The Heavy Lifting Podcast

Bruce Taylor was running a U-Haul counter inside a convenience store near Ohio State when his customers started asking him to help them move. You’ll hear why Bruce got rid of his box trucks after an insurance quote came back $6,000 a year higher for just one driver, and how he now leases from Enterprise or U-Haul so he never pays for maintenance or idle trucks. You’ll also hear how one panicked la...

In 2006, Paul Collins thought he had the flu. It was an infection eating through his heart valve. You’ll hear how Paul grew A to Z Express Moving & Storage from him and his uncle in 1996 to 48 employees by 2004, then cut it back to a home office and 3 trucks after open heart surgery at 36. That decision had him lean and safe when 2008 froze the housing market and friends with big overhead lost...

Fabio Ribeiro sold his jewelry business, sat at home for a few months, and kept answering calls from strangers who saw the van parked outside his door. In this episode you’ll hear how Fabio built Marcelo’s Movers into a New York City company running 100 to 150 moves a month while his cost per lead went from about $10 to about $100. You’ll learn the two phone calls his team makes before every move...

In 2020, Tim paid $50,000 for a moving company that had one truck, two workers and no email address. You’ll hear how Tim went from a hungover summer helper in the back of a moving truck to owning Miller’s Honest Moving & Storage in Westchester, New York, and buying two other moving companies along the way. He breaks down what $50,000 actually got him, what he lost when the seller’s marketing g...

In 2020, Dave Carter took a $20-an-hour moving job and kept asking for more hours until his boss told him to take a day off. You'll hear how Dave went from new hire to 45% owner of Big Scarlet Moving in Columbus, Ohio in about two years, through a partner program that now runs across 36 companies. He walks through the pay plan that has his crews competing for reviews every month, and why his offic...

In 2023, Elijah Schuette was hauling a Harbor Freight dolly in the back seat of a Ford Focus. You’ll hear how Elijah went from labor-only U-Haul jobs, with no moving experience, to running Apex Moving Co., a full service, white glove moving company in Cleveland, Tennessee. You’ll find out why he treats a five-mile local move like a shipment going across the country, and how he trained his crew to...

Blair Harper’s first job off a Craigslist ad paid $50 to carry a bag of clothes for a woman with a broken leg. What This Episode Covers You’ll hear how Blair went from working at Lowe’s to running Guy With A Truck, and why he stopped paying for ads altogether. You’ll learn how he got a furniture store to call him without ever pitching them: he followed them on Facebook, kept liking their posts, an...

In 2020 Tavon was waiting tables. A year later he was running a full-service moving company without a single truck of his own. What This Episode Covers You'll hear how Tavon runs full-service moves out of rented Penske and U-Haul trucks across DC, Maryland and Virginia, and why he still hasn't bought one. He breaks down what a Penske commercial account gets you and when he picks U-Haul instead. He...

The second time Brett Clark blew out his knee, he got hooked on pain pills and had to step away from his own moving company for a full year. What This Episode Covers You’ll hear how Brett went through the 12-month program at Hope Center Ministries, came back to Tennessee Country Boys Moving, and grew it 75 to 100% a year. He explains why he’d rather be the best than the biggest, and why once a day...

In 2023, Shaun Gebo started a moving company with about $2,000, a hand truck from his fiancee’s grandfather, one dolly and 20 beat-up blankets. What This Episode Covers You’ll hear how Shaun went from passing for 16 on a moving crew at age 14 to running three trucks a day in Syracuse, New York. He explains how he gets a team of 12 to 14 movers to treat every customer the way he would, and it start...

In 2008, Ronnie rented a U-Haul for $100 a week to deliver phone books, and the front end buckled before he ever left the warehouse. If your schedule is full of small jobs and you've wondered whether fewer, bigger moves would serve you better, this episode is for you. You'll hear why Ronnie stepped back from nine labor only moves a day and rebuilt Diversity Moving Company around full service clien...

In 2018 Alex was renting U-Hauls, when COVID hit he spent $6,000, about half of everything he had, on a course that taught him SEO. In this episode you'll hear how Alex went from Bellhops side jobs to running Pittsburgh Moving, a seven-truck company on track for about $2.5M this year with most of its leads coming from organic search. He walks you through exactly what he did: on-site content and se...

