Webinar recap: How to diversify your moving company with Chris Hunt 

Chris Hunt is lawyer turned CEO and General Counsel of First Class Moving Systems, an agent of North American Van Lines. The company was founded in 2001 and has expanded beyond residential moving to include commercial, government, and the Department of Defense. 

Keep reading for a recap of our chat with Chris or watch the full webinar here. 

‍

‍

‍

‍

‍

Q&A with Chris Hunt

How do you manage the challenges of leading a large and diverse moving company?

Chris says that sharing the duties of running a large company with a co-founder and competent management team makes all the difference. He also discusses outsourcing aspects of your business (such as IT) to ensure you still have resources in that area if you need them. 

Finally, Chris pinpoints managing people as one of the top challenges he faces in his day to day. 

“The job in my position and my partner's position is to try and keep everybody happy and that's impossible, we all know that. But we try to do our best. And I think we do a good job of providing a positive work environment here. But that's not up for me to decide, that's my employees.”

When did you realize you couldn't just focus on residential moving to grow your company?

At the onset of the great recession, First Class Moving Systems realized they were one-dimensional and needed to diversify to survive. 

Partnering with a larger company like National Van Lines opened up new opportunities for them. 

What made you decide to open up a commercial moving division?

Opening a commercial division was practical as it utilizes the same assets as residential moving. In the beginning, First Class Moving Systems had crews running commercial and residential moves, but now they have their own dedicated crews. 

“We looked at it logically. And a lot of offices move on nights and weekends when your trucks are just sitting in your parking lot. And that was the genesis of it—keeping those trucks moving and bringing in revenue and getting the crews more hours at a time when typically they were not working,” says Chris.

How do you decide what ‘niche’ area of the business you should expand to next?

First Class Moving Systems took a customer-centric approach when deciding how to expand. Chris says that simply listening to what customers want and need led them to several new lines of business.

“We listened to our customers. It was customer driven in many ways because we'd be out there, moving their office stuff and they'd say, hey the installers didn't show up, can you guys do this? And we would say, yeah we can do that, we can reconfigure cubicles. And it just evolved that way. Then they would ask, hey can you clean the cubicles? Sure yeah because throw anything at us. We're doing facility work now. We're doing drywall repair and painting. So we have gotten into many different aspects of commercial moving.”

How does the labor and driver shortage affect business?

The labor shortage is driving up costs, especially wages. To stay competitive, First Class Moving Systems had to increase wages, which forced them to increase their prices three times in one year. 

“I mean we had to raise our rates significantly, multiple times because we're just finding that it's becoming more and more competitive. I mean the local school districts here are paying anywhere from $26 to $30 an hour for school bus drivers. Because they just can't they can't find them. They're paying for their training, paying for them to get their commercial driver's license and the appropriate endorsements and they're still having a tough time.”

He goes on to say that most of his customers understood because they were also seeing what was happening in the market and wanted to stick with First Class Moving Systems. 

How do you attract diverse talent for corporate-level positions?

Chris says that before you can attract diverse talent, you need to know your recruiting goals and objectives. From there, investing in recruitment tools like LinkedIn, Indeed and other recruitment platforms helps streamline the process. Offering health insurance, vision, dental, 401k, etc also helps to remain competitive. 

“We are very competitive when it comes to paying people. So it's all really kind of a total effort when it comes to attracting talent.

And retaining talent—the same thing. You have to provide a positive work environment and do team building things. We give latitude to our managers to do that. We give them a budget to go bring lunch in or go have a happy hour, that sort of thing,” says Chris.

Using technology as a selling tool for your moving company 

Chris and First Class Moving Systems decided early on that they would be an early adopter of technology. When they were first starting out and trying to compete with much larger, more established companies, this gave them a competitive advantage in the market.

“It was in our earliest business plan that we would be early adopters of technology because we had no other way to gain leverage. We were taking on these massive companies in our market, some of them are several hundred million dollar companies and we were this tiny little small business with a handful of employees. So we've had a website since day one. We used MapQuest very early on. We had PalmPilots. We would take pictures of people's houses and they loved that. It was a selling tool.”

During the pandemic, when a lot of companies turned to virtual surveys First Class Moving Systems had already been doing it for 10 years so it wasn't something they had to scrabble to adopt once COVID hit. 

“That's been our thing, trying to be as agile as possible, embracing technology, and being able to pivot—really that's the key,” says Chris.

How do you form a partnership with a national carrier? 

