How to Succeed in Long Distance Moving
A how-to talk by Louis Massaro that introduces long-distance (interstate) moving for moving-company owners considering expansion. Louis contrasts long-distance with local moving, describes four revenue models (referral partner, broker, carrier/van-line agent, interline agreements), lists common operational and legal challenges (logistics, correct estimating — binding vs non-binding and 110% rule, driver shortages, payment risk, loss of control), and provides step-by-step advice to start and scale (begin with referrals, track demand, obtain FMCSA authority, study laws, start regionally, build an interstate team, cultivate interlines, proceed cautiously).
Chapters
I did. Many people have. And you can make millions and millions and millions of dollars in this business, but it needs to be done strategically. This is long distance moving 101. This is like, hey, let's lay it out, let's start the conversation and let's find out if this is right for you or not. Because I'm pretty sure every one of you probably has customers calling and wanting to move out of state whether you do long distance or not. You know, when you price out a job, you're like, wow, that's a lot of money move. That temptation is real. It needs to be done in a different way than you do locals. And so let's jump into it. I want to talk about long distance today. And you know, my first seven years in moving, I didn't do any long distance at all. We referred it out to another, you know, a van line agent in our. In the cities that we were in the first city in Denver, we referred it out to a van line agent after that. It was a mix. There were some independents and some van line agents, but we basically didn't touch it. And my justification for that, because we were getting a lot of calls, we were getting a lot of demand, was let's focus on what we know how to do, what we've established, and not get distracted with something that is a whole different animal. We'll talk about today and we'll see today. And those of you have gotten into long distance or do long distance, you know, it's not the same thing as local moving. It's not like I do local moving and I'm going to do long distance and it's the same. And the people that try to do it the same way are the ones that have a really, really hard time. And I know that some of you here have struggled to make that transition. Hopefully today is really going to help you. But seven years didn't do any long distance. It was like, you know what this things working, making a ton of money, became a millionaire, just doing local moves. And I'm like, why get into the long distance? You know, just open up more offices of the local. And then at some point, I had, I think five or four or five offices at the time. And my team came to me, they're like, look, here's the, here's the stats. Here are all the calls and requests that we're getting for long distance that we're referring out. Like, it's a lot of business. And so we actually started off by becoming a booking agent for a van line where it was like, hey, look, we don't have the capacity to haul anything. Right? We've got local shipments. We don't have the capacity to haul anything, but we have a tremendous capacity to book moves. Right. I had the call center set up, kind of showed them what we have. They're like, yeah, we actually need tonnage. That's what they call it. We need tonnage out of those areas where you're at. And we're willing to do a. An agent agreement where you would not be required to book. I'm sorry, not be required to haul. And so with van lines, you know, it's. We'll kind of talk more about that as well. But that's not really a typical thing, right? They really want their agents to, you know, book jobs and put them into the system, but also be able to haul as well. And after, you know, we started that up and we booked a ton of jobs that they could not handle. It was just more volume than they anticipated. It was like we kind of took that first step into doing it and it was hard to turn back. So we started to buy long distance trucks, you know, 53 foot tractor trailers, 30 foot tandem axles straight trucks, 30 foot that could hold more weight than our local trucks. And really went all in. I spent about a million two on trucks, financed a million two on trucks, and went all in on doing it ourselves. So we kind of separated the agreement with the van line. They weren't able to haul all the jobs we were booking. We're like, let's book it ourselves. And it was really out of a little bit of a peer pressure of my team, right? The people that I had around me were like, let's do it, let's do it. I'm like, nah, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. And then, you know, finally I caved and I buckled. And I'm like, all right, let's do it. We're in. Let's go. And for like the next year, I spent that year learning how long distance is different, why it's a whole different animal who's doing long distance right now. Interstate moving, cross state lines. All right, I know we got some international folks here as well. A lot of what I'm going to talk about today, we're going to be referencing US Based laws and US Based interstate moving. So hopefully it'll translate well to our international members as well. But I learned that it has its own set of challenges, its own set of problems. And we'll talk about those today, I'm going to kind of break down the different types of ways that you can start to generate revenue off of long distance moves, whether you have trucks or not, some of the problems and the challenges that you're going to face. And also how to get started, if you want to get started, and kind of how to start and scale. So, you know, from there it was, ah, man, spent a few years, I think three years, three or four years, really, about four years hauling shipments all across the country. And my offices were spread out, right? So we had, you know, Denver, Seattle, Boston, a few offices in Florida, another one in Colorado Springs. So they were, they weren't really set up in a way for a logistical, strategic approach for long distance and