Speaker 1is a gentleman. Welcome back to the grow your moving company podcast. I'm your host, Wade Swichel, owner and CEO of two college brothers, moving storage and franchising and co founder of the moving time retreat and tighten up training. And today's guest is Justin Hart with just in time moving and just in time worldwide and agent for national van lines. So he's getting a little bit of best of both worlds with the independent side on just in time moving and then the national van lines for the interstate side of business with just in time worldwide. And Justin's been in business now for 21 years in the Phoenix metropolitan area of Arizona. Love that area. I've always said if I didn't live in Tampa Bay, I'd probably live in Phoenix or Scottsdale or one of those surrounding areas because it's beautiful out there. Definitely a change. Based from the humidity that we get to experience here in Florida. But Justin is running about 20 to 25 trucks and taking over Arizona. He's got a got a big company, a big competitor out there and a very competitive market. The Phoenix area, there's a lot of really, really solid, strong moving companies out there. But Justin, thanks for coming on to the podcast. Thanks for joining me here. And tell me a little bit about yourself. You know, you and I got to know each other a little bit leading up to the ATA conference this past year. But how did you get started in the moving business? And what's what's your journey been?
Speaker 2Yeah, thank you for the introduction. And first of all, thank you for the opportunity to join on your podcast. You know, you've been revolutionary with with independent movers here, you guys over the last several years. So it's awesome to be here. But the way I got started was was not typical, I guess, or, you know, I didn't work in the moving industry at all before I started in the moving industry. So my first day owning just in time moving was my first day working on the trucks, if that makes sense. So I had, I had worked, you know, I had been kind of moving adjacent, I worked for the self self storage company for about four years prior to starting the business. And that was really the motivation, you know, prior to working in self storage, I worked for a furniture store and worked in the warehouse. So I've been around furniture a little bit. And I actually worked for an organizing and unpacking company when I was 15 to 18 years old, going in after the movers, and we would unpack and organize and put away, those are mostly commercial van line accounts. And, you know, for executives and things like that. And so I was just the kid who was taking the empty boxes out of the house and moving the boxes around for the unpackers inside the house. But I guess that was my start. So working in self storage for four years, I saw a lot of moving companies come through our facilities, not very many good companies, you know, a lot of companies who would kind of trash our facilities and steal our equipment. And, you know, I had customers that still sticks with me that would ask me, you know, hey, I know that you close up shop here in a little while, would you mind staying after hours? Because I'm afraid to be. here alone with my movers. So I thought that was kind of interesting that you would trust somebody to move your entire household your entire life, but you're afraid to be alone with them. So that's just not how I was raised. You know, it's pretty simple, but it's kind of the golden rule. And just kind of do what you say you're gonna do. If you make a mistake, own it, you know, and just be a good person, treat other people well and work hard. And so thought I could just, you know, I was 23 years old, very naive, just, I'm just gonna start this moving business. And, and it worked. I mean, we talked to the storage facility that we worked with, they put up our flyers and all their stores, which was a really good start for us kind of gave us our boost. They also rented his trucks really inexpensively. So I was definitely a rogue mover. I know I've listened to your podcast and heard, you know, talk about how a lot of us started as rogue movers. And it wasn't because I was intentionally being rogue, I just was ignorant. And I even didn't know the rules and kind of how that went along. So I learned some some difficult lessons along the way and, and really, you know, got things on the up and up. But really, the goal was to legitimize the moving industry. Because as I worked in it and started this business, I learned I saw a lot of other companies that were intentionally rogue or intentionally ripping people off and not doing things the right way. And you start to learn how the industry was looked at back then. And I think the biggest change between maybe 20 years ago now is that there's just a different view of movers, you know, there's so many quality companies. And you know, you mentioned it, Arizona is a competitive market, there's 100 quality companies in Arizona, you know, that we're competing with, which is difficult sometimes. But it's also excellent, because you know, at the end of the day, the goal is to provide moving services for people that you do well, and that are respected. And I think that that's what we're seeing now across the country. So yeah, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1you hit the nail on the head, there's companies that get started, I always say this is a low barrier to entering low barrier to entrance business, but a high barrier to success. And a lot of us just started off back in like, the Craigslist days, or the classified section days of a newspaper just offering some labor services. I know, that's how I did it when I was in college. And I was just advertising my own labor for 10 to $15 an hour to go load and unload trucks and another company in my original city that I was operating and had actually gotten in a little bit of trouble with the state for operating
Speaker 2kind of the same way. I can't believe it. Yeah, Florida, and where everybody does business
Speaker 1perfectly all the time. Of the state, but But no, they got on the straight and narrow, and they got licensed, and they started going after and whistleblowing companies that weren't because they probably thought it wasn't fair that they got popped and nobody else did. But I wasn't really a company, it was just me doing labor and bringing my friends out to load and unload trucks and help people with small little truck deliveries with a pickup truck. But, but they had reached out and told me that they were going if I didn't shut down, they were going to whistleblow me or I had the option to, going and working for that company $15 an hour. So I did that. And I was like, Oh, well, you know what, if I don't have to pick up the phone and book these moves myself for, you know, as cheap as I'm charging, and somebody will pay me what I've been charging at the high at the high end of what I've been personally charging, then sounds like a decent deal. And I went and worked, worked there for a little bit before I ended up actually doing it the right way and getting the insurance and licensing. But yeah, I don't think you know, nobody wants to be well, I shouldn't say nobody, but the good guys don't want to be road movers. Sometimes it's just tough to get that, that license and the insurance when you don't have really deep pockets or an actual moving truck to ensure but but I will say if there's a will, there's a way. But once you did get started, you know, what what was kind of your trajectory? How are you getting new moves? I mean, this would have been what 2120 years ago. So it was definitely a lot different. But it was there anything that
Speaker 2could be applied today, I guess. Yeah, way different and definitely applied today. We still do some of the same things today. So you know, back then it was the same thing for me. I you know, a pickup truck and like a six by eight open trailer did some small stuff in that and then rented a truck and then bought a truck. And when I bought that truck, you know, I paid it off as fast as I possibly could. I'm not sure that's the smart way to go about it. But I'm very debt averse. And so I was trying to not, you know, owe people anything and just get that truck paid for. But back then, you know, besides, we did buy some yellow page ads, which I know sounds pretty crazy, but trying to compete with some of the larger van lines, you know, s and like, allied had like four pages full ads in the yellow pages, and I had like a little blurb, you know, so that wasn't super effective. It was really just pounding the pavement business development. So at the time, I didn't realize that's what we were doing. But you know, it was, I came from the self storage world, I knew how to work in self storage facilities, that's where we got to get our start. And so whenever I didn't have moves that I was on, I was going to every storage facility within a 50 mile radius, basically just trying to get our information and tell my story, get our card into the right hands, and kind of get some some work started that way. So for us, it was always just make the phone ring. And I didn't have a lot of money for marketing, I didn't buy leads, I didn't do any, there was really no online advertising that I was aware of. At that time, I did some Craigslist stuff as that went on. And that was a little bit of help here and there. But really, it was pounding the pavement developing relationships, you know, really just trying to get people to give you a chance, because I knew if they would give us a call for one move, that they were going to be very, very happy with that. So that's kind of what we were doing. And then we had a lot of people that were very happy with what we did, they were going to call us back again, they're going to trust us with their clients, or whether it was a storage facility or a realtor, or whatever the case was, but for us, it was self storage. That's kind of how we got our start and kind of push that. And I think coming from that background helped me kind of have an end with a lot of those different facilities, because I could kind of speak their language a little bit. But at the end of the day, it would take our, it was telling our clients, you know, leaving our card with our clients, letting them know how important it was for them to mention to the storage facility, if they were happy with us or to the realtor, because you and I know we can tell someone how great we are all day long, but until it comes from somebody else, that's where it really is more impactful. So