According to Chris, reaching out and building a relationship is the best way to form a partnership. There are no guarantees one will form, but you’ll never know if you don’t take that first step. Be clear with your objectives and ensure both parties will benefit from the partnership. 

“We developed relationships with their regional people who kind of go out and scour small businesses and our first van line partnership was National Van Lines. And they did a really good job of pursuing us. Basically, we submitted an inquiry with them. We just said, hey, we're considering partnering with the van line. And they responded and they came to visit and kind of give you suggestions or ideas of how you can improve your chances of getting an offer to partner with them.”

Do you ever foresee replacing your sales team with an online booking tool?

Chris says that he thinks It’s unlikely that the personal experience will ever be completely replaced by technology. Too many customers still appreciate the personal touch. 

“There are always going to be people who have maybe four- or five-bedroom houses and really want that face-to-face customer experience. I think those people are always going to be around and seeking out our services, so we're always going to provide that.”

Advantages of leasing vs. buying trucks

Chris says that there are advantages to both owning and leasing trucks and that it really comes down to what you need at that point in time. 

“If that's all you can do, then go lease it. If you can own it though, we lean towards owning them because we pay them off quickly or we buy them cash, and then we have that equity in the vehicles. And we can trade up when they reach the end of their useful life as far as we're concerned, and we trade them in and get newer equipment.”

He goes on to say that leasing is a great way to get access to newer equipment. 

“In my experience, buying older trucks and trying to keep them beyond their useful life is not the way to go. We've learned that lesson time and time again early on, and you wind up paying more than you would for a newer vehicle just in repairs and downtime and that sort of thing. So my advice would be to buy if you can buy; otherwise, lease but try to have newer equipment.

Tips for smaller moving companies looking to grow

Chris’ biggest tip is don’t grow too fast, but also capitalize when the market turns down. He says it's an opportunity to grow because you'll have access to human capital but also equipment and materials will be cheaper. 

“There’s always an opportunity to grow but just do so at a controlled and manageable pace.”

Final words

Building a moving company takes dedication and an ability to embrace new things. If you started a business as a mover, take the time to learn technology and build processes. You’ll be thankful you took the time while you were small rather than waiting until you have multiple vehicles and several crews.  

Watch the full conversation with Chris here.

Full webinar transcript: How to diversify your moving company with Chris Hunt

Hi, we’ll kick things off. Welcome everyone to our live Q&A of the “Ask the Experts'' series. My name is Heidi Liou and I'm the Strategic Partnerships Manager at Supermove. We're on a mission to make moving simple for everyone with software for moving companies that brings your whole team from your coordinators to your sales, your operations, and dispatch all onto one system. Today I'm joined by Chris Hunt and look forward to talking about how to diversify your moving company. 

A brief bio about Chris: He's based in Tampa and is the CEO and General Counsel of First Class Moving Systems an agent of North American Van Lines. They started from scratch in 2001 with only one truck, which I'm sure many of you guys can relate to. Working out of his partner's house, they have thrived over the past 20 years by diversifying their moving company beyond residential moving. His teams provide household goods and commercial moving services to consumers, corporations, government agencies, and the Department of Defense. We're here today to learn from you, Chris, how to diversify your moving company. 

I'll start by asking the questions that were submitted during registration and for those tuning in, type in your questions anytime into the Q&A box which we'll have time for at the end. To kick it off, Chris, can you tell us a little bit about your background? How did you go from being an attorney to running a moving company?

Sure. It started before I went to law school. When I was 19, I had just finished my first year of college and I spent about three days doing nothing. And my father came home one day and said, “hey here go by this place. It's a moving company. My friend's son works there. You're gonna go work there.” So I went there and I applied and basically, the owner was like, “well you don't have any experience?” so I said, “no but I really need a job” and he said, “we'll see.” And as I was leaving, one of the salespeople said, “just show up the Tuesday after memorial day.” I said “what?” and he said, “just show up.” He goes, “they'll hire you.” And that's basically how I got into this business.

Wow. I feel like that happens a lot in moving—just come to the office.