created a lot of challenges, which we'll talk about. And so from that, we're already into it. We're already booking millions of dollars a year in long distance. And I had the call center I had, you know, that was operating like clockwork, you know. And I'm like, you know, we started booking a lot of jobs and we would start to give those jobs to other carriers, right? We would book because when you're doing long distance, you need to make sure that your routes are keeping you full, right? You don't want to take a shipment from, you know, Florida to Texas and then come back empty, deadhead back, right? You've got to make sure that job is really, really profitable to be able to do that. And you really want a shipment to be able to come back. So what we would do is we would book a lot of jobs. Now mind you, at this point, I had six locations, one or two of which I opened because of long distance, needing to get jobs back from that area. So, you know, this wasn't. We didn't just start like with one office and then get into long distance. We had four or five were open already, and then I had six throughout the time that I was doing the long distance. So we had all the demand coming from all those locations that we were servicing with a separate entity, neighbor's van lines that was handling all that. And I looked at it and it was just, man, it was, it was. I'm like, the locals are so easy. We go out, we do the job, the truck comes back, they bring us the money, they're done, right? So we'll talk about a lot of the logistical stuff with the long distance. But so I decided, I was like, you know, we've got the call center, we have the ability to book these jobs, but servicing them and even Dealing with the people that we're giving jobs to. So we would kind of book as much as we could, cherry pick the ones we wanted to haul and then contract out. We'll talk about what I mean by contract out to other carriers to haul force. I made the decision that, you know what, why don't we just become a broker and this way we don't have to worry about hauling the shipments. I don't have to worry about these trucks all over the country, you know, drivers calling in with this problem, that problem. And, you know, kind of made that, made that switch. And my mind was like, all right, we're already giving jobs to carriers and now we don't have to haul the stuff ourselves. We don't have to worry about the drivers, which was. Which was taking up a lot of my time. You know, I had already set up the systems and the processes and had kind of a model business for local that was running without me. And long distance was just kind of pulling me in. And I didn't anticipate the challenges that would come with relinquishing that control to other companies. Meaning we would book the job. That's it. That was where it ended. We would give it to that company, Right. At first the thought was, hey, if the customer calls in and is like, where's my truck? You know, I have a question about the bill. We would say, no problem. Let me give you the information to the carrier who's hauling that for you and you call them. Well, what we didn't anticipate was that the carriers had zero customer service. Not all of them. Not all of them, but a lot of them were, you know, hardworking, you know, men and women that had a truck or two trucks or three trucks and were maybe even running one of those trucks themselves, right? So their number would go directly to them in the truck. And there was no real. They had no real customer service. So all of a sudden I went from having, you know, six locations, and out of those six locations, we had two people that did customer service for all of them to now needing a 10 person customer service wing. We actually had to build out a whole wing in the office, hire a customer service manager, because we needed to make sure that those customers were being taken care of. Right? Like, we booked the job, our name was on the job, and so we needed to make sure that they were getting taken care of. And long story short, that was the. I mean, to. I don't know if we have any brokers here or anyone that deals with brokers, but when you are a broker. The biggest challenge of that is you are policing carriers and trying to enforce not only your rules, but also laws with those carriers that want to kind of do their own thing. And that shift from long distance from saying I wasn't going to do it to like, yeah, we'll just start booking for this van line to, oh, we have all this work, Let me get the trucks to, oh, the trucks. So much work. Let me just broker the jobs. Caused tremendous headache problems, legal issues, and it was, you know, just a huge learning experience that I want to share because everybody thinks that it's so easy to make that transition. And my goal here today is not to talk you out of long distance. It's to make sure you know what you're getting into. I mean, if we were going to go on a hike together and we got to the bottom of the hike and I had been there before and I'm like, look, there's three trails here. Let me lay out what to expect in each one of these. This one here is a nice steady climb. You know, it's going to be similar to what you've done before. This one's going to be a little bit harder and this one's straight up incline. And if you fall, you're going to fall to your death. You know, that's not me talking you out of it. That's me giving you my insight, having been there before. Okay? So just know that like I've got zero. And I'm not saying that long distance is the fall to your death. I'm saying I want to lay it out for you straight up and real and let you make the decision on what's right for you moving forward. Because I did. Many people have. And you can make millions and millions and millions of dollars in this business without ever touching a long distance shipment. There's other people that, that's their thing, right? Like they came up in the business and learned the business through a long distance company and were kind of in. Maybe they were a driver on the road and like that's what they know. They know that more than local. A lot of people