Speaker 1absolutely, the power of testimonials, I think is a very underrated piece of this business. And sometimes it's tough, you know, nowadays, we all want to get like the video testimonial, it's kind of like the, the golden standard of like, what a five star review could be, if you can put a video testimonial on Google, or at least a picture or put it on your website, or if you can get somebody to promote you on their channels, it does, it carries a ton of weight, we work with a local radio host that does a morning show. And we've been working with him for over four years, actually, it might be coming up on five, but but he does a live endorsement every single day, Monday through Friday. And I can't tell you how amazing that marketing source has been. They're the top Nielsen rated morning show in our market and radio had never worked for me before. But I think what makes it powerful is this guy's been in the market since like 1994. And he's got a huge loyal following. He's kind of a local legend, if you will. And so getting that endorsement and having him talk about our services on a daily basis is it's really powerful. But if you can get realtors, prominent realtors, that that have, you know, big shares, is a market uh we've got we work with a realtor that has a built you know they have billboards or the official realty uh realty company brokerage of the tampa bay lightning hockey team they do tv commercials they do radio so getting his endorsement you know has also carried a ton of weight in our community and you know if you can get leasing agents to hear that from their residents storage places to hear that from their residents realtor endorsements to their own clients i mean the booking percentages are through the roof on on those types of things but you know something interesting you said you were dead adverse and you tried to get that first truck paid off as quickly as you could is that have you self basically financed or paid cash as you've grown
Speaker 2your fleet to 20 plus trucks over the years yeah we did we at first it was you know because i've always had of course you know i would see companies who'd buy brand new trucks have them all wrapped they're beautiful every bell and whistle you could ever want as a mover that's that's wonderful but for us it was you know get the trucks in the fleet so they can get to work for us they you know basically i didn't buy a new truck until 2016 was the first brand new truck we bought so i've always been a fan of owning our trucks keeping them on the road when i started my dad was a mechanic he was a heavy heavy chassis mechanic so he was able to kind of help us work on our trucks that was a blessing for the first year or so but that just gave me the the mindset of like let's get this truck owned and paid for and kind of make it work for us you know so i've always been a fan of our trucks keeping them on the road when i started my dad was a mechanic he was a heavy heavy chassis mechanic so he was able to kind of help us work on our trucks that was a blessing for the first year or so but that just gave me the the mindset of like let's get this truck owned and paid for and kind of make it a cash cow and keep it on the road so yeah i always bought used that first truck we bought i think i paid eleven thousand dollars for it um which seemed like a lot of money back then and i was but but i mean that's nothing now we got very creative we went through a phase where like for interstate moving for instance we would buy a u-haul chassis and put one of our boxes on it but that only made it about 14 000 pounds empty right so we could load that thing up and not have to worry about being overweight going across state lines or anything like that so i think you can especially in moving you know you can take an older truck make it look pretty nice keep it up well maintain it keep it clean the client does not care if it's a 1997 or a 2017 or 2027 as long as it's a nice looking truck that you've taken care of and so so yeah we would buy trucks pay for them in cash i didn't uh really finance a truck until we bought our first new truck and then even then i wanted to pay that thing off as soon as i could it's probably not the smartest financial decision for us to do but it's just a nice feeling to know that you own it it's paid for and you're not having to pay a you know cover a big nut every month to cover that truck payment so
Speaker 1yeah i mean i there's you know there's there's the debate on financing versus paying with cash obviously you finance you keep cash available and it's a seasonal business sometimes that can be come in handy but at the same time it's a seasonal business so making that debt service payment every single month in january and february can feel like a huge burden and then you know of a certain amount of time you're going to have to pay the insurance payments you know you can of course pay insurance up front as well but you know that that's you know very dave ramsey of you i imagine you're you probably a dave ramsey disciple with with your philosophy i was back in the day yep definitely so yeah so yeah that's well i'm curious about like the maintenance so your dad was like a mechanic you know he sounds like he helped out does he still work with you or did he teach you how to do it or are you doing the uh you know the maintenance in-house or do you outsource that now yeah that's actually kind of a funny story and
Speaker 2i'll i'll lead to where we go now but not a funny story it's a terrible story but so my dad was a mechanic he left his job he was still working with us you know fixing our trucks and stuff when we did to our truck but he actually came to work for us as a mover so he's like hey i you know how about i come work for you for a while and so he came to work for me which was weird weird dynamic but but it was awesome it was like the best kind of year that that i had had in the business got to spend a lot of time with him he actually passed away unexpectedly on a moving truck if you can believe that so that was like really the turning point for our company we went from it was just at the time it was myself whatever friends i could find to help me my dad you know people just working with us probably the same start that you had just the one truck and we're just trying to make things work that was a big shift for our company because you know we were on a job together separated i went to do a second job he stayed back we were on and literally two hours later you know got a phone call he had a heart attack so it was very traumatic at the time but it was kind of a springboard for us because that enabled us to you know i called the only other moving company i knew at the time told them what happened they covered some of our work for us and stuff and kind of helped us get things straightened out actually the gentleman that i called i said hey if you're ever you know slow or need some you know to work a day here a day there i'd love to have you can work for us part-time and then about six months work for you full-time so we did that was the first mover i ever hired and he's still with us today um that's bobby and so that's a pretty cool story he's been our he's been you know every position in our company up to gm and now he's in business development but obviously not something you want to have happen but being you know the way that it worked it really just kind of like cemented our our at that point it was a turning point for us i could have just kind of shut it all down and been done or push forward and we pushed forward and i think that was the right
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Speaker 2into that going forward as far as our fleet goes we've always just purchased our trucks done the maintenance in-house we're not in-house but handle the maintenance in-house but we actually once we got to a certain number of trucks i think it was in 2016 2015 we hired a fleet manager on staff so he actually came into our company and he handles all of our maintenance whatever repairs he can handle on his own in-house and he also facilitates our repairs with other companies i'm sorry with maintenance companies and repair companies outside so that's critical because for years i was actually handling the maintenance and so i'd send a truck in to get repaired trust whatever they told me pay whatever they told me to pay be at their mercy get that truck back on the road having this guy come in and work for us our fleet manager mike he's been great at kind of facilitating that making sure that we're paying for what we only need to pay for getting things repaired that should be repaired and get trucks back on the road very very quickly so been a blessing having him for the last you know 10 11 years with us and uh that's that's kind of how we
Speaker 1handle things now well i'm really sorry to hear that i'm sure that must have been an extremely traumatic time um you know dealing with that and i'd have a lot of respect for you for keeping keeping things going because you know as an owner sometimes you have to you know you're responsible for everybody's livelihood that's working underneath you and and a lot of times you don't have to you don't get the time to grieve like you should and so you know a lot of respect for you to continue to plug on and um you know i'm glad i'm glad that you're doing okay now at what point at what point did you decide to bring in like how many trucks did you have when you decided to bring an in-house mechanic onto the team i think we were around