Yeah, nobody plans to be in relocation. I worked that summer and then I stayed on doing weekends. And a couple of years— two years later, I asked my boss how I could make more money. And he said, “well go get your commercial driver's license.” So I did that. And when I graduated from undergrad, I went on the road in the United Van Lines master lease program for two years, which was cool. I got paid to see the country. I took one of my friends with me and it was a really good time. But then I decided that wasn't something I wanted to continue doing. I considered being an owner-operator. I was a lease driver for a while but then I just wanted to pursue the law so I went to law school in 1998 in Fort Lauderdale, finished that up, and my current partner, who I knew from New Jersey, had moved to Tampa. I was in Fort Lauderdale, so we kind of kept in touch. And he said that he was thinking of starting a business and asked if I could kind of help incorporate it. And one thing led to another, a few cocktails, and I was his partner. And he was in the moving business and I was basically for the first couple years just kind of helping out from afar where I can. Now we were both still working because there was not enough money to pay both of us. So I was working my lawyer job and he was doing route sales for Pepsi Cola. And we would do jobs on the weekends or call in sick on a Monday or a Friday, that kind of thing.

That's the real hustle right there when you're overlapping and doing two things at once. 

Yeah, we were operating out of his house. And then I had to come to a crossroads with my law practice and I really couldn't get this entrepreneurial bug out of my system so I was like  I'm just going all in and that's what we did. And we've been growing ever since except for last year was the first year we made less money than the year prior. 

And this year is better than the previous year? 

This year, we're on track to do better than in 2019. 

So to sum that all up, there are cocktails involved and then an entrepreneurial itch. Just kidding. But I love that you leaned into your experience that started from just being a mover and connections, right timing, just jumping in, and lots of challenges involved, I'm sure, which you'll touch upon. But yeah thank you so much for sharing your story. First Class Moving Systems provides all kinds of services, not just moving and storage. What is it like to be in charge of such a large, diverse company? 

Well as I mentioned, I have a partner so I share the duties of running the company. We both do a little bit of everything but he's a little bit more on the operations side and I'm a little bit more on the sales side of the business. But it does overlap a lot. It's our people who run the company. I have to credit our management team because they work extremely hard, especially in a year like this where there were just a lot of unknown things and a spike in volume that nobody predicted as much or as intense as it was. So I have to give my hat off

to them. But challenges in the day-to-day. Technology is always a challenge. I don't have a Chief Information Officer or Chief Technology Officer here, so it's just me and a few key employees managing our IT. We have a company that we outsource it to. You still need people on-site to manage the day-to-day stuff. 

For instance, we had our email and another server crash a couple of weeks ago and it was a disaster. People weren't getting emails from us, my sales team is calling me like hey I sent this proposal out. It was very stressful so technology is always a huge challenge that takes away from… there's wasted time trying to fix those issues and then the drop in productivity. So we try to make sure we're all on the same page and get things back aligned. 

That I would say is the biggest challenge. The other is managing people. That's always a challenge. Your job in my position and my partner's position is to try and keep everybody happy and that's impossible, we all know that. But we try to do our best. And I think we do a good job of providing a positive work environment here. But that's not up for me to decide, that's my employees.

You talk about the leadership team being very crucial to the success of the business. Are you looking down the road to hire a CTO or CIO? Or is that something if you outsource, you just have to make sure you have a very trusted tech partner?

Yeah, I could see having somebody maybe in an IT management role who could probably do a much better job of managing the vendor than I could. And possibly insourcing that one day. So that's certainly something we're considering.

Yeah you're like, I wish I had someone able to fix that email crash sooner. There are always last-minute things. Even for Supermove being on the tech side of things, there's no such thing as a perfect software company but it's really about making sure we're communicating as much as possible, and being transparent with all our customers. So that sounds stressful but I'm sure you're glad that everything is fixed now and you guys figured it out like every moving company always does with last-minute changes. When did you realize you couldn't just focus on residential moving to grow your company?

I would say it was around 2005, 2006. We started this company in 2001 and seven months later 9/11 happened. You had the resulting Iraq war or Afghan wars, and then around 2005-6, you had a spike in the diesel fuel crisis. Diesel fuel went up to five dollars a gallon and really put a pinch on us, as well as our contractors who drive over the road. So we saw the housing bubble coming and a couple of years later, you had the great recession. So we knew at that point, right before that, we needed to diversify. We were one-dimensional, we were a consumer moving company. 

We eventually positioned ourselves with National Van Lines. We learned a lot from them. Great people. They taught us a lot about the military side of the business, the Department of Defense because we have a pretty sizeable air force base here in MacDill Air Force Base here in Tampa. So we learned that aspect of the business. And then in 2008, we partnered with SIRVA which owns North American Van Lines and that's been a great relationship ever since then. We then decided around 2010 to dedicate ourselves to growing from scratch a commercial side of the business, which is very different from household but utilizes the same assets at least in the beginning.