like that too. I'm sure we've got some of you here as well. And so today my goal is to. This is long distance moving 101. This is like, hey, let's lay it out, let's start the conversation and let's find out if this is right for you or not. Because I think when we've got options and we've got things kind of hanging over our head, and when we've got opportunities, because I'm pretty sure every one of you probably has customers calling and wanting to move out of state whether you do long distance or not. That temptation is real. You know, when you price out a job, you're like, wow, that's a lot of money for a move. The temptation is real. And you can make a lot of money in long distance, but it needs to be done strategically. It needs to be done in a different way than you do locals. And so let's jump into it. Let's talk about the different ways that you could actually earn revenue off of long distance moving. So the first and simplest way to start generating some revenue off of long distance requests, people that are reaching out to you that want to move, is to establish a referral partner or multiple referral partners. And what this means is you're going to refer jobs to another company, okay? Someone calls you, someone requests a quote from your company, and you are going to refer them to another company. You're not going to quote the job, you're not going to give an estimate on the job, okay? You're just going to refer them to somebody else either. You're going to have a setup where you can enter the information directly in like a little, you know, imagine like you went on their website and entered in the request for the quote. But like you have kind of a private portal where you do that and it goes to them. So you could track it. You could track what you give to them. You could do a warm transfer. Oh, you want to move long distance? No problem. We have this great company that we work with in town. We only do local moves and that's what we specialize in. But we like to refer all of our customers to a company we work really well with that they specialize in long distance. So if you want to hold on a moment, I'll go ahead and I'll transfer you and I'll get you over to one of their representatives that could help you. And you could do what's called a warm transfer, which is you put them on hold. You get somebody on the phone over at that company, at your referral partner. So a long distance company, most likely in your town, and you say, hey, I got somebody on the phone. I want to move from here to there. Okay, great. Mrs. Customer, I got John on the phone. I'm going to go ahead and just transfer you now. If you guys have any questions, I'm here to help. Thanks. John, you there? Yep. Okay, I'll see you guys later. You transfer the call. Right. So now you're able to track it. And with a referral partner, you know, you'll get a percentage just for referring the job. And that's. That percentage is typically between 5 and 10%. Okay, 5 and 10%. So for them it's like, you know, if you look at it like they had to do marketing to go get a job. Right. They're willing to spend that percentage marketing to get a job. And you're giving them this warm, hot lead for those same amounts. Right. And that those numbers would typically be negotiated. Right. So you maybe end up at 7% or whatever it might be. And this works also for those of you that are doing. I see. I know a lot of you do long distance. And I've set this up with several private clients that do long distance, where they went out and found the referral partners, they found the people who didn't want to do long distance and wanted to refer them business. And all of a sudden, without having the market, without having to go buy long distance leads, they've got companies in their city or a lot of times in their state that's not even in their city, but just in their route that are referring jobs to them. And they're paying again between that 5 and 10% for those jobs, for jobs that are completed when they're done. Right. And so the key here is as a referral partner, because there's a lot of laws with interstate moving and if you're in the U.S. the laws are the same for everybody. It doesn't matter what state you're in. The laws for interstate moving, cross state lines are the same. And so if you give somebody an estimate, you actually have to have license to be able to do that. So you can't estimate the job and then send the estimate over to somebody. That's something different. This is just a referral partner. You're just sending a lead over and you're getting a percentage of that job. You could also get a per lead amount. You know, they could pay you $50 to $100 per lead whether they book it or not. Right. I think the percentage is a better way to go. You just want to make sure you're tracking that. Okay. So that's your referral partner. Then again, no truck needed, no license needed, but you just cannot give an estimate and you cannot let that customer believe that your company is involved in any way. We do not do local moves. We are referring you to somebody. Let me get you on the phone with them. And you disconnect from the transaction, you're not involved in the transaction. You just made an introduction, that's it. The next one is a broker. Okay? With a broker you need to have a license, a household goods broker license to do this. Okay? And what this means is if you are a broker, you now are going to give the customer the estimate and then give the job to another company. To perform the job, you're going to need to book that job on the tariff of the company that you are booking for. So a tariff is again, I'm doing this so like everybody gets it, right? Like this is full on. Some of you may know what this is. A tariff is basically a document that is listing your prices, how you charge, your terms and conditions that needs to be filed with the FMCSA and needs to be available for customers to see if they choose to ask for it. Probably never will. Okay? But as a broker, you're booking the job on the tariff of the company you're giving it to. They're going to go perform the job. And typically as a broker, you would take a percentage of the job up front, right? 