But when you've done it as many times as O.B. Hill Co. of Natick, Mass., the job doesn't take as long as it would seem.
The movers of the landmark Silver Top diner began work at about 7 a.m. yesterday, with added muscle from a rigging company, Geddes Building Mover of Concord, N.H. Geddes had the unusual cargo up off its foundation and onto a flatbed trailer by about noon.
Patricia Brown, who runs the Silver Top, cooked up a diner simile.
"It's like sliding butter off a plate onto bread," she said, marveling at the riggers' technique. "They did a beautiful job, these guys."
In 1938 the Kullman Dining Car Co., of New Jersey, made the prefabricated diner with the galvanized metal roof. It was brought to a site formerly occupied by another diner at the intersection of Harris Avenue and what is now Providence Place mall in a busy commercial and industrial area.
It has not budged since then. Until now.
Evicted by the administration of Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., which sold the city-owned land where the Silver Top sits, diner owner Bernie Buoncervello and operator Brown found a new home in another industrial area -- at Middle and Blake Streets, overlooking Route 95 in Pawtucket.
Just as the Farmer's Market across the street from the current diner site was emptied out to make way for a Route 95 ramp to the Providence Place mall, another piece of the old Providence is being uprooted to make way for the new Providence.
A developer plans an undisclosed commercial project for the site. Meanwhile yesterday, digging equipment and oversized trucks were crawling around a muddy field just behind the diner to prepare another project, a luxury apartment complex to be called Jefferson at Providence Place.
"It looks sad, sitting there all lonely," Brown said of her stainless-steel-sided livelihood, as it rested on the flatbed.
It wasn't easy finding someone to handle the $22,000 move, she said. But Bryant Hill of O.B. Hill came highly recommended.
"He's got a big giant folder full of [information about] diners that he's moved," Brown said.
With a police escort, the 40,000-pound, 40-foot-long diner will be hauled to its new spot today. There will be an extra charge, Brown said, for the movers to come back and plop the Silver Top onto its new foundation, which is yet to be built.
The Providence Redevelopment Agency has agreed to pay Buoncervello $60,000 -- from the proceeds of the land sale -- to help with the cost of moving and resettling the diner.
The American Diner Museum, of Providence, is also helping. Greg Anderson and Daniel Zilka were on hand from the museum yesterday morning, and Zilka was involved in the work.
"This is small compared to the one we moved last week" in Kingston, N.Y., Anderson commented.
To get the Silver Top to Pawtucket, workers started by removing the equipment and wooden booths inside and the sign and clock from the roof. Then they broke the diner from its moorings on a cement and brick foundation. It was not resting on axles or wheels, contrary to what some people thought, according to Brown.
The diner also had to be freed from a small attached building that housed bathrooms and a little-used kitchen. Jacks powered by an air compressor were used to lift it onto rolling sliders on two steel beams. Then a truck with a winch pulled it out sideways and onto the flatbed.
The pace was slow enough to allow some bantering.
"They didn't find no gold in there, did they," Brown asked, peering into the uncovered basement.
"Two bodies, that's it," a smiling worker replied.
Today's route will take the Silver Top up Park Street behind the mall, to Orms Street, to Charles Street, and north on Route 95. Then it would be Exit 30 to East Street, past a Dunkin' Donuts, taking a U-turn beneath 95, and then south to Middle and Blake.
Brown, whose last day of pouring coffee and serving bacon and eggs in Providence was March 3, said she's heard that most of her prospective neighbors are happy to have the diner.
"I can't complain. I got what I wanted," she said recently. "I'm going to be back in business" in several months.
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