Speaker 210 trucks uh when he started working for us and it was it was a tough decision i still you know i'm not sure if it was a tough decision but i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic
Speaker 1and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic and i think it was a tough decision to bring in an in-house mechanic fleet and bought six of them cash, I think for like 25, $26,000 a piece, which was, was like crazy good at the time, because shortly after that, those, those trucks would have been, you know, 60, 70, $80,000 even used. Uh, but those things have just been nothing but lemons. You know, we've, I joke, I kind of joke, it's sort of funny, but, but we've paid a mechanic salary to keep those things on the road. And, uh, and, and so we started, you know, once after we did that, we bought four new trucks and it was only a few years before those things started racking up miles, you know, a hundred, 150, 200,000 plus miles. And you know, they're still, you know, they look new, but they're starting to have all of these recurring issues. And basically now at any given time, we've got a truck down in the fleet. And I was looking at the maintenance bills that we're paying. And then, you know, you have the issues of finding a good mechanic. That's not just putting band-aids on it because they know they'll see again in three weeks or a month or two months and justifying this person's salary on your team. And so I've actually started transition into the leasing side because when you look at what a new payment is on a, or a payment is on a new truck, if you finance, and then you look at all of the maintenance that you're responsible for that goes into it. And then the downtime of bringing it into, to a shop to have it worked on where it's just waiting in line, you know, not always knowing who's going to be working on it, how it's going to go, uh, having to rent a truck to replace it, how it's going to go. So we did the math and, you know, for, you know, around $2,000 a month, you can, you can lease a brand new truck. And we just got a couple of new Penske trucks that have backup cameras in them, which is going to also save us on claims because I mean, how often have you had a, a guy in a gas station or busy parking lot or whatever, back into somebody because the, the, the passenger didn't get out and get them back like they're supposed to. So I, I've become an opponent of leasing. Um, but I'm, you know, I know it's an ongoing debate and I'm just curious, you know, the pros and cons that you have, I'm sure you've thought about it too, you know, between owning and leasing, because also too, with owning a truck, even if you pay cash or finance it, whatever, I mean, you can, you can write that off, you know, you can accelerate a depreciation on those trucks, but, but now you just have, you know, now, now you can't do it after a certain point with leasing, you can constantly, you know, make those, uh, those write-offs towards the payments, but you know, so there's pros and cons, obviously, if you own a truck, you own a truck, if you could maintain it in house and keep it in good shape, uh, like, like your setup has, you know, I, I, I think, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. And then you have an asset on your balance sheet at once it's paid off. Uh, and typically commercial vehicles tend to not appreciate as fast as like a, like a consumer vehicle. So like if I were to go buy a new pickup truck for myself, thing loses, you know, 20% of its value, driving it off the lot. A lot of times you can have a moving truck five years later, it might still be worth, you know, $50,000 and you still have a little bit of, you know, cash in that. So I'm just curious, like, what's your philosophy? I know you're, you're a numbers guy. You're in you're in Tracy's financial group. What, what's been your analysis on the owning versus leasing? And, and I want to hear your take on.
Speaker 2I am, I was hard core. I want to own the trucks. I want to take that, you know, basically make the bet that they're going to pay off over the long term with the repairs and with the maintenance fees that we're going to have associated with them. I'm getting to the point where you are now where I'm starting. Cause we're to the point where a little bit of, you know, the bottom end of our fleet needs to kind of be turned over. It's kind of getting to the point where it doesn't make sense to keep it any longer. So we're going to have to turn some trucks over here and I'm leaning towards leasing. I, I am not sure that's the way we're going to go yet, but. What's the landscape has changed over the last, you know, five plus years, as far as truck repair and maintenance goes, it seems like what used to be like a one to $3,000 repair is now a six to $12,000 repair. We do a fair amount of interstate work and it's even worse. If one of your trucks breaks down in the middle of Montana, it's like good luck getting someone to tow it for $2,000 and then have some shop rake you over the coals because they know they can for another 10 to $20,000. So that's where I'm leaning towards going forward is definitely keeping our, maybe it's a hybrid model where we have a low, a locally owned fleet for kind of our in-state work that we do, but anything that we're going to send interstate, we lease and send out that way, you know, with, with those trucks, because the other issue I had with leasing, we've, we've done a couple of leases over the years. You know, you pay the lease for it. And then at the end of the lease, obviously you turn the truck back in and they charge you for every little scratch and ding and, you know, issue that you had with that truck while you owned it. And I don't know about your drivers, but we have great drivers, but there's still quite a few corner caps and scratches and gouges and things. So then I've got to pay a big fat, right. You know, stroke a check for, for whatever damages the leasing company says that we cause on this truck. So there's ups and downs to both. I do, you know, I think insurance is an opportunity where you can save quite a bit with least as well, because a lot of insurance policies are written to where your rented vehicles are covered. Maybe you don't have to list that vehicle necessarily as, as something you're paying on every month. You can just kind of have it as a part of your general policy for leased vehicles. That's a whole nother discussion. I'm not sure how that works exactly, but I don't want to, you know, something to think about because, you know, all these trucks that we own, especially once you own that truck, you're paying registration insurance, everything for it to sit on your lot. And so as you talked about being seasonal leasing gives you the opportunity to scale up, right? Like you can do like a three month or a six month lease on, on trucks instead of a three year, five year, seven year lease. And then you can kind of lease those trucks that you need when you need, other trucks that you need when you need them. Maybe you go to a full lease model where you have the three, five, seven year full-time leases, but then in the peak season, you kind of get those short-term leases. As someone who owns trucks, that's something that I can't do. If I own the truck, I'm paying for that truck, whether we're using it or not. So, so that's something I've thought about. There's a lot of different parts, moving parts to it. I think as we move forward, what I want to do is make sure that in the winter, I'm not seeing seven to 10 trucks sitting on our lot on a daily basis that I know that we're paying for, right. Whether or not we're using them and we're going to move towards a more efficient model where own the trucks that we know we're going to use lease the trucks going forward that we're going to use either for interstate or for,
Speaker 1for short term. So, yeah. And you know, to your point on the insurance, if, if it's going to be a long-term lease, like five or six years, you can usually get a little bit better rate on the lease, but, but a lot of times you do have to add that to your policy. I mean, there's different insurance companies, different ways they do it. Sometimes the leasing company will renew that lease monthly. I know enterprise has this flex e-rent program where they renew it every 28 days, whereas Penske, you know, they want to lock you into five, six, seven, eight years on a truck. So, you know, they're all going to be a little bit different there. But you, you hit the nail on the head with the interstate jobs, because how many times have we, I mean, I, I not that long ago, we had to Uber a crew from three hours away. They were on their way back from South Florida and you know, they, their truck broke down. They got off on an exit and I guess it got into limp mode. And that's been another issue with these newer trucks with the deaf. Oh my gosh. It's a nightmare. Yeah. I can't stand it. And that, that to me is worth the leasing in and of itself, because those deaf things, they just, they break constantly. They're expensive to repair. And Florida is not super strict. If you're going to keep the truck local, if you know, you, you have it deleted, but I'm not, not condoning doing anything against the, I'm not condoning doing
Speaker 2it either, but, but I will tell you that 75% of our repairs are DEF related repairs. It seems like, you know, it's, it's so, so yeah, there are some tricks out there to, to manage that. And that's, that's something we've looked into, but but yeah, that's a whole nother factor that changes can change your viewpoint on leasing or owning because it there's it's every, and it's not just one. I used to be like, okay, internationals suck. I'm not buying internationals. That's not how it is now with DEF. It's like, and with the whole system it's it's every brand of truck. It's something that they have to have on there and none of them work right consistently. And they're very touchy and every repair is, this is no secret. I mean, everybody on the, watching the podcast knows it's like 3, 4, 5, $6,000 every time something goes wrong with that DEF system. So
