Transcription
So let's get right into this. In this video, I'm going to go over literally every single question you might have on how to start a moving company. And a little bit about me. My name is Max Maher, and between the ages of 19 and 21, I grew my moving company from five thousand dollars a month in average monthly sales to a hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars a month in average monthly sales, all within about 15 months. The company just exploded in growth, and I still manage that company. It's been almost five years now in which I've owned moving companies. It's my main source of income, and my day-to-day everyday job is managing and running my moving company. So I figured, why not impart this knowledge and help anyone else out who is looking to start one of these and start making some money.
So the first thing I'm going to go over all the basics, really simple stuff, and then go into more technical kind of stuff, and how insurance works, hiring employees, marketing, and stuff like that. But let's start with the basics. The first thing we've got to name our company. So what I like to do when it comes to naming companies is I like things that stand out. I don't like companies that are just like Johnson's Moving or Eric's Moving, just because those don't stand out. There's so many of them, and they're kind of hard to remember. So I like names that stick out. Skinny Went Moving Company. Tons of people hire us specifically because of the name, and we ended up going with this name because it was against the grain of everyone else. You know, there's like Strong Men Movers and Muscular Guy Movers and things like that. So we went the complete opposite. That way it catches people's attention and gives us that little bit more reason to get a call and to get that additional customer. Yeah, it's jokey and it's kind of the opposite of what you want, but it plays in our favor. People love the name. You know, we're driving down the road, people are pointing at the trucks, laughing, and it ends up getting us a lot of business.
So to find a good business name, you might think, "I got to be a creative person." I'm not creative. Let me tell you, that is not the case. All you have to do is sit down and put some thought and work into it. I like to personally, whenever I'm trying to figure out anything creative, just brain dump creative ideas onto paper. Write down literally every single name that comes to your mind. Put it down on a piece of paper. Sit there for two hours, and you know, most of them are going to suck. 90% of them are just going to be terrible. 10% of them are going to be pretty good, and then from that 10%, that's what you whittle down. Availability, if that company name is being used elsewhere, if you can get a domain elsewhere. But the name is important, and especially think because you're probably going to own this company for a long period of time. You'd like a company name that works and you'd like to be attached to for a while.
So after you have your name, it's finding domain availability. I personally use the website Namecheap for finding domains, but there's tons of other websites out there. This one is just easy because it does the hosting all in one, and you can connect WordPress to it, which is what I use to build websites with. WordPress, I'm not very adept in building websites. I've built one for my pool cleaning company in the past, but it took me a lot of time. It looks fine, but it's not amazing. What I do now, whenever I build a new website, I simply go on Fiverr, F-I-V-E-R-R, and then hire someone who knows WordPress much better than me. For literally a hundred dollars, you can get a website built, and it's, it's worth the investment. Either you're going to spend 20 hours learning how to build this, buying, buying good themes or building up on a theme, or you can spend a hundred and just get it done. With, um, you do have to be good with communication, though, because a lot of times they're going to take things really literally. Um, I had an experience where I said, "Change the title to this and change the icon accordingly," and they made the whole title like, "Moving and changing the icon accordingly." So you've got to be really specific, have a little patience, but it's so cheap. For a hundred dollars, you might as well just go with it.
That way, the next thing up is making a logo for your business. And this is similar to a name. You know, once you have the name, you kind of want a logo that flows with it or something else that stands out that people will be able to recognize from a distance. We want kind of simplicity. We want it to look good. What I prefer to do for this is using Fiverr as well. You're going to hear this a few times because I love Fiverr. I use it for so many things. It's just so cheap. But what I recommend is drawing a really basic idea of what you're looking for with the logo, and then send it to someone on Fiverr. You can get this done for literally seven dollars, including the fee that they charge, the website charges. Send them your rudimentary drawing, and they will turn that drawing into a legitimate logo. Or if you don't even want to do that, you can say, "Hey, hey, here's my business name, here's a theme that I want to go after, give me a logo," and they'll do that as well. It's so simple, so easy. Logo is one of the easiest parts. But that's another thing that you want a logo that you like, because you're going to be probably wearing shirts with this, you're going to promote with it, it's going to be on your business card.