Joey's family has been moving people since the horse and carriage days, and at 14 he was hauling fireproof file cabinets out of a ten-office law firm on his very first job. In this episode you'll hear what three generations of movers taught Joey, owner of Good Guy Movers in Worcester, Massachusetts. You'll hear how he went from box boy to starting his own company in 2006 with Craigslist ads and bu...

Nick Orr bought a moving company in April 2019 without researching the industry first, and he still works 24-hour shifts at the fire station. In this episode you'll hear how Nick went from picking up side jobs with a fellow firefighter to owning ATX Firefighter Moving in Austin, and how he runs it around a one day on, two days off fire schedule. You'll hear why he signed with an SEO company headin...

It started with one summer home move for the former CEO of a major bank, and the referrals kept coming. In this episode, you'll hear how Ely built Responders Moving and Storage in central Maine into the company high net worth homeowners call when they don't want to think about their move at all. You'll see how he stacked moving, packing, storage, portable trailers and dumpsters under one roof so a...

When Russo joined Zip to Zip in 2018, the company ran three moves a day and she was answering the phones herself. What This Episode Covers You'll hear how a five-person operation turned into a roughly 100-person company doing 23 moves a day, and how the sales engine underneath it made that possible. Russo walks through why she treats every call as a consultation instead of a quote, how she trains...

Brandon and Julie built The Home Moving Solution in Albany, Georgia on a rule most owners would call backwards: they refuse to hire experienced movers. Brandon would rather take a complete rookie and train them "the HMS way", because to him half of this business is customer service, and that's easier to teach someone with no bad habits to unlearn. In this episode he lays out his hiring philosophy,...

Xavier Estronza didn't come from moving, he came from Wall Street cold-calling and a magazine ad desk, and he used both to build Hello Movers into a two-location operation running over 300 moves a month. In this episode you'll hear how Xavier went from selling aggregated leads, to a broker gig he walked away from in three months, to running his own trucks so he could control the whole job start to...

Parker Brown was working a dead-end job when he found out he was going to be a father, and that news is the whole reason Maple Street Moving exists. In this episode you'll hear how a childhood friend talked Parker into starting a moving company in April 2024, and what he did over the next two years to grow it six times over. He walks through the exact way he quotes a job, including the $14K commer...

Petr started with thirty grand, a rented sixteen-foot truck that never fit anything, and a fight with basically every customer. If you've ever gone back and forth on whether to pour everything into one location or spread across several markets, this episode is for you. You'll hear how Petr got Better Life Moving off the ground in Boston, what actually went wrong in year one, and how he turned it i...

Twenty years ago Oded Carmi started DN Van Lines with one truck and three guys. Today he runs 13 locations and turns away three to four times the military work he can actually perform. In this episode you'll learn how the military moving vertical actually works, and why it's the single biggest opportunity most moving company owners never touch. Oded breaks down the Defense Personal Property Progra...

Dwight Jones started Kimiya Services in 2018 doing whatever physical work nobody else wanted, and moving quietly took over the whole business. In this episode you get the full picture of how a moving company runs 60 to 70 jobs a month without owning a single truck. Brian and Dwight get into where that volume actually comes from, why one platform quietly feeds most of it, and how he keeps customers...

When Chris Marr walked away from the moving company he was crewing for, the senior living facilities he had been working in started calling to ask where he had gone. In this episode of The Heavy Lifting Podcast we speak with Chris Marr of MoveU in New Hampshire, who turned a decade on the truck into a business that senior communities ask for by name. You'll hear how he went from crew leader to own...

Ryan Burns closes nine out of ten people who reach out to him, and almost none of them found him through an ad. If you run a moving company and you are tired of buying cold leads that go nowhere, this one is worth your time. Ryan built Stress Free Solutions in a corner of the industry most movers never think to enter, and the numbers he gets there look nothing like the ones you get chasing clicks....

In this episode of the Heavy Lifting Podcast, Samuel shares how he built a moving company that generates five-star reviews on autopilot. Samuel started on a moving truck and worked his way up to co-owning the company. After his business partner passed away, he rebuilt from the ground up as Busy Beeline Movers, held on to the Google Business Profile that already carried 60 five-star reviews, and gr...