Speaker 1yeah, that's a whole nother, another consideration. Yeah. Yeah. And, and just being able to get a, a replacement truck when it's down, if you have a crew that breaks down in Montana, for example, you know, Penske will send out a, they'll do a load swap. They'll, they'll find a local moving company if, if they need to, if you just have one driver out there and they'll bring out a replacement truck, do a load swap, get it taken into their shop. And then it, they prioritize their, their, their lease. Trucks in their shop. But that, but that's also a problem because when you hit a corner cap or do something that's that's user error they rake you over the coals at Penske and you don't, you can't shop it around. Enterprise is a little more flexible with that. But at the end of the day, you know, with these lease strikes, we'll, we'll typically take them in to get them, get our own body work done from a vendor. That's a third of the price is Penske. And then, you know, we'll deal with the, the repercussions. We started it in five years. Hopefully it's good enough. But, you know, they won't notice, but yeah, you know, a lot of pros and cons there. Hey everybody, Wade here, and I've got an awesome game changing announcement for you. Now, I know a lot of you guys are constantly asking, how do we get more leads? How do we get better leads? You're tired of spending way too much money for pay-per-click or buying leads or LSA, whatever it may be only to get low paying customers that become a headache with small moves and you don't get an ROI on those jobs. Well, the exciting news is that our friends at moversville have just launched a new product called the realtor referral engine, where they not only get in front of realtors, but they command direct response replies and referred business. I'm super pumped about this, but don't just take my word for it. My friend, Austin Yarborough over at central coast moving and lucky day moving and the moving army. I know he's got a bunch of them. just like me. That's why we're friends. Has gotten over 40 direct replies from realtors in his first month of using the realtor referral engine from Moversville. And then there's Scott with ABC Moving Systems. He's booked over $30,000 in work and made over 20 new realtor connections. What can an extra $30,000 a month do for your business? Here's what makes this kind of marketing different. These aren't just one and done jobs. These are realtors who keep referring large jobs, can introduce you to the other members of their brokerage, and then those moves can start referring more and more jobs. You have to stay front of mind though. So if you want to learn more about the realtor referral engine by Moversville, head on over to moversville.com and book a quick 15 minute call with my friend, Tim, who runs the place. He'll know exactly what your business needs to get set up. He can do it all to make sure that you're getting high ticket jobs at a fraction of the cost of other marketing sources. I think you're going to be happy that you did that. Don't sleep on this one. Go check out moversville.com. Look for the 15 minute intro call with Tim and report back with your results so that I can talk about them here on the show. Thanks for tuning in. I'm curious about your decision with National Van Lines and your decision to become an agent for your interstate jobs. I'll be speaking at the National Van Lines Conference to talk about Titan Up Training in October. And I'm good friends with a few people over there. It seems like it's a great van line. Some of the van lines out there are better than others. I think National Van Lines is one of the good ones. They give a lot of flexibility to their agents and they've got several programs for their agents. But what made you decide
Speaker 2to go that route? Well, it starts with the people, honestly, Wade. And that's something that you kind of hit on. Through being in associations over the last seven to 10 years or so, I've kind of got to know some of the people at National Van Lines and was, you know, always just real impressed with their culture from top to bottom and the people that they have with their company. And that's something as an independent who didn't know the industry, you know, I was always taught like van lines are bad. Like, you know, I didn't really know the difference. And I saw a lot of, and there are some bad van lines and some bad actors and some bad agents, but National's a little bit different. You have to know the people over a few years there. We started kind of working with them with their National Express program and kind of, and then we also started doing some interline hauling for them, just trying to find, you know, some, some front hauls and back hauls and just different things for some of our interstate moves. And just kind of looking at things and thinking about it, you know, the reason we decided to kind of make that move, number one, they were the only van line who was open to working with us and kind of being flexible on how we approach this, because I was not willing to give up our, our own authority for interstate moving. You know, we do about 20% of our revenue is, is interstate work. And I don't want that to change. But what was happening was that we were only closing our interstate leads at about a 10 to 20% clip, right? So because it's for the way that we operate, and I'm sure it's similar for a lot of independents, like our interstate rates are typically a lot higher than van line rates because it's dedicated direct service. So you're getting set pickup dates at delivery date, you know, same team start to finish on and so forth. That's a great way to handle an interstate move, but it's not in, the budget or the right choice for maybe everybody who's calling us. And so instead of just referring that work out to another company, you know, I know we refer out to muscular and national express and different companies that they kind of do more large scale interstate moving. And you can make a percentage back on that for the volume that we were doing of interstate leads. I thought it made sense for us to look into being able to book those leads and potentially haul those leads in house. And so to do that in scale, I thought it makes sense to work with national. And so we kind of, for the last couple of years, I've just kind of tossed it around and explore the idea and see how it could work because it's not something that is super common where you're able to kind of open an agency, but also keep an inter independent company. And so we made it work to where basically any interstate lead that comes into our company, that's not a good fit for a direct dedicated service. We also have the option to book as a national van lines agent, right? And so you, you know, when a client calls, it's kind of like, what's more important to you, time or money, right? If, if they don't, if they can kind of accept what goes along with the van line model of, you know, maybe a couple of, you know, a delivery window and being on a semi and so on and so forth, but they can save quite a bit of money from a direct dedicated service. It's a really good fit. So instead of us taking that lead and referring it out where you have a lot of attrition, because by the time we refer it to somebody else and then they call and start that whole process over again, we're able to kind of present both options and book whatever works better for them. Right on site. So, and we don't have to haul everything, which is nice too. So we can still make, you know, the booking agent percentage and, and the OA agent percent, you know, OA percentage and all these different, you can make a good chunk of the, of the move without having to actually haul the move more so than if I were just to refer it out to somebody else. So that was the idea.
Speaker 1That makes total sense. Do you have, do you pay your salespeople commission? Yes. How do you handle the commission on a, on a job where they might book it for, for national van lines? Because it's harder to do it on like, the top line and that's.
Speaker 2Yeah, no doubt. It's whatever we bring in. Right. So like we, but it's a much higher commission level. So we brought in an outside sales person to be kind of our NVL and handling some commercial and some other stuff as well. But really he's experienced in the van line industry and, and how to sell van line moves. And so we have a commission structure for him based on the line haul that we receive and kind of what we receive from that, that booking. It's a much higher commission depends, you know, depending on what line item we're talking about, it's 10 to 10% basically of what we're bringing in, but it's, but it works out really, really well. So it's kind of complicated, but basically it's a commission-based structure for the actual revenue that we receive for booking those moves.
Speaker 1That makes sense. And you said when you were kind of doing it in house where you, you know, send the same crew start to finish dedicated transport, you know, you were booking, I think you said like 20%. How have you seen the bookings go up? Because, you know, we always talk about, you know, with our sales team here, at least, you know, don't sell on price. Like, you know, providing this premium service for a premium experience. And we have real costs because we're a real moving company. There's always going to be a rogue out there, just a company that doesn't know their numbers. That's going to be undercutting, but it can factor in when you're talking a 10, 20, $30,000 move or, you know, something really big like that. I mean, yeah, you know, a customer is probably going to be okay with waiting a little while to have their stuff delivered to save 10 or $15,000. So price, price kind of, you know, plays into that, but I'm, I'm curious, you know, how has that booking percentage gone up since you've been able to get more efficient with helping those customers on their, their long distance moves?
