How to Keep Your Moving Business Busy in the Off-Season

Every moving company knows the shape of the year. Summer is packed, and winter is quiet. As Angie Garner put it at the start of the session, “The moves might slow down, but the bills definitely don’t.” You still have trucks, equipment, insurance, and a crew you want to keep busy and keep around for spring.

That was the focus of Fill the Calendar, the first session in our Grow Beyond the Move webinar series. Angie, who leads product marketing at SmartMoving, moderated a conversation with Austin Alaniz and Daniel Savage, two former moving company operators who kept their calendars full by building work beyond the household move. Austin grew B2B accounts with flooring, restoration, and specialty delivery companies. Daniel ran a Phoenix moving company with a 20,000-square-foot warehouse and built a storage business alongside his moves.

Their shared lesson: the trucks, crews, and skills you already have can earn money all year when you put them to work on more than residential moves. In a live poll, attendees said storage and office moves are the extra services they offer most, and that finding customers is their biggest barrier. Here’s how Austin and Daniel handled both.

Watch the full Fill the Calendar session, including Austin and Daniel’s answers to attendee questions.

Storage: recurring revenue between moves

For Daniel, storage was the most reliable way to create recurring revenue. One storage customer usually means several jobs: the move in, partial deliveries, and the final move-out. His team often booked a summer move into storage and moved the items out in winter, adding a job right when residential work slowed down.

Daniel saw it as the way out of the boom-and-bust cycle:

“You’re not starting at zero every month waiting for the next move to book."

Storage customers came from his own moves and from delayed closings, downsizing, renovations, and businesses that needed extra space. Designers and stagers used it between jobs, and offering it made his team the go-to resource for realtors. His advice for getting started:

• Start without a warehouse: use third-party self-storage units, then move into your own space once storage revenue supports it
• Know your costs first: figure out what the space costs you before you give a customer a price
• Charge for handling: price vault storage as a monthly fee per vault plus a flat handling fee for loading items in and bringing them back out

Specialty deliveries and junk removal: work close to what you already do

Austin built much of his off-season work by partnering with businesses that have customers to serve but not enough trucks or labor. Companies that sell swim spas, hot tubs, pool tables, pianos, and safes often need delivery help, especially around the holidays. That work was easy to quote by the mile or by the unit, and much of it ran on weekdays, which freed his team to focus on household moves later in the week.

Flooring and restoration companies became some of his steadiest accounts. He started with one flooring account and grew it into several by calling other flooring companies and asking who they worked with. When a homeowner’s floors had to be ripped out and replaced, Austin’s team packed, moved, and stored the home’s contents, then moved everything back, often over several days or weeks for a single property. Once he found the right project manager, the work kept coming.

Daniel saw the same kind of opportunity in designer receiving and retail deliveries. Designers often have furniture arriving from several vendors and want it delivered when the space is ready. His tip: check and photograph every item as it comes in, so damage that happened before it reached you isn’t blamed on you.

Junk removal is another natural add-on, but both panelists warned that it’s easy to underprice. Items left on the truck get touched two or three times, and Austin always felt his team wasn’t charging enough. Movers price it by the quarter or eighth of a truck, by flat fee, or by the hour. Daniel often added a small flat fee of $50 to $100 at the end of a move to haul away a few pieces. Whatever you charge, know how and when you’ll dispose of items before you book, like a scheduled weekly dump run, so they don’t end up on the next crew’s truck. Usable desks, chairs, and file cabinets from office decommissioning jobs can go to churches or community organizations, which may also bring tax write-offs.

Storage, specialty deliveries, and junk removal are all new revenue lines covered in how to grow a moving company.

Landing accounts: relationships over cold emails

Asked what someone should do first, Austin didn’t hesitate: look at your insurance. Property managers and commercial buildings require a certificate of insurance (COI) on file, so keep one ready at all times. When you visit a property, bring coffee or cookies for the property manager and front desk staff, leave your card, and ask who their preferred movers are.

From there, it’s about relationships. Ask every contact, “Who else do you know that might use our services?” Stay in touch with people as they change jobs, too. One of Austin’s project managers moved to another flooring company and brought him a new account. He also reminded attendees that hearing no is a normal part of sales. It doesn’t mean you’re asking the wrong questions, so keep asking different people.

