What made you want to do the work you do? Please share the full story.
Ace Hardware is where I actually learned the job. Assistant Manager sounds small on paper. I was running inventory counts, training new hires, and handling the customer who wanted a refund on something we didn’t even sell. Something about that pace stuck with me. I didn’t know why at the time.
Years later, watching how many moving companies treated people, I couldn’t ignore it. Late, overpromised, quoted one price and charged another. So, I started Immediate Movers and Storage to do the opposite. On purpose, I am still building toward that, honestly, some days more than others.
Tell us 3 surprisingly easy and 3 surprisingly difficult things about your business.
Trust came easier than I expected. Show up on time, quote it straight and people will notice. Word of mouth followed the same pattern, with barely any advertising in the first two years. Keeping a small crew tight was easy too. Everybody knew everybody back then.
The hard stuff hit later. Scheduling around weather sounds minor until a snowstorm pushes four jobs into one afternoon and the phone won’t stop. Retention’s been the real fight. Good movers get poached constantly in this labor market, I’ve lost people I trained for a year over fifty cents an hour. Scaling from one truck to a fleet was its own animal. Systems that worked fine for three guys broke completely at fifteen and i’m still patching some of that today.
What are the 3 things you like best about your work and why?
Watching a client exhale once the last box is in the new place. That’s the moment I look forward to, every time. Building systems that hold up when I’m not standing there watching them, that one’s harder to explain. It’s more of a quiet satisfaction than a big one. Training a helper into a crew lead within a year, I’ve watched it happen three times. Still catches me off guard how fast some people grow into it.
What do you think are your 3 biggest weaknesses and how are you overcoming them?
I was the bottleneck for four years. Every schedule change went through me, every hire, every reroute. Cost us jobs and I know it did. A client would call needing something same-day, and nobody could confirm without me picking up the phone. I still catch myself wanting to approve things I don’t need to approve.
I’m not patient with underperformance either. Early on that showed in ways that probably drove off good people, and honestly I’m still working on the coaching-not-correcting part. Haven’t fully cracked it.
Pricing was the third one. Underpriced jobs for years out of fear of losing them. Ran the numbers eventually and found we were leaving something like 12% margin on the table on long-distance moves. Fixed the pricing. I still wonder how many years that cost us before I looked.
Tell us about a time where you saw a surprising outcome that you did not expect.
So, this one job comes to mind. Third-floor walkup in Hammond with no elevator. A piano nobody mentioned until the truck was already parked. That’s the kind of job that used to mean me driving over there myself, dropping whatever I was doing.
Instead, my crew lead called it. Rerouted two guys from another job. Had it handled before I even finished my coffee. That one caught me off guard. Told me the systems I’d spent years building actually worked without me standing in the room. Didn’t expect to feel a little useless about that, but I did, for about a day.
What is the biggest challenge you face each day and how do you handle it?
Weather and Traffic. That combination wrecks more schedules than anything else. One bad Chicago storm and four jobs back up into each other before noon. I build thirty to forty minutes of buffer into every crew’s day now. Learned that after one too many angry phone calls I had to take personally. And the office calls the customer the second we’re running behind. Not after. Before they’ve had time to wonder where we are.
What is a habit you try to stick to and how has it helped you?
Every morning before trucks leave, I walk the day’s schedule with dispatch, five minutes or sometimes less. It catches the stuff that would otherwise blow up by noon: a truck that’s not fueled, a crew short a guy. Since I started doing that every single day, on-time arrivals went from somewhere around 80% to over 95%. It’s actually just a small habit, but it changed how the whole day runs.
How do you celebrate your victories?
Team lunch after a brutal month. Somewhere they’d pick, not somewhere I’d pick. A bonus check gets cashed and forgotten by Friday. Somebody standing up and saying “you handled that piano move like a pro,” that sticks. Longer than the money does, every time. I didn’t expect that to be true when I started this. And it turned out to be the thing that actually works.
Who is your favorite motivational speaker and why?
Honestly, I’ve never been big into the stage-and-microphone motivational circuit. If I had to name someone, I’d point to guys like Grant Cardone, not for the hype but for the relentless focus on follow-through, doing the unglamorous stuff daily instead of waiting for the big break. That’s closer to how I actually run this business than anything I’ve read from the classic self-help crowd.
What advice would you give to your younger self and why?
Delegate two years earlier than you think you’re ready to. I held onto scheduling, hiring, even truck maintenance decisions long after I should’ve handed them off, because I didn’t trust anyone else to care as much as I did. Turns out I was wrong about that. Some of my best people care more about getting it right than I do now.
Are you willing to be a mentor? If yes, what is the best way to reach you?
Yes. I talk to a handful of guys starting their own service businesses already, informally, and I’m open to more of that, especially operators trying to go from one truck to a real company. Best way to reach me is through Immediate Movers and Storage directly, and here is my contact email: andrew@immediatemoversnwi.com
Just for fun, what is your favorite ice cream flavor?
Mint chocolate chip. No story there, just always been the one.