch space with a compressed folded up moving blanket and slide the side of the thickly padded night-stand along the railing with a little pressure holding the nightstand constantly against the folded blanket and railing.  

1-30) With the night-stand and folded blanket sliding on the railing, you could easily keep the nightstand exactly a quarter inch away from the railing the whole way down the stairs.   When one thing slides along something else with thick padding between them, it can near eliminate the inch or two of variant sideways motion that would normally happen on all other sides of the unit if you were walking carrying something free-floating normally.  This technique is called "blanket sliding" or "padded sliding", and it can be used in many different ways to steady the movement of many different types of furniture items.  

1-31) When you are carrying a sofa out a very tight doorway, this "padded sliding" phenomena should be taken advantage of.   The padding is already there in the form of the sofa cushions of the head-rest and knee-rest, and these can both be slid along the door-jam as the steadying anchor.   As long as the sofa cushions remain constantly sliding against the door-jam, this nearly eliminates the variant sideways motion that could otherwise swing the back legs or back corner into door.  

1-32) The sliding on one side protects the damage from happening on the opposite side. The motion will be steadied as if moved by a machine.  The moment the head-rest and knee rest are both not up against the door-jam, the sofa becomes free-floating, and the sideways variant motion that automatically happens with carrying something free-floating becomes an unnecessary added risk factor. 

1-33) And what if that free-floating variant sideways motion occurs in a sudden motion when a carrier's hand is cupping a back leg when it's pressed between the leg and the door?  If at any time that a sofa is going through a tight doorway the head-rest or knee-rest stop touching the door-jam, you are needlessly adding variant swinging and so increasing the risk of damage and injury.  Even if you think it's less important to do this "constant contact slide" at times, as long as it's a tight doorway (less than an inch of clearance), practicing this correctly will help this to happen correctly on those times when it is more critical.  The time to prevent future damage is in these "practice" times, not to just afterwards think "there was nothing I could do" when something does go wrong.

1-34) Before even STARTING to bring a sofa into the truck, someone should first lay a blanket down on the floor of the truck near where the sofa is going to be tipped up on end.  This is so that when the sofa is brought to the truck the end can be put down onto the blanket and the sofa can be tipped up right away.  The blanket should be opened up completely so that there's lots of blanket on all sides of where the end of the sofa end is being put down.  If the end of the sofa needs extra cushioning, fold an additional blanket and put it down for that extra cushioning.  The movers can then grab the sides of the main open blanket and blanket-lift-slide the sofa into place, with the legs against the wall and the back of the sofa against the box-spring (or similar large flat protected surface).  

1-35) If the arm of the sofa protrudes out from the side of the sofa in a way that would squash the arm rest or foam in the arm rest  (from the sofa standing on end) to possibly deform the arm, then add support under the  lower edge frame of the sofa to relieve or share the bulk of weight.  It's better to use something semi-stiff as the added support, like a rolled up smaller carpet, because if you use a rolled up softer blanket the part of the blanket that presses PAST the bottom frame-bar can push the fabric in and cause stretched out fabric.

1-36) When carrying a sofa, or when two men carry most anything two-handed, the weight of the item should be spread fairly evenly between both hands, and not be very heavy in one hand and very light in the other hand. The imbalance of weight between hands means that the hand that is carrying more weight by one mover, is also placing more weight in the other movers same hand placed diagonally across the carried item.  When either mover experiences a significant disproportion of more weight in one hand, they should shift the weight towards the hand carrying less weight until the weight at least comes close to evening out.  Another solution to this problem is that the less experienced mover should always lift with both hands with a ballpark equal amount of lift, and let the more experienced mover control the tip angle of the carried item.

For particularly nice & expensive dining tables, the default way of moving them is to take the legs or base off.  However, when speed is the priority, and when the table legs can be left on for transport, you can take dining tables straight to the truck.

The benefits of leaving the legs on the table is that you don't have to take the legs off and put them back on, saving time, and reducing risk of problems with the hardware, and you can use the space under the table as a protected area in the truck, and possibly using the elevated platform of the table for other purposes.  Leaving the legs on is better in situations where the doing a fast job is a higher priority than doing a zero-damage job.