These days, we have dedicated crews that do only commercial and vehicles that are dedicated to commercial. But when we started, we were having to mix and match. A crew might move a household one day, and the next day they might be moving an office.

Yeah got to be versatile. Well was that decision to create the commercial moving part? You said that even after you became a van line agent. I'm just curious, what made you decide to open up a separate division for commercial moving?

I read a book once that talked about this runner, this triathlete. And this writer was interviewing and watching this guy, spending time with him, and he saw that he was straining his cottage cheese. That's what he was eating to get protein and he would run water through it. And he's like, “what are you doing?” and he said, “oh I'm rinsing the cottage cheese to get the extra fat off of it.” So he made the analogy that rinsing the cottage cheese is basically doing everything you can that is humanly possible to achieve your objectives. And really that was it. We knew the commercial business was out there. We knew there was market share to be had, so we put it into our business plan. And it's been growing ever since. 

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense for you guys to maximize your assets, and maximize the potential that you guys have as a company. But I think there are so many moving companies out there that maybe are just overwhelmed with just households or whatever that focus is for them. So how did you decide—and maybe the answer is people—how did you decide that we want to maximize and we're ready to create another section of our business?

Well, we looked at it logically. And a lot of offices move on nights and weekends when your household business is—your trucks are just sitting in your parking lot. And that was the genesis of it—keeping those trucks moving and bringing in revenue and getting the crews more hours at a time when typically they were not working. 

Yeah. Or even for winter when not many people are moving, I guess that's probably a good time and commercial moving is pretty consistent throughout, nothing like peak season or too many dips. 

No. Although this year was a little different, typically the fourth quarter is a little bit busier on the commercial side because companies are trying to get that spend in before the end of the year, and that kind of thing if they have extra budget dollars. 

Yeah and I guess with post-COVID life, are you seeing a lot of migration back to the office, or is it more maybe people deciding to leave their office and go into storage?

We're seeing a little bit of everything. We're seeing companies that are going back to the office. We are seeing companies put the brakes on and kind of stay in this holding pattern. And we have some that started to bring people back to the office and therefore reconfigure their offices. And then they kind of had us go back to doing what they were doing and said we're gonna keep our people at home for now. 

So how does that work with your commercial moving business? Do they ever ask at the last minute, “hey we're writing a release early. Can we book a big move for next week?”

Yeah although this year was very challenging with that sort of thing. We had to tell a lot of our good customers that we just didn't have trucks or crews available and most of them were able to work with us. And they understood because it really is for the first time a universal problem with the supply chain.

Yeah, I know. I was going to ask a question about the labor and driver shortage affecting the business. So you're turning customers away. Are there other examples of how it's affected business this year? 

How the labor and driver shortage has affected…? 

Yeah.

I mean we had to raise our rates significantly, multiple times because we're just finding that it's becoming more and more competitive. I mean the local school districts here are paying anywhere from $26 to $30 an hour for school bus drivers. Because they just can't they can't find them. They're paying for their training, paying for them to get their commercial driver's license and the appropriate endorsements and they're still having a tough time.

‍Wow, yeah the increasing rates. Any moving company owner who's looking at their P&L I'm sure they’re realizing something has to change, something has to budge. And then gotta communicate that to the customers. And I hope that customers understand although I'm sure there are plenty of people that want the lowest price possible when they're asking. 

Yeah most of them understood. I'm sure they were seeing it in various aspects of their transportation programs. it's not just from us. But some were disappointed or wanted to find a better rate. And a few of them came back to us and said okay yeah we see now what the market is and we want to stick with you guys.

Yeah, you're like you didn't trust me when I told you in the beginning. [laughs] How did you think about the next niche area to get into, such as furniture, office furniture, liquidation? Was it because you joined a van line or was it just kind of based on trends that you saw, or your peers? 

Certainly joining a van line was helpful because it exposed us to several of our mentors. Kevin Ankenbeauer from Ward, who you had on earlier this year, being one of them. They taught us a lot about the business and would say, hey you need to do this or you should look into that, or in your market, this might work, that kind of thing. That was certainly one aspect of it. 

Another one was we listened to our customers. It was customer driven in many ways because we'd be out there, moving their office stuff and they'd say, hey the installers didn't show up, can you guys do this? And we would say, yeah we can do that, we can reconfigure cubicles. And it just evolved that way. Then they would ask, hey can you clean the cubicles? Sure yeah because throw anything at us. We're doing facility work now. We're doing drywall repair and painting. So we have gotten into many different aspects of commercial moving.