And that's the next thing, your business card. Same thing here. If you don't want to learn how to, you know, work programs like InDesign or even a free program like Canva, which you can use to, you know, build business cards and other little graphic type things, then just hire someone on Fiverr. You can do this for 10 or 20 dollars. Have them build a business card with the elements and colors that you need. Match it up to the color scheme of the website or whatever, you know, branding you're going for. These are the things that I think are worth just outsourcing and paying someone else to do, because they're not the kinds of things that you necessarily need to get good at. You're not going to be making logos every single day. You're just going to do it once, and we want the launch to be as easy as possible. We don't want you to be bogged down by these kinds of details before you launch. And really, paying someone to do these, all of these together, is like less than $200. So just delegate it out, pay it out. That's the easier way to do that.
Let me grab my notes here. I got tons of notes. So the next thing to think about is your business structure. So starting out, if you don't get a specific business structure, you start with a sole proprietorship, which is basically your name, you are the business. And with a moving company, I really recommend you get an LLC. That way, all liability is on the company, not on you. There's something that's called the corporate veil. So if there's an issue that happens in your business, only your business is liable for that issue. Let's say, I don't know, you drop someone's piano, it busts, or some major issue or something like that, you're not going to go bankrupt because of that. The company is what's liable for all that. So I recommend you getting an LLC. In most states, it's between $50 to $100. Go on the state website, that's the cheapest way to do it. There are other websites that, that you can do that as well. I'll link some below. Actually, there's, there's going to be timestamps to all the kinds of links and everything I talk about below. So if you want to skip around, go ahead and do that. But yeah, with an LLC, there's a few different versions of LLCs. I'll let you look that up, which one is best for you tax structure-wise. But an LLC or some other form of entity in order to get the liability away from you is a huge recommendation for me. It's just going to be more peace of mind, and they're, they're fairly cheap.
So as far as taxes work for an LLC versus sole prop, it's kind of the same kind of deal. With a sole prop, the taxes are basically on you as an individual who is also a business. And then with an LLC, which is considered a fictitious entity, that's what's being taxed. And then you're technically an employee of that LLC, which also kind of varies based on the LLC type. For instance, I have a C corp LLC, which makes me an employee, and I have to pay myself a reasonable wage through the LLC. That's where the nuances come in. I recommend talking to an accountant with that kind of thing and getting that figured out, whatever's going to be best for you tax-wise. You want to save as much money as possible tax-wise.
So moving on to the next thing, should you franchise or should you not? So my company is part of a franchise, but it's a little bit of a unique story for me because I was the first franchise of this company. So it wasn't so much like a traditional franchise in that it was more the rules weren't set in stone. You know, I was helping make the rules and the procedures and things like that. So I have a kind of different experience there. You have to ask yourself what exactly you want to be doing in the business. How entrepreneurial you are. The less entrepreneurial you are, the better, I think it is for you to go to a franchise because all the systems are going to be in place, all the processes are going to be in place. Really, if you want to do a franchise, you don't need this video at all, because they're going to give you some kind of resource in order to cover all this. So if you want a franchise, you might as well clock out. If you don't want to franchise, continue with this video, and you feel like you're an entrepreneurial person who can just figure these things out for yourself, that's probably the better route because you're going to make more money in the long run. You're not going to have to pay a franchise fee, you're not going to have advertising fees. But there are benefits to both. One big benefit is the loneliness of entrepreneurship. You know, it's really tough because if you start a business yourself, you don't necessarily have this built-in structure, people to go to with questions, to ask things like that. But if you do come into a franchise, they have a stake in you succeeding, and they're a great uh sounding board for questions you have, any issues that are that are coming to your business. So that is pretty valuable, to be honest. Um, and that would be a reason to join some kind of franchise. There's a few big ones out there. Um, you know, it's worth doing research into, but it totally depends on your personality and exactly what you want to do entrepreneurial-wise.
Now moving on to licensing. As far as state licensing goes, that does vary from state to state. Here in Arizona, there's no specific state licensing. For instance, but in Texas, you have to get a Texas DMV number. So in order to look that up, check out the Small Business Association's website for various licensing that you need on the state level. As far as on the federal level, you'll need to go to fmcsa.gov, and you'll need to get a DOT number. And this is what allows you to be a motor carrier at all, which is, uh, you know, basically you're carrying goods for money. You get a DOT number, that's completely free. If you want to pay an outside source to do it, you can, but you're going to have to provide all that information anyways. So you might as well just do it on the fmcsa.gov website, completely free. And this is for what's called an intrastate carrier. That's for within a state. You cannot cross state lines with just a DOT number. If you want to cross state lines, you also need what's called an MC number. You can get this at the same time as when you're registering for a DOT number. This costs $300, and that's to get your interstate authority to carry household goods. There's a higher barrier to entry in order to get this. You also have to show proof of insurance, and depending on the state, there might be some kind of inspection where someone comes out, takes a look at your truck every year. You also need to get a safety inspection done on each of your trucks. So decide yourself if you want to do out-of-state moves. If you do, there's more eyes looking at you, but there's also the potential to earn more money. I think it's better just to get it done with and be able to do those long distance moves, because really, you do one or two of them, it's going to pay for that licensing. The long distance moves can you get a $10,000 job from a long distance move, and you'd hate to miss out on that because you didn't pay for a $300 license. And you want to get insurance anyways, so, you know, do that legally, get your insurance, do that part legally. You don't want to get caught without insurance.