25 to 35% of the job you would take up front as a deposit and then the carrier would collect the rest on the other end. Okay? So there's some real challenges to becoming a broker, which we'll talk about when we get to the potential problems in general with long distance. So that's one way to book jobs and give them to somebody else. The problem with this by itself is that typically brokers will book the job and there's some good brokers out there, but there's a lot that get into it thinking, I just got to book the job, I'm going to give it to somebody, I don't really care what happens after that. That's where major problems happen. That's where people end up in jail. That's where there are real issues. If you are going to become a broker, you have to take the stance of I'm going to become a broker, but I am going to understand that even though the law might say my responsibility stops at booking, giving the estimate, I'm taking the responsibility to make sure every customer is handled with utmost care, as if it was, you know, my truck and my driver's doing it. Major problem though, right? Because now you're trying to control and police other business owners, right? Who's got a hard enough time trying to control and police your own employees? Now you're trying to tell another business owner what they can and can't do. Alright, we'll talk more about those problems there. But again, you don't need trucks. You also can't advertise that you have trucks. So if you're a broker and you've got trucks on your website, you can't do that. You got to be explicit to the customer and that you are a broker. Here's who we're giving your job to. Here's a list of the potential customer companies that we may give your job to. And we are a broker. We will not be handling your move. We're just facilitating, hooking you up with somebody else, right? Then you've got traditional. You're a carrier, okay? You're a carrier. So as a carrier, you could be an independent carrier. Just meaning like, hey, it's your company and you got your, you know, you got your authority, you know, you got your MC number, you went to the fmcsa, you got your authority to be able to haul household goods. And a van line agent just means that you're an agent for one of the van lines. So you know, Mayflower, United Allied, North American, Wheaton Beacons, you know, some smaller ones out there as well. But you are an agent for them. Either way, you are a carrier. And what a carrier means is a carrier means that you are going to actually move their possessions, okay? You're licensed to do so. So you could give an estimate. And now you could say, look at our trucks, we're a moving company, we're going to be there, we're going to move you, okay? And you could send your truck to go get them. Or you could actually, you could still, let's just use the word, contract the job out to somebody else. But in this case, you would be doing it in the form of what's called an interline agreement. By the way, you guys, you have this recording, okay? So if you're like, you know, if any, don't worry, you can watch this again. If you want to take all this in, you can still. So if I'm a carrier, whether I'm independent or a van line agent, I can say, you know what, this job, I just, I don't have a truck for it. I need to get somebody else to do it. Well, what you do is you have another company, right? So if I've got my company and I've got another, you know, someone else's company here, I would have an interline agreement with them, okay? It's a document that needs to be signed that says we have an agreement that says I can give you my jobs. Alright? And if and if they're going to give you jobs, you'd actually have two interline agreements that go both ways. Okay, I'm going to give you jobs, you're going to give me jobs. Again, would need two interline agreements if it's going both ways. Otherwise, if you're just giving them jobs, it would just be a one way interline agreement. And what that means is similar to a broker, I could book the job and give it to them. However, when I give them the job, I book it on my estimate, I give it to the other company, they go out, doesn't matter, their truck could say something totally different, but they go out with my paperwork and act on behalf of my company. Meaning I take full responsibility for that shipment, full responsibility for everything that happens. Because they're doing it on my contract, they're acting as an agent for me. Whereas a broker gives the job out and the broker is just booking the job for that person. The person who receives the job takes full responsibility for it. So you still have the ability as a carrier to, you know, you could be a carrier and book a ton of jobs that you give most of them out to other companies, but you're taking on the responsibility for everything that happens. Okay, I like this way of doing it. Looking back at what I know because you need to kind of take the responsibility anyways. The law says as a broker, really, after you've given your estimate and given a good faith to give a correct estimate, your responsibility is kind of done there, right? If you did everything in a lawful manner and didn't deceive anybody, you're done. But you're really not. Because if things don't go right on that job, the problem's coming back to you no matter what. Okay. So for me, I like, I would recommend, you know, obviously starting as, just as a referral partner. But if you're going to like get into, you know, taking control of shipments, becoming a carrier, having the ability to haul your own shipments, but then also still have the ability to give shipments to somebody else. And you're just going to make sure that they're doing a good job. Because again, it doesn't matter what your label is, broker or carrier, if someone calls you, the job goes bad, who do you think they're going to call? It's coming back to you. So those are the different ways of being able to generate revenue in long distance. Okay. And so like with the referral partners, again, that could be a moving company, that