Speaker 2I can tell you that our, our interstate, our just-in-time moving interstate revenue has actually increased since we've done this. And I think that's maybe because, you know, we're selling it a little bit differently, or maybe showing the kind of side-by-side to somebody and they can kind of choose the direct dedicated service. So we definitely have not seen it affect our interstate work from a just-in-time moving perspective for our direct dedicated stuff. It's, it's been the same or better, but what we have seen is in this, the short, you know, we're about four months in now with, with national and we've already exceeded, we're more than halfway towards our 15, 15 month goal with them from a line haul perspective. So we've booked, I think we've booked last I checked well over, I don't know where we're at. We're probably close to $250,000 in line haul that we've booked with national van line since we started the agency, right? The just-in-time worldwide agency. And so that's, that's work that we wouldn't have booked otherwise, most likely, or would have been as much smaller percentage of it would have actually closed. So we've seen our closing ratio go up. If we take all of our interstate leads that come in, look at what we booked with just-in-time moving and also with national van lines, we've definitely seen a huge increase in closing percentage. Our goal was to at least, you know, go from 10 to 20 to like 40%, right? So at least that's what we've done. And so we've seen a huge increase in closing percentage. It's double our closing percentage if, because we're really presenting kind of the best of both worlds. I mean, other than these two options, your other options to go with a broker or another van line or something, another competitor, but like, as far as the type of service that we're offering, it's either direct, dedicated, or it's the kind of the national van line service. It makes it a little harder for someone to say no, especially if you've got reputation. I think that's the biggest thing too, is that we've got a reputation that we're going to be there for that client. We're going to take care of them. So even if they book the van line service, we're still there for them from start to finish, you know, on that move. So.
Speaker 1No, I mean, that's a great option to help your clients out with addressing their true needs. You know, is the money the most important thing, or is that dedicated transport with the same crew start to finish your best, your best option? Now I know you're, you're involved with the ATA. That's how we first connected. And you see a lot of van lines, you see a lot of independence. You have both sides, you're in both worlds, foot in each. And I'm sure you've kind of seen, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly. I'm sure you shopped other van lines when you were considering that decision, you landed on national, but I know there's other good van lines out there. What separates a good van line from a not so good van line. And you don't have to mention any names, but just in case anybody's entertaining this option. Well, I think one way is talk to the
Speaker 2agents. You know, that's one thing that I did is kind of, you know, besides just the, because there are like for us, it wasn't so much a good van line or a bad van line. It was more about the flexibility, and national was the most flexible as far as working with us, letting us keep our own authority and our own independence. And that's the biggest turnoff, I think, for independents working with van lines is that you kind of lose your identity once you become an agent for that van line. And so I wasn't willing to do that. Started this from scratch, just like you, just like everybody else did. And I wasn't willing just to kind of throw that all away and just become an agent for a van line. But I think what I've seen in general is that it's like we're working together more, right? You're starting to see other van lines do a lot more interline hauling agreements and work with independents more and listen to independents more. And I think that that's really the direction we're heading. So I don't know that it's a good van line or a bad van line. I just think that it's about what you're looking for with your business. And for us, it was being able to keep our independence. Some companies want to become part of a van line, become an agency, and that's 100% fine. I mean, there's the support that goes along with that. But for us, it was the flexibility. And then it's the people. I just think from top to bottom, National has really, really great people, starting with Tim Hellenthal and working down from there. You know, they're all just awesome to work with. But a lot of other good folks, other van lines we've worked with as well. You know, it was not for if other van lines would have been as flexible, the decision wouldn't have been as easy for us. But that's just the way that it worked out because I knew what we were getting into with National. But don't get me wrong. It was not like I was like, oh, yeah, where do I sign? Like, this is it was still it took me a long time to kind of get to the point where I was comfortable enough. And for them to, you know, we just have discussions of how do we make this work, you know, and so just a lot of communication and working
Speaker 1through things. Yeah, no, I think ultimately, you're spot on. It comes down to what's the best fit for you, your goals, your style, you know, who do you click with, who you get along with. And I personally, you know, I've done a lot of research just on the moving industry in general, the history of the moving industry. There's a really good book called The Mobile Society that Derek Green actually turned me on to and who's loves Eric. Yeah, he's a character, but he's a great guy. But I that book, it just I nerded out on it was written in like the 70s. It's really hard to find. I think I got a copy on eBay. And it had a stamp on it from like the Jefferson County Library. So I don't know if the library was liquidating books that nobody checked out or if somebody walked away with it, put it on eBay. But but you know, the industry is an interesting backstory for anybody who wants to go down that rabbit hole. Up until the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, they only allocated like 2000 moving licenses around the country. And then Reagan in his administration, they kind of flipped it on its head. And overnight, like 40,000 moving companies popped up when they kind of opened up that market. Deregulated, but those legacy companies that had been around for, you know, 100 years, in some cases, back to the horse and carriage days, they had a big say in, you know, how that legislation was going to roll out. The lobbyists, if you will, and I know you're still involved with, you know, you're very involved with ATA, which is kind of essentially a lobbyist, you know, they go to bat for moving and storage companies, as well as other trucking companies. And, you know, one of the things when I got into this business is there's this stigma surrounding the moving industry. You know, I think there was just a lot of old school practices. Up until recently, the moving industry, I felt like has been kind of behind other home service industries in terms of technology, in terms of, you know, methodologies.
Speaker 2You know, they because change in general, right? Yeah, don't change. Yeah, right. And, you know,
Speaker 1with the internet, with AI, with all the different technologies that have become available, all the training resources and conferences. Now, we're starting to see it, it finally catch up. I want to take a second and tell you all about tighten up training. As a co founder, we've spent months and months and months and a lot of money pulling together resources from some of the best moving companies in the world. And we're excited to bring this to an online platform available to any mover to use at an affordable price. Tighten up training has over 200 videos, including mover training, your highest turnover position so that you can reduce claims, streamline operations, give your team the tools to perform at the highest level of service that generate repeat and referral business and allow you to charge higher prices, as well as sales training, marketing training, business development, leadership, we're adding more content as we speak, we've got legal training in there, we've even got door to door. Training for the moving industry. Thanks to Lenny gray at the moving time retreat. We've seen a massive explosion of moving companies jumping on to tighten up training since the last retreat, and people are loving it. And when you sign up and mentioned this podcast, we're going to give you a free six week onboarding course in order to learn how to hold your team accountable and get the entire team on the platform so that you can have the best off season and summer season that you've ever had. So go to tighten up training.com. Schedule your free demo. And look forward to tightening up. But I'm curious to hear what what you've seen happening in the moving industry as a whole, you know, where is it still flawed? What is improving? What changes have you seen, in general across across the entire industry?