Refer back to my notes, sorry. I don't want to miss anything for you fine folks. All right, on to a business bank account. In order to get a business bank account, if you have a sole prop, sole proprietorship, you can just go and get one because it's basically a bank account under your name. If you have an LLC or you want a business bank account under a specific business name, that's when you need your articles of incorporation from your state. You get that when you register the LLC, and you need an EIN number. And in order to get an EIN number, you go to the IRS website, irs.gov. Don't go to a dot com website, that means you're going to be paying more for some third-party source to get that for you. IRS.gov.gov. It's completely free. It takes literally five minutes. It's basically like a social security number, but for your business. You'll need to bring both of those to the bank. Most of the banks are pretty similar as far as who's the best for business bank account. I have both Chase and Wells Fargo, but that's just based off convenience, not necessarily one is better than the other or they're better than anything else specifically.
As far as business credit cards go, you will also need your business EIN number to get one of those. I personally use a Chase Ink Business Card and an American Express Business Card. I like to use the American Express on everything I possibly can because their customer service is so much better, and if you ever have like a, like a fraudulent charge or anything like that, they are 100 times easier to work with than Chase. But I keep both just because not everywhere accepts American Express, but I prefer to use the Amex for as much as I possibly can.
On to your online presence. The first thing to do is get a Google My Business page. And I think that's getting more and more popular to the point where that's probably going to be the majority of all your calls are going to come from that in the future. It seems like this, the other websites for web presence are going down the sheets a little bit, especially Yelp. But not to say those aren't worth it. To make the Google My Business page is super important though, because if you think about how are customers finding a service, especially something like moving, they're searching on Google, "moving companies." So you want to be right up there in those listings. And more and more recently, I've heard people say, "Treat that Google My Business page like that's your social media." Because you can make posts on there, you can put pictures on there, and that's what the first thing that people are going to see. And I've seen more and more in my GMB, Google My Business analytics, that people are just looking at that and directly calling from there before even going to my website at all. So that's getting bigger and bigger.
You might as well also get things like a Yelp page. You know, put your business in every directory you possibly can. That way the SEO on your website will be a little bit better. A Yelp page is good too. We do get plenty of calls from Yelp. They're just kind of a hassle to deal with. I'm not a huge fan of Yelp ads. I do pay for them. Um, a big reason for that is if you do have Yelp ads, it takes the competitors off your Yelp page, which is the biggest reason for me. But I've had paid Yelp ads for about five years now, and I haven't increased the price, but the effectiveness has definitely gone down. So if you're going to do paid ads, I'm not sure if I would choose Yelp. I'll let you experiment with that because that really does change based on how popular Yelp is in your area. Just happens to be in my area, it's going down in popularity a little bit.
And now the next thing, onto insurance, which is super important for a moving company and a bit of a hassle to be honest in the start, because this is what ended up delaying me the biggest compared to anything else. There's several different kinds of insurance you need to get. First one is general liability. This is probably the cheapest insurance. This basically covers any various random thing that could happen on the job. Let's say, uh, let's say when your movers bump into the stucco on the side of a house, scuff that up, that causes some damage on someone's property, you could use general liability for that. I've actually never done a general liability claim. I try to personally, I just pay things out out of pocket if they happen, that way my claim rates don't go up if it's, you know, a smaller or reasonable amount of money.
