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Share the lorry. Pay for the metres you fill, not the ones you do not.
A lorry running to Switzerland holds around forty five cubic metres. A one bedroom flat is nearer fifteen. Sharing that space with other households is how you stop paying to send thirty cubic metres of fresh air across a continent.
That is the risk nobody mentions when a shared load is sold on price. Each household on the vehicle is cleared in its own right, and a consignment whose paperwork is not in order can hold the vehicle while it is resolved. A lorry running to Switzerland has roughly forty five cubic metres in it. Most people moving there are not filling that. A one bedroom flat is nearer fifteen. So rather than send a mostly empty vehicle across a continent, movers wait until they have three or four households going the same way and run them together.
That is a part load. You pay for the metres you occupy instead of the whole lorry, and the long expensive bit of the journey gets split between everybody on board. On a Switzerland route that matters more than on a short hop, because the driving is the largest single thing you are paying for.
What you give up is precision. A vehicle to yourself leaves when you say. A shared one leaves when it is full enough to be worth running. If you can live with a window rather than a date, this is usually the cheaper way to move a smaller home.
Everything is itemised before it goes on. That inventory is doing more work on a shared run than on a private one, because at the far end somebody has to know which of the four stacks of furniture on the lorry is yours. Numbered labels on every item, and a list that matches, is what stops a sofa going to the wrong address in a different canton.
Your goods are usually blocked together as one lot and secured, rather than scattered through the vehicle. Good movers build a bulkhead of straps or boards between consignments. If you want to know how yours will be separated, ask. It is a reasonable question and the answer tells you a lot about the operation.
There are two ways a shared load is run and they are not the same experience.
Straight through. The lorry collects from each household in turn, drives to Switzerland and delivers to each in turn. Your goods are handled twice, once on and once off. This is the version you want.
Combined at a depot. Your goods are collected locally, taken to a warehouse where loads heading for the same region are put together, then transferred onto the vehicle that runs the long leg. That is an extra load and unload each way. It opens up more routes and often costs less, but every additional handling is another chance for a corner to get knocked.
Neither is wrong. What matters is knowing which you have bought, because it changes how carefully you should pack the things you are keeping in your own boxes.
The single biggest misunderstanding about shared loads is the timing. People book one to save money, then treat it like a private vehicle and get frustrated. Here is how it really behaves.
You are given a range of days rather than one, often several days wide, sometimes longer in quiet periods. The mover is assembling the run. Somebody has to be at the property, with everything ready, across that whole window.
Once loaded, a Switzerland leg is straightforward driving. The variable is not the road, it is how long your goods waited before the vehicle was full, and whether Swiss clearance holds anything at the frontier.
Also a range. The driver has several drops and works out the order from geography, not from who booked first. Someone in Basel and someone in Chur on the same lorry will not be unloaded on the same afternoon.
A vehicle carrying four households is a big vehicle. Plenty of Swiss addresses will not take one. Old town streets in Bern, Solothurn and Carouge are narrow and often have vehicle restrictions. Mountain roads above Sion or into the Grisons valleys have tight hairpins. Zermatt, Wengen, Mürren, Saas Fee and Braunwald do not allow ordinary road vehicles at all.
None of that stops you using a shared load. It just means the last stage is a separate job: the lorry stops at a practical point and your goods transfer to something smaller. That transfer needs arranging in advance and pricing on its own. Raise it at enquiry, not when the driver phones from the valley floor.
Shared runs work on volume, so they follow the busy lines. Northern Switzerland is well served: a lorry heading for Zurich, Basel, Bern or Winterthur will find other households easily. Geneva and the Lake Geneva shore likewise.
Ticino is different. Lugano, Locarno and Bellinzona sit south of the Alps and are normally reached from Italy rather than driven down from Zurich. A shared load going there is joining a different flow of traffic, which can mean a longer wait for the vehicle to fill.
Send it once and one vetted moving company from our network works through it with you. See also what changes the number on a Switzerland quote.
Your goods travel on a lorry that is also carrying other households going the same way. You pay for the space you take up rather than for the whole vehicle. It is the same idea as a shared taxi, applied to a forty five cubic metre lorry.
Close enough that movers use the words interchangeably. Groupage is the older trade word for combining several consignments into one vehicle or container. If a quote says groupage, ask whether your goods stay on one lorry the whole way or get handled at a depot in between, because that is the part that actually affects you.
LCL stands for less than container load, and it means your goods share a shipping container with other consignments rather than filling one. You will meet the term on quotes for sea routes. For a Switzerland move it is less common than road sharing, because the country has no seaport and the whole journey ends overland anyway.
More than a dedicated vehicle. The mover is waiting for enough other households on the same route to make the run worthwhile, so you are given a collection window rather than a collection day, and a delivery window at the far end. If either of your dates is fixed, say so at enquiry stage.
Sometimes. Some shared loads run straight through on one vehicle. Others are combined at a depot, which is a warehouse where loads heading for the same region are put together. More handling means more chances for something to get scuffed, so ask which it is and make sure the inventory is itemised properly before collection.
Usually not, and at that size it often stops saving you anything. Once your goods fill most of a vehicle you are paying close to the dedicated rate while still accepting the date windows. The crossover point depends on the route, so ask for both to be quoted rather than assuming.
The long leg can. The last stretch often cannot, because a full sized lorry carrying several households will not take a narrow mountain road or enter a car free village such as Zermatt. Those deliveries get transferred to a smaller vehicle for the final stage, which is arranged and priced separately.
One vetted moving company from our network works out whether sharing a lorry suits your move, and tells you plainly if a vehicle to yourself would serve you better. Planning the other direction? See moving from Switzerland back to the UK.
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Operated by DATACONTEXT (UK) LTD, company number 07425576, ICO registration ZB022743, registered at Norman House, Saint Saviours Estate, Abbey Street, London SE1 3DH. Running since 2010. We work with vetted moving companies in the AGM Group network.
Page reviewed and Swiss information checked on 5 August 2026 against the Federal Office for Customs and Border Security. General information, not advice on your own position.
Written by Darren Benjamin, founder of International Removals Companies, who has run the business since 2010. Last checked 5 August 2026.