Wow. So you're seeing a lot of people or maybe a handful of customers wanting you guys to be a one-stop shop instead of having to deal with maybe multiple contacts? They just want to ask you to please get this done for us. We are willing to pay. Well, that's fascinating. Just to kind of pivot and talk a little bit about hiring good talent. We did get this question from registration. What is the best way to attract diverse talent for corporate level positions, so BDM. business analysts, etc.? 

First of all, I would say have your recruiting metrics. Set goals and objectives first before you even consider trying to recruit. And then I would say invest in recruitment tools. We use LinkedIn, we use Indeed, and some of the other sites that help, Monster and that sort of thing that helps us attract talent. And then obviously, we offer health insurance, vision, dental, 401K, that kind of stuff. And we are very competitive when it comes to paying people. So it's all really kind of a total effort when it comes to attracting talent.

And retaining talent—the same thing. You have to provide a positive work environment and do team building things. We give latitude to our managers to do that. We give them a budget to go bring lunch in or go have a happy hour, that sort of thing. 

So there's a have-fun budget for the managers. I'm curious in terms of being able to retain your employees as well as hire good ones, do you have any other general tips around that? Because I feel like everyone is trying to get creative to make sure that they're able to hire and retain.

Sure. When we first started, when we were a very small business and it was my partner and I running the whole thing, we hired someone who—she's actually still with us today. All we had to offer her was coffee and she loved it. We would provide free coffee and she was thrilled. It was a hit with her. She couldn't get over the fact that it was free. So then we did other things early on that didn't cost a lot. We would give away t-shirts to the crews here and there and have little contests and give away a gift card or something like that. Recognizing people is important for your talent retention. 

Yeah, I think recognition is definitely important. Free coffee, free food. No one can turn away free food. It excites everyone. So I know you touched a little bit about the technology earlier but I'm curious, what are your thoughts on the technology that you use for your company, and how does it benefit your company—the technology that you're using in order to organize customer leads and dispatch?

It's all very important. It was in our earliest business plan that we would be early adopters of technology because we had no other way to gain leverage. We were taking on these massive companies in our market, some of them are several hundred million dollar companies and we were this tiny little small business with a handful of employees, so we've had a website since day one. So our website's 20 years old. My brother is a computer engineer so he helped us out a lot with that sort of thing. We used MapQuest very early on. We had PalmPilots. We would take pictures of people's houses and they loved that. They have this prized grandfather clock or something and they see you taking a picture of it in like 2004/2005 with your PalmPilot and your stylus and they loved it. It was a selling tool. That was a huge part of it. So it helped us operationally, but also we would make sure we sold it. Hey, we're using this stuff. Let's go out and let people know that.

During the pandemic, a lot of companies turned to virtual surveys. We've been doing it for 10 years consistently so it wasn't something we had to pivot into. we were already doing it. We obviously turned it up. We were doing only 15 or 17% or something like that, and it got up so we were doing like 80 or 90% of our surveys at the height. And we're still using it. People are embracing it. Customers aren't as resistant to using it nowadays. So that is certainly an area where we've been able to capitalize.

Safety initiatives like GPS, dashcams on our trucks, that sort of thing. And again, we sell it. We tell our customers, hey we have this technology. We have it in place and it benefits you and you don't pay anything extra for it. There have been nuclear verdicts in Florida. Last week I think there was a billion-dollar verdict against a trucking company for a safety issue that caused an accident. So we want to make sure we have the best available technology. And then our van line partner North American Van Lines does a great job of innovating technology. They have this new technology called Move Scout. It's fantastic. So we really have been early adopters of it and we are big believers in technology.

Yeah, I love that you're an early adopter. I don't meet enough in the moving industry, but I can see that it puts you on a different level because you have tools that other people might not even know about, and automate things or use those tools to help your company be more efficient. So I love that. 

I'm going to ask one last question and then for anyone tuning in, just type in your questions in Q&A and I'll make sure that Chris answers the questions that are submitted live. How does one form a partnership with a national carrier? 

We developed relationships with their regional people who kind of go out and scour small businesses and our first van line partnership was National Van Lines. And they did a really good job of pursuing us. Dick Scaffa he's still with them and we’re still friends with him to this day. And then Mike Hammond, Steve Young at North American—the same thing. Basically, we submitted an inquiry with them. We just said, hey, we're considering partnering with the van line. And they responded and they came to visit and kind of give you suggestions or ideas of how you can improve your chances of getting an offer to partner with them. 

Wow okay, so it sounds pretty simple, just make sure you get connected and on both ends, make sure it works and both parties are benefiting from it.