The next one is auto liability. This is huge and quite a hassle to get. You have to get commercial truck insurance on your moving trucks. If you own or you're leasing or however you're doing your trucks, you have to get commercial truck insurance. If you're leasing it or you have a loan, you're probably going to need comprehensive coverage, which is full coverage. Auto liability covers if your truck gets in an accident, it covers the other vehicles. Comprehensive, which is an additional to auto liability, covers damage to your truck as well. So that's something to consider as well. For really old trucks, I don't know if comprehensive is necessarily worth it because it increases the price quite a bit, but you need auto liability no matter what. I believe the limit you need for FMCSA is a million dollar liability. I recommend doing two million dollar because it's not much more expensive, and I have seen someone get a claim, not me, that was over a million dollars, and I think it's like ten dollars more a month for the difference between a million and two million, at least for the, uh, carrier that I use.
The next one you need is what's called cargo insurance. It's also called inland marine insurance. No idea why it's called that, but this is what covers the goods that are being transported within your vehicle. So if let's say your truck rolls over, auto liability doesn't cover that. Cargo insurance covers that. And I would recommend you get several hundred thousand dollars in coverage on your cargo insurance just in case. And try not to use this ever, if possible. I mean, try not to get an accident ever, but, you know, try not to use your insurance and jack up your rates, because as soon as you jack those up, operations are going to be all messed up and wacky, especially if you have several trucks. You can be paying so much money for your insurance bill.
The next one is warehouse insurance. If you do have a warehouse, you need to get it covered. There are some companies like Transguard, which packages all these insurances together, but I think you need certain credibility in order to do that. You might have to search around, get an insurance broker to just do all this for you. Warehouse insurance is super cheap, though. The last one is workers' compensation insurance. Which, if you have employees, you must get workers' compensation insurance. This is something that do not skimp out on, because if you don't have it, this could be the highest claim you ever have. If someone gets injured, they can't work again. Just give the workers' comp. It's a huge pain to get it. I know because you have to pay something like 14 cents on every dollar you pay is going to go to workers' comp, and it just feels like money going through, getting thrown out the door, but you need to have it. It's a law, and it will cause massive issues if you don't have it. And workers' comp insurance is for W-2 employees. So the difference between W-2 and 1099 employees are, with W-2, you are paying their taxes for them, you need to give them insurance. It seems like you should do 1099, but as far as movers go, there's really not a way to classify a mover as 1099. As as attractive as it might sound, you probably shouldn't try to do it. You might get away with it for a while, but as soon as someone tries to report you or something like that, you're probably gonna get slapped with a fine, because it's hard to claim that a mover is actually a 1099 worker unless you're contracting out the jobs in a true way, which means they have their own truck, they have their own equipment, they're hiring their own employees. That would be considered a 1099. Anything other than that, it's basically a W-2. I wouldn't really try to fudge that either, because it seems like the IRS is really cracking down more and more on that in all business industries, not just in the moving industry.
Now moving on to what to charge. As far as a local move goes, I prefer simplicity over everything else. There are so many moving companies that do these wacky ways of charging that are like secretive or manipulative and are just poor business practices. I prefer the most simple way possible, a flat hourly rate that includes everything on the job, no hidden fees or anything like that. And then maybe a trip charge depending on the state that you're in. If you're in California, you have to do what's called double drive time, which means the drive in between the load and unload is doubled. Most other states, you can do a trip charge, which covers the drive time from your warehouse to the customer's home, and then back home at the end of the day. A flat hourly rate plus a trip charge is basically the best way to do it. You can try quoting flat rates if you want for local jobs. I prefer not to do that because customers tend to really underestimate how much stuff they have, and you don't want to be arguing with people every day. So many people assume they have so much less than they really do. That's why I like an hourly rate. It's fair to everyone. We're there as long as the job takes to, you know, move everything. That way we're not getting screwed, the customer is not getting screwed. All's fair at the end of the day. It's rarely an issue that way.
However, with long distance moves or especially large moves, a flat rate is probably the best way to go. If it's over 100 miles, you actually have to do a flat rate legally. So for a long distance move, the way that I charge a flat rate personally is I calculate how many hours I think the entire job is going to take, and I multiply that by a hundred. That's my simple equation, and it seems to work for me. It is on the higher end because we are what's considered full service. We're loading all the items into our truck, we're wrapping them up. The same guy is is loading as he is driving and unloading. And, uh, it's, it's what we consider like the gold standard of a long distance move. You know, it's not like an impersonal, getting thrown in some truck with five other people's stuff, which is much cheaper, which is also something that can be a great business, but that's not personally what I do at this time.