If you are going slow enough when you near a bump hazard, a bump won't damage anything.  The nearer you are to bumping,  the slower you should go, all the way down to a snail crawl when almost touching.  And if there's still damage risk, add more padding of some kind.

 Living room rugs usually have a floor-gripping liner below them.  If you just roll up the rug with the liner, several things happen.  One is that the very first edge of the carpet that is being rolled gets rolled much tighter than the rest of the carpet, and often ends up with a long-term curve-up imparted to the carpet, preventing it from laying down flat when it is rolled back out.  Secondly, the carpet liner is often filthy, and the caprpet liner transfers all its dirt onto the top of the carpet. 

If instead of rolling the carpet up like people normally would, you instead fold the carpet over in half first, bringing the liner along with it, and then roll it up, this causes several good things to happen.  It prevents the curve up on the edge.  And it prevents the liner dirt from getting on the carpet.   

Roll it up square, so the support on the end is strong and won't crumple, if stood on end.  And wrap the ends (or at least one end) in plastic wrap, so if it is stood on end the fabric won't get grimy from the truck floor.

A large rug also needs to be laid completely flat, where ever it's going in the load.  Carpets can easily stretch out and deform, so you can't fold them or lay them over uneven things.

When rugs are too long to go across the truck, they need to go lengthwise.  If you tie them off on the wall, you need to add some cardboard to prevent the rope or strap from leaving an indentation in the carpet.

You wan't to load rugs towards the end of the truck, so when you unload they can be laid down before the rest of the furniture comes in.   When you re-lay them back down on the floor, it can help to "fluff/shake" the carpet to catch a layer of air beneath it, so it can float towards where you want it to lay. 

Mechanical sofas are in a different category than regular sofas due to the major difference that most of the backs come off these type items, and that changes much.  Mechanical sofas are usually best stood up on end in the truck, like regular sofas, except it's usually better to take the backs off first.  Many of these type mechanical sofas have a control mechanism on the end, and so should get a folded up blanket underneath them to spread the weight and relieve the mechanism.

Any surface that presses against the fabric needs to be very flat, so it won't leave indentations in the material.  Usually, the best way is to put the knees of the unit facing downwards, or standing on it's base.   Resting on its knees works fine because that's the side that is usually the most well backed and strong, although some units have well backed sides too.  Rarely  are the back sides well backed, so these should almost never be laid on their backs.  Legs to the side wall is also better.

Recliners can go on their feet, but you'd have to be very careful to only put very flat things to the sides of it, and only very light things on top of it, or it very easily can leave indentations in the material.  Note the indentations on the side of this recliner.  It only took a slightly not flat thing to leave these marks.  If big boxes aren't available to go around it, it helps to have big sections of cardboard protecting it.  If your Lead doesn't have plenty of big pieces of cardboard (unopened new boxes) available as supplies, your crew is not properly equipped to be loading up a household.

Putting the chair on it's knees, legs to the wall, back to the roof is the best way in most situations where the back doesn't come off.  Partially because this doesn't let anything stretch out the unsupported material on the back, it puts the weight on the strong front knee side, things can't push in the flimsy underside material, and the legs can't hurt anything.  Also, things can be stacked up inside the chair easily, but if the back side of the chair were down, you'd have to stack things on the angled back of the chair which would be harder to do, worse for the chair, and wasted time.

This is a text book laying on the knees, legs to sidewall, with the back laid on top, nice cushiony things inside, but there's no pad wrapping, which is not sufficient.

Note that the knees are not laying directly against the knobby protrusions of the bins, but rather there are several layers of flat stiff rubber pads flattening out the area underneath.

Again, these type of things go up top as top loader, with only light fluffy things on top of them.  You should be saving the light fuffy things for exactly this purpose, and not just loading them anywhere they can go. The advantage of standing on it's base is that it doesn't have the weight of it's own weight pressing against its cushions (& inner foam), or pressing against its material, providing the best case scenario for the condition of the furniture piece.

The foam in the cushions does crush with constant vibrating pressure, or long term slow "storage" pressure, and you can do this to a chair if you don't follow the rules.

It might look fine to just set a removed recliner top laying down, without wrapping, but the vibration in a truck for longer distances, can vibrate a wear pattern into the material.