could be, you know, freight, you know, you could refer it to freight companies as well. To where? Like, hey, you know what we do? We refer it to this freight company, right? Or this container company that moves it on containers. But we send our local crews out there to do the job. So let me give you a estimate for our local crews to come out and load these containers. But then we're going to just have you talk to this other company who will handle the transport of those goods and you could find somebody to unload them on the other end. So the referral partner could be that as well. All right, so that's the different ways of doing it. Let's talk about the potential problems that you'll run into. All right? And then look, problems are problems. You've got potential problems in local too, right? I mean, it's not, you know. No, no part of the business. Local storage, packing, commercial storage. I said that. You know, junk removal, cleaning, whatever, whatever you've got going on. Everything's got potential problems. Let me show you what the potential problems are for long distance. Okay? Number one is, you've got, hang on. Is logistical planning. Okay? Logistical planning with local moves, it's, it's like, okay, we've got four jobs or we've got 40 jobs on Saturday. Get enough people in, get enough trucks, send them out, collect your money. At the end of the day, trucks come back. With long distance, you've got trucks leaving town, coming back to town. And there's a lot that happens that makes it very challenging, not impossible. People do this very, very well, but still run into, you know, challenges along the way to give precise dates, you know, for example, most long distance jobs, you're going to need to be able to give a delivery spread to the customer, you know, and the delivery spread, depending on the weight of the shipment, depending on the distance, depending on your availability, might be like, hey, you know, here's a three day delivery spread. Or you might have to give them a 14 day delivery spread because you're just like, I don't know when we're going to be able to get it there. So when you sell the job, you've got to be able to tell them what that delivery spread is so they can anticipate what, when it's going to come. But now you run into issues, right? If you've got a tractor trailer, let's just say you don't need a tractor trailer to do long distance. But let's just say, and you were planning to have three or four different shipments on that trailer and you know, two of those shipments went overweight, they were more weight or cubes than had been anticipated. And so now you run into like, oh, wow, we can't fit this next shipment that we're supposed to pick up. How do we go get that? Do we send the local crew to go get it? Do we have to readjust and interline that out to somebody else who could pick it up for us? You know, if we send a local crew, they have to bring it back to our warehouse. Now we have to unload it, then we have to load it again back on the truck. Right. You run into, you know, maybe you need a shuttle. You can't get the big truck into the neighborhood. So you gotta rent a truck, get a shuttle, smaller penske or whatever it might be to go do a couple of loads to bring it back to the trailer. You know, running late, you know, hours of service, like how long the driver could be on the road. Right. Without having to stop. So logistical planning becomes a whole different animal than send the truck out, collect your money, and come back. Okay, so that's one, one component of it. This one. It's a big deal. Incorrectly estimating the moves. Okay, Incorrectly estimating the moves. So, you know, you now are in a position where the way that you estimate the moves is a big deal. Because not only. Let me give you an idea. If you are quoting it based on weight, typically in long distance, you're either gonna, you're gonna book based on weight or based on cubic feet. Now, you can book other ways. You can book hourly if you want, as long as that's what your tariff says. Okay. As long as that's what your tariff says and that's how you filed it, that's okay. But typically it's either weight or cubic feet, both of those. You come up with that amount by doing an inventory of the job. So it all starts by getting an inventory, getting an accurate inventory of the job, whether you're in person, whether you're over the phone. There are also some restrictions for getting giving estimates over the phone for long distance. But whether you're in person or over the phone, you're getting an inventory. Meaning, you know, there's a desk, there's a chair, there's a credenza, there's a plant. Right. There's whatever's in each room of the house, there's a rug. All of that needs to go in the inventory, similar to local. Right. But you're giving them a price based on this. And your price needs to either be a binding estimate or a non binding estimate. FMCSA does not recognize. And let me just give a disclosure. I'm not giving anybody legal advice here. I'm not a lawyer. Right. I'm not an agent of the fmcsa. I'm giving you my experience and my guidance. And I think everybody should study the laws, but I want to make you aware of what they are. Okay? You either have to give a binding or a non binding estimate. So what that means is you get the inventory based on that inventory. You send the customer an estimate. Like everything has to be documented. You have to give it. There has to be an estimate. Right. And if it's binding, that means based off this inventory and these services that we discussed, this is your price, no more, no less. This is your price. Non binding means, this is typically, this would be based on weight. Non binding means that it's a price, but it's non binding. We're going to go get a weight at the weigh station, meaning we're going to go weigh the truck before without your shipment on it. Then we're going to weigh it again with your shipment on it. And then we're going to subtract the difference between the heavyweight and the empty weight to get what your actual weight is. Okay. And we're going to charge you based on that. But