Pricing is just so huge though. Make it simple. Make that another reason why people want to go with you. In order to figure out what you should charge, do a little bit of market research. Call like 20 moving companies in your area. Get their rates, see if there's any hidden fees or nuances in how they charge. And then I would position yours in the top, like, 25% of rates with the goal of eventually making that in like the top one or two spots. As far as expense goes, um, right now it seems like around the country, the average price for like two guys and a truck is between like $100 an hour and $130 an hour, with the outliers being, I've seen companies charge $165 an hour with two guys. And that's where you want to be. There's just, you, you have the ability to make your business so much better that way. And then also with this market research, this will tell you a lot. Ask questions when you're on the phone. People ask how many trucks they have, ask how busy they are. If they even answer the phone. If you're calling around, you call 20 places, no one answers the phone. That is a great sign that there is some demand in the area for another moving company, because these people are either booked up or offering terrible customer service. So I would consider that an awesome opportunity if no one is answering their phone or returning calls or emailing you back or anything like that.
Now on to hiring employees. The most important thing in this business, probably, is having good employees because basically your employees are the business. They're doing a labor service, they're moving customers' furniture. It is the most important part. Do not skimp on hiring amazing help. So where I go to search for employees, I use a variety of websites and methods. As far as websites go, I use Craigslist and Indeed. Both of them can work well. With Indeed, it's cheaper, there's a lower average quality that seems to come from there. With Indeed, it's more expensive, higher average quality, more total applicants. But I wouldn't necessarily say one is better than the other, because like Craigslist is so much cheaper. The biggest thing here is whittling down the people as much as possible.
As far as other outside sources, I use, I've done now hiring flyers up on like college campuses, which that's actually worked pretty well for me. And, uh, the biggest thing is trying to hire people that you just happen to see working a current job. If you're at a restaurant or at a gas station, and there's someone offering like amazing customer service, or they're super friendly on their job, or they just, you know, you can tell when someone's awesome at their job. That's the kind of person where you like, set them aside and be like, "Hey, do you know of anyone looking for a job?" Hand them a business card, tell them what you pay. And those tend to be the best employees in the long run. You won't get every one of them. You might get one out of ten or eight, but that, that is so worth it. It's free to do, and the best thing is that just happens in natural life. You don't have to go to search for it. You will see these people once you start looking for them. And trust me, it's a little bit awkward, but it is completely worth it.
So as far as the website go though, you get so many applicants that the biggest thing here is to disqualify as many people as possible. So what I like to do is put disqualifiers within the ad itself. I'll specify exactly what I'm looking for in the position. We're looking for a clean-cut, hard-working, smiling face, whatever person. In that ad itself, we want people who aren't that to look at and be like, "No, that's not worth my time." Then from there, I like to send questionnaires to every other applicant that, that, you know, makes it through that first filter. I'll send a questionnaire with like three to eight questions, and then I'll take a look at that. The ones that answer well, I will then request an interview with them. Have them come in, and at this point, we've probably took it from like 200 total applicants to 50 or 60 fill up that questionnaire to like 20 or 30 show up for the interview, and then one or two of those will get hired. And this is pretty common. And if you go to any state, if you talk to anyone anywhere, basically people say, "Oh, you just can't hire good help anymore." And I do not believe that is the case. I believe if you filter out these people, you build a good environment, you treat employees well, like, like humans, you know, like they have, you know, needs and want to be treated well, then it is very possible to hire amazing employees, even in this industry where it's super hard. You can't pay a super high rate because customers aren't willing to pay a massive amount for moving. Like I said, it's hard work, and, you know, it seems like it'd be impossible to hire great people, but it is not. We have done it time and time again. It's not easy by any means, it's not easy, but if you have a high enough standard, it is very possible. And I've seen it done. Not only have I done it, I've seen other locations do similar things and hire amazing people.
One question that I really like to use when I'm filtering out candidates is, I ask, "Tell me about something that you've learned recently." And the answers to this can vary so wildly, from like two words, "uninterested," to this like five-paragraph thing about how they just learned this piece on piano that their grandma played back in the day, whatever. You know, I like to look for passion because when you see someone who's super passionate in literally anything, they tend to be just a better person, a better worker, just easier to be around. So that's one thing that really stands out to me. What's the last thing that you've learned?