Speaker 2Yeah, what I will say with with the ATA, you know, in ATA MSC, and really appreciate your support, by the way, and participating in our conference, our annual meeting, back in February, we need more independence that we've seen a big change in the ATA MSC focus, where it used to be viewed as just, you know, even back when it was AMSA, it was just more about kind of the van lines, they dominated the talking points, and they dominated the focus of the of that organization and what it went after. So now, over the last several years, we've seen a lot more independence come into the ATA MSC, we've seen them listen to what we're, what our kind of desires are, and what is important to us. So in fact, I'll be at the call. In Washington, next month, middle of September, you know, lobbying, what meeting with our representatives about issues in the moving industry, right. So we're looking at the moving tax credit and trying to get that back on to back, you know, through legislation so that people can write off their moving expenses again, which is huge for the moving industry, right. So there's other things like that, where it's things that are important to independence. And so the independent voice has definitely become much more heard. I think in the moving industry. So as far as what's going well, I really think it's that, like, I don't know, when I first started, it was very much like I was in my own world and didn't really talk to others too much just kind of did our own thing. I look at somebody else's website and almost get like, not envious, but just like, Oh, man, we should be doing something like that, you know, but not actually reach out to them. We're way past that. Now, like, we're in a whole new world where we all are working together talking, sharing, you know, kind of have the rising tide mentality in our industry. And it's expanding. And, you know, we've not latched on, but you look at like Tommy Mello, and other home service industry professionals, and we can take a lot from what they're, what they're doing as well. So I think, you know, as far as what's going well, is that what, what I think, you know, kind of, I don't really know what gaps there are to fill, because I feel like, you know, movers aren't looked at as when I first started, I felt like we were trying to win the customer over, from the time they called us until the time we finished the move. And like, they'd, they'd always thought terribly of movers had a bad experience. And, and the industry itself was full of bad actors. And I don't think that's the case anymore. I know, in our market, it's not market around the country, it's not, you go on Google and search movers. And there's, in every market, there's, you know, at least five to 10, if not 20, or 3040 movers that have tons and tons of solid reviews, great reputation, and do a great job. So I just hope we keep pushing that direction. I think that, you know, now it's going to be a battle of profitability, I think that as our as our costs are rising, you know, it's like, there's always a fight. For pricing to come down and for people to pay less for things. But at the same time, as movers, we, we have to push our rates, but also understand that we have to make a profit. And so repairs and insurance and everything we're paying, it makes it tougher and tougher to be sustainable. So I think that's an issue for some, some companies is reaching a level where they're making enough money to stay in the business, you know, and kind of getting past that point of like, just scraping by because that that's not sustainable, you know, long term. So
Speaker 1yeah, I think I think the moving industry at one point had gotten a little bit commoditized, where people just kind of thought of, you know, all things being equal, you know, everybody, you know, I'm sure you know, somebody, pretty much anybody you talk to has either had a bad moving experience, or they know somebody who's had a bad moving experience, and that that has gotten better, because there's been a lot of resources over the last decade that have come up, you know, starting with Louis Massaro doing his thing with the mostly independence, you know, the the AMSA, you know, transition to the ATA, I've seen a lot of positive changes there. I remember when I was first starting, I joined AMSA and ordered their pro mover certification, a DVD and about as exciting as watching paint dry. But you know, there's there's been a lot more resources that have become available, even just on YouTube. I mean, obviously, I can toot my own horn with Titan of training.
Speaker 2Yeah, I've heard of one called Titan of training. It's pretty, pretty good. So
Speaker 1there's other ones coming out, too. Now, there's, you know, there's, there's a few other movers that have created their own stuff. There's a ton of stuff online now. And the service and the level of service has improved. And, and it's gotten very competitive with, you know, a lot of younger savvy people. And from what I hear that a lot of those older legacy people are either aging out, or it's second, third generation companies that, you know, the kids don't want to run the business anymore. Have you have you noticed any trends in any segments of the of the industry where there's still, you know, kind of behaving like dinosaurs, if you are still using paper bills of lading? Are they not on a CRM? Are they not embracing AI and the internet? And are there older populations that, that struggle to keep up, or maybe it's just an organization that's been around since 1920. And, you know, they, they're, they've built such a big network and they're so big now that, that it's hard for them to pivot into some of these things with how many agents they have.
Speaker 2Yeah. What are you seeing there? No, I've seen that for sure. And I've really seen it from an acquisition and sales side. You know, a lot of these companies that are getting acquired are of that ilk, which are, they've been around forever. They had never really evolved. They kind of haven't changed things. And, and yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of like evolve or die. I mean, you have to, you, we've been, you know, for the last 15 years going, you know, paperless and doing all, trying to always evolve with the times and change, because I felt like when there were still moving companies buying yellow page ads in 2017, you know, it's like, what, what are you doing? Like, that's crazy. So, so for us, that's that. And I think really where it's evolved is not so much operational. I mean, you know, as far as like, doing the moving, a lot of that hasn't really changed. That's kind of an art, you know, protecting a sofa today is the same. It was protecting a sofa 20 years ago, but the, the, from the sales side, a lot of these older companies that don't have the passion and don't have kind of the, have not evolved with the times they, they lose more than they win because their, their sales process, they like, I, we, we talked to one company we're going to acquire that locally here that doesn't, didn't do follow-ups. They just didn't, they, just would do the quote, send the quote. And they were like, if we do a good job and if the customer wants us, they'll call us. And I'm like, that's like terrible. That's, and, and as a result, their closing ratio, their closing rate was like 20%, you know? So like, which was high for their, for the way that they did things. But so that's, that's where I see it. You look at, you know, all these different opportunities to look at like every segment of your business, whether it's how you move. I mean, I I'm blown away. I go on Facebook and look at some of the groups and, and some of the posts people, have of how great of a mover they are. And there's, and they are, I mean, I'm like, I'm, you're, they're better than I am. That's insane. Like I, you know, I don't know how they do that. I love that. I love seeing that it motivates you to the people to kind of do the same thing. You know, you look at like the sales process and looking at your numbers, there's just so much available now that was not available before. And I, there's thousands and thousands of companies who are, and young, eager entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of that, you know? And so I think that that's like the biggest change is that if you're not doing that, you are going to fall behind because there's, there's just your competitors are right. Like they're, they're learning how to sell things better than you. They're learning how to use AI in their business. They're learning how, how their numbers work and where to look for holes that you're not looking for. You know, I just met with some movers last week in an independent group and like, I thought I was going to come into there kind of knowing how, you know, kind of having things solid and wrapped up. And I came away with four pages of notes of changes that we need to make in our sales process alone. To kind of get better, you know, and these are things that 10 years ago, I wouldn't have even paid attention to. Right. So I think definitely you have to stay on top of it.
Speaker 1Yeah. We're at a, we're in an age now where the information's all there and it really largely comes down to execution. And you mentioned Tommy Mello and he talks about how he would go to other industries like HVAC and plumbing and electrical conferences and roofing. And he would take a lot of the things there and apply it to the garage door space because there wasn't a lot of resources in the garage door space. And, you know, private equity has gotten very interested, in-home services, particularly, you know, starting with HVAC and plumbing, electrical, not garage doors. And, you know, I know some moving companies that have merged or sold to private equity. And I think there's a huge opportunity there for a lot of moving companies out there. And I've noticed the independents have started to gain a lot of market share. You know, the consumers are getting more choice. A lot of the established legacy companies, the van lines and the agents there, you know, they get all, they've kind of been grandfathered into a lot of the military. You know, they've kind of been grandfathered into a lot of the military. You know, they've kind of been grandfathered into a lot of the military. You know, they've kind of been They've kind of been grandfathered into a lot of the military. You know, they've kind of been and the corporate and, you know, a lot of this account work. But independents are starting to band together, or maybe they're just in their market doing their thing. And they're taking some of that, but they're also really starting to get a stranglehold on the residential side of things. And I'm curious where you think the industry is going. Do you think independents continue to kind of edge out the legacy companies that have just been slow to change? Or do you think they're going to figure it out and, you know, get some of that market share back, especially if they get private equity injections, or, you know, anything like that?
