How To Handle Storage At Your Moving Company

You currently offer storage at your moving company or have you thought about offering storage at your moving company? You know, storage could be a very lucrative monthly recurring revenue that could really help pay a lot of the bills for your business. You know, we did storage and we did it, you know, some would say the traditional way where we had wooden vaults, five by seven by seven and a half containers that we would have at the warehouse and we'd stack them three high. And what we would do is we'd send the truck out, we'd go pick up the storage, we'd bring it back, we'd load in the vault and we'd keep it there and know the customer was ready to have it delivered out. You know, nowadays there's a lot of different ways that you could do the storage. You could even bring the vaults out to their home, let them load them up or load them up for them there, then bring the vaults back. But I want to talk to you about how I used to do and share that process with you because I know a lot of companies are thinking whether they should get into storage. And then I know there's a lot of companies that are doing storage currently that are kind of looking at their process and thinking, how can we streamline this? How can we make this a little bit better? Because you also have a lot of liability when you bring someone's possessions into your building. Not even just someone, when you bring hundreds of people's possessions into your building, you're responsible for all that. Alright? So it's definitely something that you want to consider and it's definitely something that you want to do very carefully. In my locations, I would say we had anywhere small locations, 300 vaults, all the way up to locations with 650 volts billing customers $75 a per volt. It can pay a lot of your monthly bills. All right? But if you're going to do it, you need to set it up correctly or you're exposing yourself to a lot of liability. Alright? So I want to give you five steps that you know the way we used to do it to help you. And hopefully this will help get you started or maybe give you some ideas on how to streamline your storage business. So first thing you want to do as a moving company, you definitely want to to offer one month free storage all the time, all right? I am a big, big believer in this. And the reason is when you're moving somebody and they're coming into your facility, you're getting paid for that move in and you're getting paid for that move out. So that's two moves. So if they come into your warehouse for a month and they don't pay you anything for storage, but you have the space, what did you lose? Nothing. But you gain two moves. Okay? So the only time you wouldn't do this, obviously, is if you're, you know, almost at capacity or just about at capacity, and you can't take on any more storage business, or you're going to need to go rent additional space in order to do it. But if you have additional space, if you move into a warehouse for the first time, if you're just getting into storage, or let's say you're expanding your current facility, I even up it to two months free storage, what's the difference? You have the space, you have to pay for the space. You may or may not get that move, and you may be able to book that move by offering them that additional storage. And remember, it's two moves every time. A move in and it's a move out. Always ask the customer when you're booking storage if they're going to need access to the storage. All right, we're talking about doing it the traditional way where you have a warehouse. You're putting them in wooden vaults, five by seven by seven and a half. You're going to stack them either two or three high, sometimes even four. All right? But if a customer is going to need to get in and out of that storage, you know, in and out of your facility, it's probably not a good fit for them. And you're probably better off telling them to go to a self storage unit, which you'll be more than happy to move them to, both in and both out. And the reason for this is because you don't want this disruption. You don't want customers calling and saying, hey, I need to get into my storage. Even though you're going to charge for that, even though there's a fee associated with that, it's not really, in my opinion, good business. Right? You don't want to have to charge them every time they come. It just seems petty. And you don't want to have your warehouse person pull down vaults, set them up, let them look through them, supervise them, because you can't let them in your warehouse unsupervised, because remember, you're responsible for everybody's shipments, all right? So you can't just let somebody go in there. So to me, if they are someone that's going to need constant in and out access, they're better off at a self Storage facility, All right, Let them know we're more of a long term facility. We'll pick your items up, we'll hold them for you. When you're ready, let us know and we'll deliver everything back. Alright? Every single storage job must have a detailed inventory. Meaning that you need to go out there with, if you've seen them, the lot, the stickers, okay, different colored stickers with lot numbers on them. All right? Nowadays there's some electronic versions as well, all right, but old school, you have the stickers, you label each piece with a sticker. Each sticker has a certain lot number and a certain number of the piece. Then you write down on the inventory what that piece is and also the condition that it's in. It's very important that you mark the condition that it's in before it comes into storage and that the customer acknowledges that. All right? This is crucial. Do not pick up storage. Bring it to your facility without doing a detailed inventory of every single piece. And you need to make sure that your driver or your head mover, whoever's in charge, knows how to do that and they know how to look for the damages and put the code on there for the damages. All right, Number four, this is so, so, so, so important. And I know companies right now that are not doing this, that have big storage facilities, good sized companies. And if that's you, you need to start doing this or you're exposing yourself to way too much liability. Check in every single shipment completely, all right? You need to have somebody at the warehouse, not the crew that brought it in, okay? You need to have a warehouseman, a dispatcher, a manager, yourself, a different mover, even someone that as they're bringing in the shipment, remember they did a detailed inventory. You're going to have someone that's taking the inventory sheet and as each piece comes off the truck, they're going to say what number it is. Okay? They're going to say number 42. Someone's going to go, they're going to check off 42. They're going to say number four. 322, they're going to check that off. Right? Every piece that comes off the truck needs to get checked off to make sure that everything that left that house made it back to your office. All right? 