Now on to marketing. And this is basically everyone's favorite topic because it is what brings money in the door. If you're just starting out, you probably don't have a ton of money. My favorite way to market a moving company, which you can either consider it cheap or free if you're the one doing it, is simply going and collecting referrals. Just gathering those referrals. And how I do that is I go and talk to other businesses that might be able to refer my business to their clients. Businesses like storage facilities, furniture stores, real estate agents. I've talked to literally hundreds of these. Actually, I have a video where I went and talked to 500 different businesses and then tallied the results. Took several weeks to do this, but it was extremely worth it, and I continue to do this. It works so well, and it costs literally the price of gas and business cards. It's super awkward to do at first, but let me tell you, you get better at it, and you will start pulling in referrals. You will get calls just a day or two after you do this because it works so effectively.
The next thing you can do is flyers in the mail. Go on websites like Zillow, look for houses for sale, and shoot those houses flyers with your information. You will get some calls from that, not nearly as many calls as doing the in-person connections, but, you know, I guess you don't have to go out of your office. Pretty cheap to do this. It can work well depending on the state. I've seen it be pretty darn successful.
The next one is online ads. Things like Google AdWords. What I've found is more and more, unless you have a massive budget, these aren't super worth it. This does vary depending on your area. If you especially live in a smaller area, Google Ads are going to be much more worth it for you because there's much fewer people bidding on that space. But if you're just starting out, I would personally focus on building those personal connections and making referral funnels straight to you. And one thing with the referrals, something that is amazing to do, actually two things. After you meet with these people, get their business card, shoot them an email after you meet with them, and just kind of go over your business again, maybe shoot them some documentation, thank them for their time. After that, depending on how the interaction went, go and talk to them again, show them that you're here for the long term, you're here to do an awesome job. And then once they finally send you a referral, and you do an awesome job, try and get that client to give you a testimonial. And then send that testimonial back to the referral source. It's positive reinforcement. That way, the referral source is going to see that awesome review and want to send more jobs to you because they know that their clients are getting taken care of. This is huge. The positive reinforcement is massive. Yes, it's extra work. You have to think about all these different people, but just make like a spreadsheet or use a CRM or something like that to organize all this. It's not too bad, but trust me, it is completely worth it. It will explode your business. If you went out right now and talked to 100 businesses in the next week, which is totally possible, I guarantee you your phones would be ringing. I dare you to do it.
So on to the next thing. We're done with marketing. On the trucks. Trucks. So should you buy a new truck? Should you buy a used truck? This is all dependent on how much money you have to invest upfront. I personally bought used trucks at first, and then, you know, the best strategy seems to be, buy used trucks until you don't have to buy used trucks anymore, then buy brand new trucks. Get the extended warranty, sell the truck before the extended warranty is up. That seems to be the best way to do it because of the asset-wise. I prefer to do that because a lot of value in a moving company is in its assets itself. So if you own your trucks, that gives you the ability to sell your business for much more money. You know, if you have five trucks all worth $50,000 each, that's $250,000 in assets that you can sell on top of your business, which is a great payday. Especially when you have to be paying out that money either way.
But sometimes leasing or renting is better depending on whatever your strategy is. I'm not a huge fan of leasing because you get stuck in these contracts for like three to five years, and I don't like being stuck in any kind of contract. Recently though, I have found a deal through Enterprise Trucks. You can do month-to-month rentals, a long-term rental, and it's actually about the same price as a three to five year lease through any other various trucking company. And I've actually have one truck right now that I do it, and it's pretty great. They, they take care of all the maintenance. They don't take care of windshields though, which is kind of annoying. If the windshield gets cracked, they don't cover that, which I feel like they should. But they take care of tires, oil. If it breaks down, they swap a unit out. If you damage the unit, actually, you can swap the unit out, and you don't have to pay extra for the second unit, which is a nice, a nice piece. So that's another thing to think about. There's a lot of variables there. Like I said, owning is better in the long run because that way you have the assets.
As far as wrapping trucks goes, here's something that I personally do. To wrap a truck like this is super expensive. You'd be looking at like six to $10,000 to wrap this entire truck. But what you can do, and what I do, is get vinyl stickers instead. You can pay a company to do this, and for the price of about $1,500, you can get an entire truck vinyl stickered in whatever your logo is. It looks just as nice, it looks clean, and it is like a fifth of the price. So I really recommend that. Even if you're not even owning a moving company, you can do this on other vehicles. Vinyl stickers, any print shop can basically do this that does car decaling. So that's something definitely look into.
