Moving On Up
By TheWild1 at 14 September, 2007, 5:39 pm, Categories : All About Business
I was admiring the lyrically great hit rap “Party like a Rock Star,” as I pulled up behind a truck at a stoplight. It had the words “Two Men and a Truck” written in big bold letters. I picked up my Samsung BlackJack
We have already established that the company could be part of a franchise or not. There are pros and cons to each (I will discuss this in a future article), but for now we will assume that they are basically the same in outcome.
First, we will need to consider what services we will be offering. These days moving companies offer more then well… moving.
Some services we might include:
Moving: The obvious one
Retail delivery: Many stores contract local movers to deliver merchandise to customer’s home
Packing: Many movers have this add on feature; I have used it twice and for the most part they do a good job.
Storage: Once your build up your business and can buy some space eventually you may want to consider this.
Determine distance:
Are we going to travel across the country or just the close by states? Many of the smaller companies only offer close by states. This is an important thing to consider because we will need to decide how many trucks you need, the size of them, and gas. If we know that we will not be making any cross country trips, then we can lower your expected cost of gas.
Start-up cost will include:
Truck(s): Cost will range depending on size and how many
Permit: Depending on how big the truck; we may need a permit
Office or some sort of storage lot: May not need a full building, but we will at the very least need a place to store the trucks because in most places vehicles that big cannot be stored in a residential area.
Boxes: If we are offering packing services then we will need this; it is also good to have boxes even if we don’t pack because we can still offer boxes. Most people prefer to do as many things as they can in one place.
Marketing: If nobody knows about us, then we won’t get any business.
Pricing:
So we have finally decided what services to include, what distance radius we will use, and our start-up costs. According to some sites, start-up can range between $150,000 - $450,000. Now we need to figure out how to make all our money back. If we are with a franchise, pricing is already calculated out. However, we decided to start our very own business. Determining prices for a moving company is quite difficult with many uncertain variables, so we will look at what we may want to consider when calculating prices:
Are we going to have a flat fee or a per mile/load fee? For very small moves, our best bet would probably be applying a flat fee, however; if we need to move a whole house then that flat fee would not work for us. In this case we might add a price on the amount of the load plus the distance. So a mixture of both is probably going to be the best choice. If we are packing or giving the customer’s boxes we will need to add a fee onto this. So, by including all this factors into our equation, we can find a good start to pricing.
The Best Solution:
I personally feel that, unless you have tons of money stored in the bank, you should start off slow. You could first purchase a pick-up truck and offer a retail delivery service, small moving company (just moving pieces of furniture across town), or garbage removal. You would be surprised how many people need somebody to haul away an old grill or entertainment cabinet. Just look at 1800GotJunk and 1800JunkUSA.
As you build your client base, reputation, and money, then you can slowly add more capital to your company until you are “moving on up into a deluxe apartment in the sky.”
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