Yeah. Obviously, figure out what in your market is going to work. And then make sure there's a need. And then figure out what your objective is. 

Yeah, I'm going to open it up to Q&A. We have one question so far about household goods, sales, and booking moves. Do you see a future of a complete online booking, not involving a salesperson or team? I think that's an excellent question. 

I think it's a good question and I think there certainly is a future for it, but I think there's a certain limit to the demographics. So I think some people are open to it but I think there are always going to be people who have maybe four- or five-bedroom houses and really want that face-to-face customer experience. I think those people are always going to be around and seeking out our services. so we're always going to provide that. We're always going to have outside consumer sales reps for that purpose. 

Yeah, I'm not sure if you heard, but you can buy a tesla online. I haven't tried to buy that myself. But yeah can you imagine a day when moving is—like you said you'll always have customer service reps—but maybe there'll be companies that are fully robot-driven or tech-driven and there's no human to contact—there's just like a chatbot. I got another question: Do you own or lease trucks? And have you seen an advantage of one over the other?

I think both have advantages. We own trucks and then we lease them as well, so it comes down to what you need at that point in time. If that's all you can do, then go lease it. If you can own it though, we lean towards owning them because we pay them off quickly or we buy them cash, and then we have that equity in the vehicles. And we can trade up when they reach the end of their useful life as far as we're concerned, and we trade them in and get newer equipment.

yeah, I think for the smaller companies, I've talked to some moving company owners that also can lease Penske trucks which I think is interesting. Because you land on their website and they say, we can move you but if you want a cheaper option, you can also rent a Penske truck from us. So I think that's fascinating. Talking about diversifying your company, different ways that they can profit off of a cheaper move. But I don't know what that agreement looks like and who knows how much that margin is when they're an official Penske leaser 

It's a good way to get access to newer equipment. If you can't afford to buy it, certainly lease it. In my experience, buying older trucks and trying to keep them beyond their useful life is not the way to go. We've learned that lesson time and time again early on, and you wind up paying more than you would for a newer vehicle just in repairs and downtime and that sort of thing. so my advice would be to buy if you can buy; otherwise, lease but try to have newer equipment.

Yeah, the ideal situation is always to have new equipment and nothing will break down.

Right, exactly.

Do you see a difference in the demographics, age, family size, and shipment size, between shipments now versus years ago? 

For the first time we saw consumer shipments grow in size, yeah absolutely. They had been declining. The average went from about eight thousand pounds down to below seven. And it was up this year, back up close to eight thousand pounds I believe on average. For corporate it was over ten thousand pounds for the first time in a while. So despite the volume being down on the corporate side, the shipment size was up. So we did a little less work for bigger shipments. It helped offset the decrease in corporate volume.

I can only imagine all the changes you've seen over the past 20 years running this business and having to always adapt or really just make sure that you're able to cater to these changes.

That's been our thing, trying to be as agile as possible, embracing technology, and being able to pivot—really that's the key.

Are you handling any international shipments today, household goods or commercial?

Yeah, both. Not nearly as much as we were because of COVID, I believe, but also because the corporate volume was down. So it's more so on the consumer side, which makes up a small percentage of your international business.

I want to ask you one last question that we have: Do you have any tips for smaller moving companies who are looking to grow their business? 

Don't grow too quickly but also capitalize when the market turns down. It's an opportunity to grow because you'll have access to human capital but also equipment and materials will be cheaper. Now you have the business but it's hard to buy trucks right now because of many reasons. We're looking to buy some new crew cab and quad cab straight trucks and it's going to be about 12 to 15 months to get them. So there's always an opportunity to grow but just do so at a controlled and manageable pace. 

‍Yeah, that's some great advice. Well, Chris I really appreciate you taking the time to speak to us today and sharing your knowledge about diversifying and growing your company. Once again, this live Q&A was hosted by Supermove and we are the software team that brings everyone from your coordinators to dispatch onto one system and makes it really easy to run your business. If you're not using any moving software today or are just curious about how we can level up your business, just sign up for a demo on the Supermove website and mention that you attended this live Q&A with Chris. Chris, do you have any last words before we wrap up? 

I appreciate the opportunity and I think diversification is a very key component to running a moving and storage business so appreciate you giving me the chance to get the message out there. 

Great. Well, thank you all for attending. Look forward to our next event on Supermove’s social media platforms and we'll see you all next time. Thanks so much, Chris. 

Thanks, Heidi. Take care. 

‍