So on to supplies. We're just starting out. This is super basic. So the most basic supplies I would get, a really reliable, nice box dolly. I'll link one below that I like a lot. A reliable, nice strap dolly. This is important because if you're ever moving like a huge fridge or maybe like a baby grand piano that you need a strap to a strap dolly, it's important to have one of those. They're more expensive, you won't use it on every job, but I would consider it pretty much necessary to have one. Thick moving pads. And I say thick because we don't want those little shrimpy U-Haul ones that get holes torn in them. Pay a little bit extra for the thick moving pads and just do it the right way. You'll want tape, obviously. I don't like the tape that you can get from storage because you can't easily tear it. Get moving tape, it's much better, trust me. Uh, plastic wrap. Same with this. I don't like the plastic wrap that's like green that you can get at like, like Home Depot or Lowe's or wherever. Go get stretch wrap from an actual moving supply store. It's cheaper and it actually works much better. And then the last one is a four-wheel dolly, which is basically this carpeted four-wheel thing. It's super convenient. You'll basically need it on, on most jobs if you're using your equipment right. I'd get two of those per truck. And pad-wise, I would get about 70 per truck. So, excuse me, let me get a drink of water.
So you're on to your first job. How can we make this job the best job possible? I, this is what I would do. I would show up early. I'd show up 10 minutes early. Make sure your truck is completely dialed out, everything's in its place, it's totally clean, your guys are in clean uniforms, ready to go, you got your paperwork ready, everything is just spotless, ready to go. You show up to your customer, do a little walkthrough, ask them if they have any specific concerns, is there any furniture that you need to know about that's damaged already? Take pictures if there's existing damages. Assure them that you'll be able to do, you know, any various thing that additional that they might ask. Then immediately after that, you get your signatures that you need to get started. Get wrapping everything. Wrap up all the furniture completely in pads, completely. Most moving companies don't do this, and it stands out in a huge way. If you wrap everything, it's going to save you so much money in claims. It makes the truck easier to pack, it just makes life so much easier. Wrap every single piece of furniture in moving pads. Load that all up in your truck. And while you're not carrying furniture, jog back and forth. This is going to wow your customers. They're going to be like, "Holy crap, these people respect my time. I'm going to tell everyone." Sometimes the neighbor will see you running back and forth in the truck, and they're going to call and be like, "I saw your guys jogging back and forth. I need to use you for my move." It's advertisement in itself. And just don't smell like crap, you know? Don't smell like cigarettes, don't smell like bo. Wear a clean shirt. And if you do those things, and you do them enough, you're gonna build a solid moving company. It's, it's pretty crazy. It's actually that simple, but there's just so many terrible moving companies that it's really easy to stand out. And also keep in mind that these people are in a really stressful transition in their life. Moving is not easy. They have to deal with a million things. Focus on the comfort of the customer and empathize with their situation and all the stress they're going through. If you can empathize with their situation, you're gonna offer much better service.
And then on to landing more clients. A lot of this comes down to honestly just so basic, easy business principles. Answer your phone when someone calls. If you miss a call, call right back. If someone emails you, email them back promptly. Make quotes easy to understand. Make your rates easy to follow and not sketchy. Doing these things, follow-up calls. If someone requests a quote from you, they don't book right away, call them three days later and say, "Hey, just following up. Just wanted to see if you want to go ahead with this move." This will land you more sales. Don't let those sales slip through the cracks. Make it worth your time. Send thank you cards to your customers after you move them. It's just basic business. I mean, if you call a custo, a business, you can tell good customer service from poor customer service. Have good customer service. Be excited to talk to people. Be excited to service them.
So how much can a moving company make? And this varies so wildly because the thing about moving is you can start a moving company, just you and your brother or your dad, and you move people on the weekends, and you know, you might make a few thousand dollars a year. But there's also moving operations. I personally know someone who has a moving company that does $10 million a year in revenue and owns several storage facilities. So the range here is massive. But it really comes down to charging enough and having high-quality jobs, high-quality people, and just doing that enough over time, and you can build a massive operation.
And if after watching this video, you still have questions that I haven't answered, or let's say you have a moving company and you're looking to take it to the next level, feel free to email me, and I'll answer your questions the best I can to the best of my ability. Email me at because it's hard@gmail.com. And also, don't forget to subscribe to my channel. Please leave this video a like. This video, I would like to say this video took me an hour to record, but really, it's more like five years of experience in running a moving company. So a ton of time went into the knowledge that went into this video. So I would appreciate it so much if you loved to like and subscribe. Until next time, thanks for watching.
[Music]