99% of movers are honest, hard working people. There's a very small percentage, but they're out there that if that's not tight and they know you're not looking at what's coming in and what's coming out, they will make a pit stop at their house and drop off that TV when they know that that customer is not going to even move out for another year or two. Like, nobody will even know for a year or two, all right? Or they'll drop off that box of shoes to their girlfriend. Whatever the case may be. I've seen it. And you don't want that to happen. Every single piece needs to get checked off. So as it's getting checked off, if a sticker is not there, for example, there's a piece of furniture or a box, and they say there's no number, what you want to do is have them put it to the side, and at the end, you want to take a look at all the pieces and boxes that didn't have a number on them and then match it up to whatever's left. All right? But everything needs to get checked off. This is so important. Do not just have them come back and unload and be on their way, all right? I know it's much easier. I know it can be a pain to do this. When I first started my business, when it was just me, I had the warehouse. I was literally in the warehouse on my cell phone booking moves while I was checking off numbers, all right? And if I had to have them stop what they were doing because I had to take a reservation, then they had to stop what they were doing. But I made sure that everything was accounted for. This is huge. Number five, as things are coming in the storage, you need to make sure you protect them. All right? Remember, you're moving this furniture twice. Now, there's a big risk of moving something once, that something will get scratched or something will get damaged. But now you're moving it once into the truck, you're moving it again into a vault. You're moving it back out of the vault and to the customer's house. So pad and shrink wrap as needed. All right? I know that you're going to want to sell this to the customer, and that's great. If you could sell padding and packing and shrink wrap, great. But if they don't want to buy it when it comes back, before you put it in the vault, make sure you do what you need to do to protect it, all right? For your own liability. Or you're going to have a problem, and you're going to have a claim, and you're going to have a bad review. All right? So I would get. You know, some supply places will call them warehouse pads. You know, it's like a moving pad. It's a little bit thinner. All right, you could either change out the pads when you get back to the warehouse or. Or if you know it's going on a storage job, you could basically pull your regular moving pads off the truck, load it with the warehouse pads and send them out there. And this way they can pad everything and when it comes back, it can go right into the vault. All right, then I want to give you one little bonus tip here. Set everybody up on automatic billing and make this a requirement. All right? We didn't do this at first. When I first started storage, I literally was manually sending out bills to people, okay, pen and paper. Years later, we finally set them up on automatic reoccurring billing, either on their credit card or even on a bank account. And we made this a requirement. If they're coming into storage, you know, you're still going to have people that you're going to have to call because the payment didn't go through, and you're going to have to follow up with that. But it's much easier than trying to track down checks and trying to get payments. Set everybody up on automatic reoccurring billing. All right, so listen, I hope this was helpful. I know there's a lot of different ways you could do storage. I know you don't even have to have a facility. You can, you know, put things in a self storage unit. But when you're ready. And this I would say, you know, people ask me sometimes, like, when should I get an office? When should I get a warehouse? You should get a warehouse when you're ready to do storage, when you're ready to collect monthly revenue that's going to help pay for the rent, pay for some of your insurance, maybe even your trucks. You know, it could be a very lucrative business if it's done right. But the reason I'm stressing the liability so much is because if it's not and you have a claim every single time something comes out of storage or every single time something comes out of storage or something missing, it's going to be a nightmare and you're going to wish you never started doing it. All right? So if you're in that place now, you know what I'm talking about. Because, you know, I experienced it and I had to backtrack from that and make sure that we set up processes that did not allow that to happen. All right? So again, if you're not offering storage, think about offering storage. It's a big money generator. And until I see you next time go out there every single day profit in your business, thriving your life. I'll see you next time. Hey, my friend, it's Louis. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Do me two favors. Number one, subscribe to this channel so that you continue to get updates every time I release new training for you. And number two, if you'd like to get ahead a little bit faster and become more profitable in your business, what I'd like to do is give you a copy of my 10 rules of a Profitable Moving company. These are the same 10 rules that I applied in my business that helped me grow it into a multi million dollar nationwide company. Okay, so all you need to do is click on the link on this page or head over to louismassaro.com 10rules. So that's Louis L O U I S Massaro M A S s a r o.com tenrules just put in your name and email address and I'll email you out a copy and okay. Until then, every single day, go out and profit in business and thrive in life. I'll see you later.