Moving company on an upward trajectory
Austin Business Journal - by A.J. Mistretta ABJ Staff
Mike Loughrey has a rather straightforward way of looking at his business.
He sees the large number of new office buildings going up in and around Austin and reads the headlines about the numerous companies expanding and relocating here.
"Someone's got to move those companies in," he says. "Why shouldn't it be us?"
Indeed, in just a little over a year's time, Loughrey's MoveCorp has carved out a spot for itself among some of the city's major corporate-moving companies. The firm counts Convio Inc., Concordia University and Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) among its clients, and has built a roster of more than 50 full- and part-time employees since its launch in June 2006.
MoveCorp recently completed its largest project to date, the relocation over a nine-day period of 75 truckloads of furniture and equipment from the former Schlumberger site to a staging warehouse in Leander for Concordia. The university is plotting its move to the new campus next year.
Loughrey says he never envisioned himself in the moving business. He came to Austin 10 years ago and took a job in sales with another moving company a few years later. He discovered a tremendous potential for the industry in Austin, a young city with an expanding corporate infrastructure. But he says he grew tired of working for a company where he was making promises that got broken.
"In this business, you're only as good as your word," he says. "It says a lot to a client when their assets actually show up like you told them they would."
Loughrey says companies today don't just want someone to take their boxes from Point A to Point B. MoveCorp offers complete project management, helping the client to pre-coordinate a move. Jim Beam, operations manager for MoveCorp, brings 18 years of experience in the business to the table and deals mostly in project management. The firm also employs technicians who can disconnect and reconnect servers and computers, and provides a furniture liquidation service. One environmentally friendly component of the company's service is its "boxless" approach. MoveCorp uses a system of reusable crates.
"We spent a lot of money up front to make sure that we had the right equipment to be successful," he says.
Also contributing to MoveCorp's success is its fairly solid, quality labor pool, says Loughrey. Since many company moves occur at night and on the weekends to limit downtime, MoveCorp often brings in people who have daytime jobs but are looking to make extra money.
The moving industry as a whole is a $10 billion-a-year business, according to statistics from the American Moving and Storage Association. Interstate corporate relocation dropped off slightly after 2001 but has rebounded in recent years. Figures on companies specializing in corporate moving at a local level are a bit more difficult to come by.
But Mary Scott Tuck, director of transportation statistics for AMSA, says cities such as Austin that are seeing significant business growth are likely to have a more dynamic field of companies involved in corporate moves.
"This is a small town and if someone is moving, you can bet 10 other moving companies are chasing the same opportunity," says Loughrey. "We believe good competition is healthy and we like to keep it friendly."
Austin's largest commercial mover, Central Transportation Systems Inc., raked in $4.5 million in 2006 from commercial moves.
Karel Kozuh, project manager with HS&A, which is overseeing the Concordia move, says MoveCorp won the first phase of the move contract through a competitive bid process.
"MoveCorp's unsolicited budget consulting was very helpful in the overall creation of the budget for the entire project," says Kozuh. "They raised the bar on pre-move planning and seemed determined from the beginning to exceed our expectations."
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