Dalton Laing, Gleaner Writer

WESTERN BUREAU: RELOCATING TO a new home comes with its challenges. Packing, trucking and unpacking. Moving a house by truck, however, is a whole different operation.

In Westmoreland, it is not unusual to see trucks navigating roadways and negotiating tight corners with their cargo of traditional wooden houses, which scatter the landscape primarily along the stretch of road from Big Bridge through Little London into Negril.

"We carry these houses to as far away as Trelawny," says Rugby Smith, removal expert of Broughton, Westmoreland.

Smith, co-owner of Derval and Brother Ltd, has been involved in landscaping, construction and house moving for the past 22 years.

He said that in Westmoreland, owners of these houses tend to relocate on a regular basis as their land leases expire.

Nowadays, Smith uses a 1989 six-wheeler Leyland Freighter truck to transport the buildings around the country, but he recalls the day when he acquired his