Moving house

The vehicle at the centre of most German moves has a name an English reader thinks they already know. Der Transporter, or in the hire firm’s wording der Kleintransporter, is a van: the high-roofed box on wheels that two friends can load in an afternoon. In British English a « transporter » is something else — the long lorry that carries new cars to a dealer, a tank transporter, or the machine in science fiction that beams people from place to place. Both words go back to Latin transportare, to carry across, and both name a vehicle that carries things; what differs is the size and the cargo. So when a German friend says Ich habe einen Transporter gemietet, picture a van rather than a car carrier, and when you book one yourself, the word to type into the search box is Kleintransporter.