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, there's always talked about like a roll up and, you know, people paradoxically coming in and buying up companies and things. And I think that that will happen to an extent. But I think that we're already at the point where there's just so many companies who are who are on the rise. Whether you're a 1 million, 2 million, $4 million company, $5 million company, like you're the growth is there, right for the industry. And so I think we're going to see it. I think the legacy companies will continue to kind of, I hope, maybe I'm wrongly or not, it doesn't matter. But I think that they will kind of fade out. And I think you will see the younger companies kind of rise to the top, especially in the independent world, the willingness to share success and, and kind of best practices and things that work is, it's really insane. I mean, it's something that like, I remember when we were starting the Arizona Moving Association, even five, six years ago, Nigel, who's with CDS at the time, he's with Packaging Exchange, now, I think, but he, he was from Vegas, and he would come in and be like, you know, I see how you guys like work together here in Arizona, like, you don't see that in Vegas, like, you don't see like, everyone's like, you know, it doesn't talk to each other doesn't work together. Even in Arizona. I mean, yeah, you want to dominate your market. I understand that. But you know, even at our association annual that we had back in February, you know, we had to ask the pros and we had met we had Josh Gerhill up on stage, we had Chad from Camelback moving up on stage, we had Roger Wise from Wheaton Beacons up on stage, all sharing what they could about their perspective, areas of expertise, to other movers in their market, which is insane to think about. But it's like, amazing that we're at that point where, because it doesn't really matter how much you know, you still have to take that knowledge and implement it into your company, right. And so but at the same time, the first step is gaining the knowledge and having access to it. And the willingness to share that among independents and among smaller companies. And so I think it's really, really important that companies and newer companies is fantastic. And I think that that's something that with the legacy companies to a degree, they're just not able to pivot as quickly. And they don't they don't see as much because they're, they've just got more overhead, it's harder to move, it's harder to pivot, you know, it's like, it's basically like a big giant center, as opposed to a point guard, right? Like it's there's, you know, I guess you got you're looking for that next Wemby, right, somebody that can just be giant and pivot, but and it's out there, I'm sure. But, but in general, you know, I see a lot of smaller companies continuing to grow, work together, share information, share knowledge of what's working, and keep pushing the envelope. So hopefully, it motivates the legacy companies to kind of move forward. I don't think it'll be as dramatic as kind of the yellow page to internet days where a lot of companies died because they didn't embrace the internet. But, but I do think that it's definitely a concern. As far as the independent kind of industry, you know, going forward. So
Speaker 1David Wright: 100%, you know, rising tide lifts all ships. And when I first started this podcast, even before that, like I was terrified to talk to my competitors, I was terrified to run into the company that I worked with for six months that I started competing with. But eventually I did. And I remember one of the local companies up in Gainesville, actually reached out to all of us and got us all together for a beer at one of the local breweries. And like, I was like, these guys aren't bad people. Like I was, I thought they were like the enemy for so long. I was so terrified. You know, and that kind of opened up my eyes, like, okay, maybe there's some good people here that I'm not competing, because I just had this in my head of this, like stigma of what a what a real moving company owner was like, it was just like, big, burly, angry guy, but it really wasn't the case. And I was terrified to pick up the phone, and reach out to, to, you know, other companies to just ask for advice. And eventually, I just did it. And I realized that there was so much gold happening in those conversations, you know, even if they were in different markets. And that's ultimately how this podcast started, it was, you know, as a calling card to just have an excuse, to reach out to other moving companies, whether they're in my market, which I've done podcasts with people that are competitors, or in a totally different market. And I attribute, you know, seeking out that mentorship to, to a lot of the growth and success that we've had, because we were just spinning our wheels for so long trying to reinvent the wheel when the answers were there, and the model was there. And there's no real secrets in the moving business. It's all comes down to execution. And yeah, maybe there's some proprietary marketing plays and things like that, that, you know, you might not want everybody to know about. But for the most part, everybody, you know, has the same information available now at their fingertips, whether it's chat, GPT, Claude, YouTube, Google, whatever it is, and, you know, it really comes down to how you're going to put it into play. But just like how the Yellow Pages went to the internet and washed a lot of people out, I think a lot of that's happening with AI now. It's kind of that next wave of the internet and our connectivity with one another. I'm curious, what your projections for AR, how do you, how do you use AI in your companies? And how do you think AI is going to play a role in the moving and storage industry over the next 10
Speaker 2years? We, it's tough because we've, you keep hearing that it's going to, it's going to hit the wall or it's going to kind of hit a point where it becomes, you know, not useful for whatever reason. For us, it's, it's something that we're, everything that we do, we're like, okay, how can we use AI to make this better to do this? It starts with, you know, obviously for us, and I think that's, that's a big part of it. And then you have the technology, you know, the technology, changing how we're going to handle our, our sales from inside to outside and kind of set parameters and structure and things like that. And that is, AI has been extremely helpful for that kind of thing. That's just on a kind of a basic level, but it, it's really amazing that you don't have, you know, it kind of helps you. It's kind of like having someone that kind of gives you some advice based on what it can find out there on the internet, which is cool, but we're using it in a ton of different ways. Financials, you know, we work with pro mover accounting and, and Brock, and he's actually put in like a, a portal that it's like, almost like having a CFO that analyzes your books, looks at everything, looks at the industry and gives you kind of really good advice and really good insight based on your numbers. Whereas, you know, years ago, I was just kind of looking at our bank account and saying, is the bank account going up? I guess we're doing good. Is it going down? What's going on? Right. So now this is like things that we can be proactive with based on our forecasting and our budget and where we're heading. And, and so there's lots of advice that way too, even with our, even with our, our CRM. I mean, they've got a whole AI component that will help you kind of structure your whole, the whole CRM without having to go through and dig through all the settings. It kind of does it for you. So there's a million ways that we're using it. One way I'm very interested in is from kind of a dispatch module. And I talked about this at a conference semi recently, but I would like it to, we spend a lot of time kind of, you know, dispatching all of our trucks and crews and assigning the right guys to the jobs and assigning the right trucks to the right jobs. And, and I would like that to be handled by AI. I don't see why it can't look at all of our team, what their qualifications are, all of our trucks, what specs they have, the jobs look, read the notes, see what's needed, and then basically do what it thinks is right to where our dispatch can come in and go, eh, we're going to move one thing here, one thing there, and then be done just kind of double check it and move on as opposed to creating it every day. Right. And starting from scratch. And so that'll probably save us two hours a day. Once we get that implemented. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's a big part of having somebody kind of go through our schedule and handle the dispatch. So there's a million different ways to use it. The biggest thing for us is just keeping it top of mind, you know, just whenever we have something that, an initiative or something that we're doing, just seeing if we can bring AI into the fold and how it can help us. But it's also not the be all end all. I mean, there's still some things where it doesn't handle quite right or whatever the case is, but it's getting better and better every day. And we're moving, you know, we still, we use an AI phone auto attendant, the through super move that, that, you know, we're doing, you know, handles calls for us after hours and can text out a link for a digital survey to our clients or a virtual survey they can do on their own. I mean, it's, there's all these things that it can do to kind of help you kind of be there for your clients when, when you need them. So, yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah. I mean, you can write in a whole app, you know, vibe coding, I think is what they're calling it these days, but we've done that recently for our bonus structure to have a portal for our, our movers, to be able to see how they stack up on our, on a totem pole with the bonuses and evaluate their performance through when we're trying to decide who our. Our, our VIP movers are our best players or, you know, who's the weaker links are instead of just going by the gut or what they tell you or how friendly they are with you. You know, it helps us quantify that inventory management. We built out a app for, for inventory management through cloud. And now we use smart moving as our CRM and it can API and a lot of things. I think most of the CRMs now have APIs that you can connect a lot of this stuff too. And most recently I uploaded three years of data, both job data for the month of August for the last three years, our book data, our projected bookings, our opportunities that we have, our sales person, you know, performance reports and had Claude tell me, you know, how to set our pricing with dynamic pricing for the month. And I know, you know, you can't really get into that on with ATA standards, but, but you know, if you're, if your state allows and your tariff allows you to be able to adjust pricing, depending on availability, it was extremely insightful to know, you know, what our projected busiest days are going to look like, what our slow days that we need to fill look like, what our average, how, how many days out our average job books, which is about 11. It was the median day out that a job performed from the time that it's booked. So once we get under that 11 day mark, we know we got to get a little more aggressive to fill the schedule and just super helpful in, in trying to optimize and keep trucks on the road so that we don't. I'm going to, I'm going to steal that from you,
Speaker 2Wade, if that's all right, because we're actually, that's been a big topic for us is dynamic pricing and, and making sure that we're, you know, lowering the need to and increasing when we have the opportunity to, and, and we're putting that onto, on a sales manager right now, who's kind of using his gut feeling and using what he thinks is going to happen. Why, why are we, we have, we really can have the data right there for us and it can tell us exactly how to handle that. So that's a really good, really good point. Thank you for bringing that up. Absolutely. Yeah. Just download historical
Speaker 1data and what, what your current data looks like and put it in the cloud and ask it. I could send you over the prompts that I used and what I put in there after the call. Awesome. Do you think that, you know, a lot of talk, and this will be the last thing, cause I know we're coming up on time, but a lot of talk about AI replacing a lot of jobs, you know, do you see that happening at all in the moving industry? I think it's going to be a while before robots are loading and unloading trucks, but I think self-driving trucks are not too far away. We've already got a lot of self-driving cars that are being tested, Waymos, things like that. You know, there's, you know, Tesla obviously does their thing and, and there are robots that are starting to come out. Do you see that entering the moving industry anytime soon, or do you think, you know, this is going to always be
Speaker 2something that, that people have to physically do? I think what, what separates us from our competitors is our people. And I think that that's something that it doesn't matter. I'm still of the mindset that AI is not going to replace our people. It's going to free them up to do things that they're more capable of doing and better, better with their time spent. So I don't think we're near the point where that's going to happen. That's a concern, a real concern that we're going to start to replace our people with, with AI. But I do think that, because again, that's, if that does happen, then there's going to be one moving company, right? And it's going to be just a commodity at that point. Basically, there's going to be no, what separates you from anybody else. So for us, it's how we treat our clients. It's how we treat our people who then go out and treat our clients the right way and provide that personal touch. And I just don't think you're going to have that with AI, but I do think it's going to make us insanely more efficient. And powerful in a lot of ways. I don't, you know, as far as the truck driving goes, you know, that's more of a concern for like, you know, the freight industry, I think for moving as well, you might not be sending drivers across country. Maybe you load a truck and it takes it to where it's going. And then you, I call you and say, Hey, I've got a truck that just pulled up to a house in Florida. Can you send a crew over to unload it? I mean, that's still, we're still a ways away from that. So maybe we lose driving opportunities over the years, but, but even just seeing, you know, I, I still think we're a long way away. There's a lot of variables to overcome with driving, loading, moving, you know, from an operational standpoint, that's not going to go anywhere. And even from an admin standpoint and a sales standpoint, we need people like we, that's how we sell who we are is, is by the people who believe in our company and that,
Speaker 1and that's not going to change. I don't think. I agree. I, I, I think people like to do business with people and, and things tend to come full circle. You know, when the internet first got big became a thing, you know, before that it was word of mouth, you know, coming from a trusted source, what your reputation was, and then it went online. And if you had a cutting edge website and good reviews, it said it gave you an edge over all of the competitors. And, and now everybody has, you know, the, the website and, and everybody knows they have to get the Google reviews. So it's not as, as much of a cutting edge thing, but you know, the AI now is, is kind of the new cutting edge thing with the voice agents and all the different things. But the end of the day, you know, people want to do business with people. And I think it's going to go back to full circle where the people, the companies that can stand out from the AIs that, you know, it's not just a, a robot talking to you on the phone, or it's not, you know, there's no personal touch involved and, you know, whether it's customer service, whatever, that that's going to give companies an advantage. So I think, you know, I think, you know, there's, there's a place for the voice agents. There's a place for some of this stuff, but, but ultimately I, I do believe that, that the companies that, that can use those tools in the right areas, but still deliver that, that personal touch and experience are going to have the edge when everybody goes to try to save money and cut costs by automating everything with a real person.
Speaker 2No, I agree. That can be even a selling point. Like, you know, I, I hope I don't get to the point where I'm like, call Justin time moving. We, we have real people, you know, I hope that,
Speaker 1but, but I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. I think in a lot of business, I mean, just like when you call your bank or whatever, and it's a voice automation, you know, it's a voice automation. You know, the automated, you know, thing menu like drives me crazy because it's a real person, real person. Yes. No, I agree. Yeah. Well, Justin, this has been great. You know, thank you for everything you do for the industry. Thanks for coming on and sharing your insights. I know you're very well connected. You, you have a very good finger on the pulse with all of the, the happenings and the trends and the connections and the networks within this business. And, and I'm, and that's only, only good things can come from that. So for anybody who might want to reach out to you, connect, or maybe they're interested in joining the ATA. I know we want to get up more independent movers in that and continue to grow the moving and storage conference side of things. How, how can people get in touch? Best way I'm going to give my cell phone number,
Speaker 2honestly, 4 8 0 6 1 2 3 3 1 8 Justin at J I T moving.com cell phone email, obviously look us up on Facebook, Instagram, whatever. I'm pretty accessible guy. And right back at you. I mean, it's, I'm just happy to be a part. of this industry at this time and space, and I think that we're kind of in the, in the golden age of independent moving, quite frankly. So. I agree. I think,
Speaker 1I think the market is only going to grow from here and there's a ton of opportunity. The information's out there. You just got to go get it and you got to implement it. Thank you for coming on Justin. Before we wrap up a couple of quick announcements, we have our moving tight retreat, September 2nd to the 4th in Clearwater beach, Florida. That's going to be an awesome event. We're expecting close to 300 people, if not more to come out to this event, a lot of amazing cutting edge vendors, people that you may have worked with, or maybe you've never heard of before that'll be showcasing some new products. So you, by the time this episode airs, you should still have time to grab tickets to that. I hope to see you there. And if you don't mind leaving a review for this podcast, I I've recently started to realize that online reviews play into AI algorithms and everything else. So if you've enjoyed this podcast, if you got something out of it, whether it was from Justin or a previous guest, go ahead and hit that follow subscribe button and please leave a review. That would be greatly appreciated. But until next time, we'll see a lot of you guys at the retreat in a couple of weeks, if not there elsewhere at the ATA conferences, as we get closer to that in the spring for the moving and storage conference and tighten up. We'll see you all next time. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the grow your moving company podcast. If you'd like to learn more about any of the sponsors listed on this show, want to apply for the next moving Titan retreat or interested in owning or working for two college brothers franchise, drop me a line at [email protected] moving out and have a great day. 
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