Angie added a simpler starting point: answer the phone. When someone calls about a service you don’t list, have the conversation before you say no. One of Austin’s largest restoration accounts came from an after-hours call through a Google Local Services ad he ran to stand out from movers who only work 9 to 5. He asked what was working with their current mover and what they expected, which helped him price the job and vet the customer at the same time.

Getting paid: questions to ask a new business customer

Residential moves are usually paid at the end of the job. Business customers work differently, and a project can run for weeks before you send an invoice. Austin’s rule is to get everything in writing with a contract. Before you take on a new business customer, ask:

• Payment terms: What terms do you expect, and will you pay by ACH, wire, or card? Austin encouraged faster payment on Net 30 terms with a discount for paying within 10 days.
• Card on file: Will you keep a card on file? Austin required one from newer clients, and a business that won’t is a red flag.
• Insurance: What COI requirements do you and your buildings have?
• Arrival and start times: How strict are your timing requirements? The stricter they are, the more of a premium you can charge.
• POs and invoicing: Do you need PO numbers on invoices, and who should receive them?

For storage, Daniel’s team had every customer sign a credit card authorization form and set them up on autobilling. All storage bills were due on the first of the month, which turned collections into one process instead of a daily task. Payments were late after two days, with a $50 flat fee and a notice on the fourth. Customers still past due the next month got notice that their items would go to auction. The key, he said, is a consistent process instead of waiting until a balance becomes a major issue.

Scheduling a mixed calendar

Once household moves, storage runs, and commercial jobs share a week, dispatch gets more complicated. Having six available movers doesn’t mean you have the right six movers.

• Tag jobs and crews: use job tags and crew skills so the right people land on specialty work
• Schedule specialty work first: cover commercial moves, storage inbounds, and big jobs before filling in residential moves
• Split the week: negotiate timing up front and keep recurring business work early in the week, leaving later days for household moves

Daniel learned the tag lesson the hard way when he sent a new mover out on a baby grand piano job. “We’ll just say it was a rough day for my other two guys,” he said.

Managing it all in Smart Pro

Everything Austin and Daniel described creates new work for the office: projects that span weeks, rates that differ by customer, crews matched by skill, POs, and invoices on terms. That’s why SmartMoving built Smart Pro, a product tier for moving companies taking on work beyond the traditional household move. It combines Smart Growth with the Accounts module and warehousing. Austin showed how he’d manage a commercial account in it:

• Accounts: keep each business customer’s contacts, departments, account-specific rates, and documents in one profile
• Projects: keep multi-day, multi-job work in one view, with jobs that are easy to duplicate
• Skill-based labor: track what you bill and what you pay your crew, and see skill tags in dispatch so the right people land on each job
• Invoicing: bill several jobs at once, with PO numbers
• Commercial portal: give clients a secure, branded place to see invoices, claims, statements, documents, and stored items, and request items from storage for pickup or delivery

Your checklist before the slow season

Asked what they’d try first, Daniel picked commercial moves, since they open up new customers and referrals and are the easiest transition from residential work. Austin picked storage and specialty deliveries like spas, safes, pianos, and pool tables, since you likely already have the equipment. Whichever you choose, get it set up while you’re still busy, alongside your other slow season sales plans, so the work is lined up before residential moves slow down:

• Pick one service: choose one your current crew, trucks, and equipment can handle
• Know your costs: include disposal and double handling in your price so you make a profit on every job
• Get your COI ready: have it on hand before you walk into any commercial property
• List five local businesses: think property managers, designers, retailers, or flooring and restoration companies you can visit in person
• Set your payment terms: use the questions above to decide on contracts, Net terms, and card-on-file rules

And as Daniel put it, bring more four-wheelers and speed packs than you think you need on a commercial move. Have questions? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

Your questions, answered

How much should I mark up third-party self-storage units?

Daniel suggests 25% to 40%. Keep it modest so customers don’t just rent the unit themselves, and remember the bigger win is booking the move in and the move out.

When should I hire someone to find business accounts instead of relying on emails from the owner or sales team?

Whoever owns it, Austin said cold email won’t get it done, since everyone gets hundreds a day. Business accounts come from relationships, so look at networking groups like BNI that meet consistently. Once you land one or two accounts, more tend to follow.

Should realty teams go in Accounts or stay as affiliates?

By default, keep them as affiliates. Accounts in Smart Pro are built for recurring business and ongoing projects, while realtor referrals usually tie back to typical household moves. If a realty group sends you ongoing project work, an account may make sense.