there's also a law that says you can't charge more than 110% of the estimate. So if you were to give an estimate for $1,000. Right. I was using number. You can't charge more than $1,100 for that estimate, even if the weight says it should be 1500. Right. These are low numbers. Now you also have the ability. So even with binding, binding is kind of a myth, right? And this is where a lot of times, you know, people that are not doing the right thing by the customers, people that are out to just get the job by any means and then do whatever. Like the typical scams that you hear about would be someone saying, here's a binding estimate customer, this isn't going to cost anymore. But then they show up and this could happen with a broker, carrier relationship, or this could happen as a carrier just booking it all the way through. They show up and they're like, you know what? This is more than we thought it was going to be. We need to do a revision of the job, which is legal to do, right? So you're able to do a revision of the job. As long as you do it. You need a new document, revised estimate form, as long as you do it before the job starts and explain why you're you know, what, the chart, why, okay, present it to the customer so that they have a choice. They don't. They kind of don't because you're there. But like, you can't load their stuff up. Go get a weight and go, hey, it's more. You got to pay us more. Right? But if you do a revision before you start the job, you could charge them more. Okay? Which is good because it protects you as a carrier from someone that says, I'm not taking this, I'm not, you know, if you go do an on site, they're like, I'm not taking this, I'm not taking that. We're going to be selling this. But you go there and actually have all this stuff and you're looking at it, you're like, this is much more than we have in the inventory. This is why you need your inventories to list by room, okay? And so you're able to do that revision. But, you know, there are people out there that, people, you know, whenever you hear these stories, like they're purposely giving a low ball estimate, then going out and revising that estimate to a higher price and putting the customer in a position where they have to pay it. It's a crime, right? People go to jail for this. And there are people who end up in situations and end up in problems. I could assure you that had zero intention on ever taking advantage of anybody, but had other companies that they dealt with that they weren't able to completely control that may have done something like this. Okay? So that meant incorrectly estimating the job could be a big problem for you, which really, I kind of covered this one as well, which is the carrier revising the estimate. You know, whether you're doing it yourself, you know, a lot of times, look, I know you, most of you, I've read your, your, your assessments, you know, your, your, you want to serve your customers, you want to do a great job, you want to be impactful in your community. But sometimes you get so big and you've got people working for you that are just, you know, sometimes operation could just get sloppy. You've got no room to get sloppy in long distance. You know, you can't. All of a sudden the driver goes out there, maybe the driver's getting a percentage of the job. He's like, you know what? This is more than I thought it was going to be. I'm going to revise the estimate, right? And you don't really even know this type of stuff is going on. And you could end up, you know, in a real problem. And again, I just want to reiterate that a revision of the job is not in itself a problem. It's there to protect you, to make sure that if there was anything that was not discussed, that you could revise it for, you know, more or even for less. But it's your job to make sure that the original estimate is correct, the original estimate is as close to accurate as possible, and avoid as many revisions as possible. If you're going out and every job you're doing has a revision, that's a problem, right? If you start getting complaints and DOT comes in and looks and says you've got every job you do, you have a revision, like, is this part of your business process? You're gonna have a problem, right? If you're using it occasionally because it's, you know, you need to correct the estimate, it's fine. Okay. These are potential problems you're estimating. Needs to be on point. Another problem with long distance is driver shortage. You know, if you're doing local and you think there's a shortage for drivers in local, long distance is a whole nother ball game. You know, typically, you're going to have class B, class A drivers, you know, you know, we'll talk about. We'll talk about, like, being able to send a truck across state lines and, you know, sure, you could, you know, send your local crews in your local. In your local truck, right? You could send your local crews in a Penske truck. You know, people will do that. It's not my recommendation to not be a licensed interstate mover and send somebody across state lines in a Penske truck and tell them to hide the bill of lading. People do it, you know, and to say, oh, we're just moving ourselves, not my recommendation. It's not worth it. But there is a real driver shortage for interstate drivers. So with knowing this, it's also could be an advantage, right? I think that when there is a problem in an industry, there's a labor shortage in moving. Most people, all of a sudden, it infects their mind, and they're like, oh, there's a labor shortage. There's nothing I could do, except for some of you who go, you know what? I don't care what there is. I'm just going to work harder and smarter to get the labor that I need, and we'll have the crews and we'll be able to service the jobs. It's the same thing for long distance for years. This has been a problem for years and years and years. It's been a problem driver shortage in moving because typically the moving driver for long distance, you know, I'm talking more so like tractor trailer drivers. It's a different thing than just driving for, you know, a local, you know, Amazon or somebody, or, you know, they're just doing dock to dock stuff. They've got to actually get out and move. So there's been this driver shortage. It's been an issue. But for the people who say, you know what, doesn't matter. We're gonna, we're gonna tighten up our recruiting efforts. We're gonna make sure we treat them right, we're gonna make sure that we take care of them. They're the ones that can say, I'm gonna look past this problem and let everybody else think that it's a big issue and roadblock. But we're gonna overcome that challenge, you know, like with our drivers. We used to have a concierge in the office. Anything they needed, they could call the concierge and, you know, which did. She did something else in the office too, Right. It wasn't. That wasn't her only job. But they're out on the road, they need money transferred somewhere. We got it. They need flowers sent to their wife because it's their anniversary and we have them out on the road, we'll take care of it. Right? They need to know anything they needed, we would take care of it. Full on concierge, right? So now if you're, if you're really looking to scale and grow your interstate operation, I know we've got people here with, I'm seeing with, with big interstate operations. What can you do for your driver to make it to where they want to work for you? Right? And a lot of that is just having smooth processes, having good people that they work with and then doing those little extras to take care of them, making their job as easy as you possibly can. But there is a driver shortage. That's a potential problem. Another one is not getting paid, right? So whether you're doing a shipment, you know, speaking to somebody recently who was like, we did this big long distance job, it cost us all this money. We had to rent the trucks, we had to put out the money for the fuel, we had to pay for hotels, and then customer wouldn't pay, right? So now you're in a position of, do I hold it because they haven't paid me, which puts you in a really bad spot if they make a complaint because now it looks like a hostage situation, or do I unload this and, you know, Kind of take my loss. That's one way of not getting paid. Another way is if you're dealing with someone else, another carrier, or you're an agent for a van line. You know, there's many reasons that you might not get your money right away. They might not like the way that you submitted your paperwork, right? Or there might be an outstanding claim or something like that that could hold up your money. So you're not getting paid right away. And you might have had a lot that you needed to lay out. You might have already needed to pay all your expenses, the truck, the fuel, hotels, the driver, helpers, whatever it might be, and then not end up getting paid. Whereas the local send truck out, you get paid. And the last. Listen, there's a bunch of little potential problems, but I think they all kind of fall under these umbrellas. Last one is losing control when you work with others. You know, I explained the problem of what happened as a broker. Well, first I explained the problem, what happened when we were an agent for a van line and had so much, so many jobs that we booked that they couldn't handle it. We didn't have that control, right? We couldn't control their drivers and which jobs they were going on. Then as a broker, you know, you give somebody a job and they want to do a revision on that estimate. I can't. You've got no control over them. And speaking of van lines, and I think van line, becoming an agent for a van line can be good. It could also be bad for some people. It's about fit. It's about the right fit with the right van line, with the right agent, that's it. So there's no good or there's no bad. But you do lose some control if you are, you know, you could either be independent, meaning, I've got my own authority. I do what I want. I take shipments wherever I want. Or I could be an agent for a van line, which means I kind of put things in their system. They support me, they help me. They could give me some backhauls as well. But if you want to open another office, you're kind of at their mercy of do they need an agent in that city or not? You could still open a local office if you want. But if you want to do long distance, and they're like, no, we already have an agent in that city. We're good. You're not able to move the way you want to move. You're not able to expand the way you want to expand. You might not be able to Letter your trucks the way that you want to letter your trucks. You might have to letter your trucks with their branding. Right? So you do lose some control when working with others. Same thing if somebody's giving you moves. Right? The inner line. The inner line agreement. Right. Works the other way. So you might be giving somebody jobs, but now somebody's giving you jobs. You don't have control over the way that they book that estimate. You don't have control over what they said to that customer. If you're receiving jobs from a broker, you don't have control over what was promised to that customer. Right? So again, these are some of the issues, right? You got to be. You got to go into. You know, we tend to run into situations like, yeah, it's all great. And you know me, I'm optimistic. I'm always looking for the positive. But we've got to be aware of the potential problems, and we've got to look to mitigate those problems. And we got to look to say, you know, for me, everybody's different. Everybody's different. I will not sit here and say, you guys should all go do long distance or that you should all not do long distance. You know, my private clients know, like, a lot of it depends on everything you've got going on. Your desires, your ability and bandwidth and capacity to handle stress and uncertainty. So I'm laying it out for you so that you're well informed, that you've got the information that I could share some insight of having been there and having worked with other companies who've got major, you know, interstate operations, having worked with the major van lines, not just their agents, but with the van lines themselves and speaking for them and training their agents. I want to make sure that you've got the information that you need. All right. We can answer some questions as well. So now, now that you've got all that, let's talk about how do you get started if you want to do long distance? Okay. How do you get started if you want to do long distance? Okay, here's my recommendation. If you're like, I don't do long distance and I want to start. Here's the order of how I would start and scale. Refer the jobs to a referral partner. Okay? That's step one. Just start doing that. Find somebody who's got a great reputation in your town, call them and start referring moves to them. Okay? You don't book them. You just either send them a phone call. You know, you send them an email with the information, you forward them a lead. You Submit some information on their site and you track it, okay? You find somebody. And if you're someone who does interstate, you've got the trucks, you've got the drivers. Find yourself referral partners. This right here, I'm telling you, I spent the last 18 months working with a few private clients doing this. And it's been tremendous. Millions of dollars worth of tremendous to their business. To where it's not like, oh, let's get the leads, let's try to book, let's get. No, they've got a company that's getting calls that doesn't do long distance and they're giving them the jobs. It's a win win for everybody. Next start doing that. But at the same time, identify and track the demand, right? Keep a list or identify it in your CRM, right? If you're in smart moving, start tagging them. Start knowing what jobs you're giving or what long distance requests you have so that you could identify how much, how much demand you have and where it's to, right? So like for me, I didn't start doing long distance, so I had major demand. Like it was, it was. I should have started off slower, but. But you'll know the demand. You'll be like, oh, okay, we're getting two jobs a month. We're getting, you know, we have the potential to get two jobs, 20 jobs, 200 jobs. These are the routes. This is where people are moving to. You know, a lot of times the routes are pretty consistent. Like you might have, you'll always have people that are moving all over, but people tend to move from one place to a few other places, right? So track that so that, you know, because that'll be where you could say, oh, I think it's time that we start. I think it's time that we start hauling this stuff ourselves or booking it at least, and, you know, finding somebody to haul it. At that point, you would get your authority, okay? In the U.S. you would, you would go to the FMCSA, you know, USDOT. You would get your authority, your dot number, your MC number. And this is, you know, even if you want to be a, a broker, you still have to get authority to do that, okay? But you'd get your carrier authority, fmcsa. That's why you could do it legally because there's, I forget what the number is. Major fines for hauling interstate shipments without a license. Somebody knows the number, throw it in the chat. But major fines then from there, study the interstate moving laws. Study them, know them, know when can I give a Binding estimate. When can I give a non binding estimate? If I give those types of estimates, how do I, what do I have to do? Do I have to go get a weight? Can I revise that estimate? What happens if I'm late? What's this tariff thing? Where do I have to keep it filed? How do I have to let people know about it, all of that? So you could find a lot of this on FMCSA's site or. I would highly recommend that everyone interested in interstate moving read. Michael Garcia, who's an attorney in the moving industry, wrote a book. This is, you know, a tremendous resource for all moving law that will break it down for you. A lot of you have seen Michael speak at our live events, but study the law, know the law. You know, it's, it's not, it's not something to take lightly. Every person who's doing interstate moving in the US is dealing with the federal government. So it's different than dealing with your local, you know, some states, some states might even be tougher than dealing with the dot. But know that law. Study that law. Make sure your people know the law. Your processes around long distance need to be based and determined on the law, period. Okay, then once you've done that, start. If you're going to start hauling or even just booking and giving it out to somebody, start with a regional route. Okay. Don't just, oh, you're moving long distance. Sure, let's go. You know, we're in, we're in Florida. They're moving to, you know, San Francisco. Sure. Start with a regional route. Get used to it. You know, 300 to 700, no more than a thousand miles. You know, keep it close, keep it to where your trucks could go out, they could come back. You know, you're not dealing with a lot of logistical issues because if you're not make. If these jobs, like your jobs need to be profitable and there needs to be, you know, if you're not going to get a backhaul, that job needs to be profitable, right? It should be profitable either way. But a lot of times people are depending on getting a shipment one way and a shipment another way. Like that's the appeal of being in a van line is that they can help you get those shipments. Right, both ways. But if you are, if you're depending on a backhaul and you don't get a backhaul, that's a problem. If you are trying to compete with your local trucks or a Penske truck for a shipment that's 2,000 miles away, with no backhaul and you're just pricing it out. A lot of people do this. So if you're there and you're just like pricing stuff out, like, what's this gonna cost me to do? How many days? Hotels, all right, this, There's a lot of people that do that. So don't feel like you're alone in doing that. But what happens is you out price yourself, right? You end up out pricing yourself because you can't compete 2,000 miles on a big shipment when that's just going to take up a portion on somebody else's trailer that's also going to have something coming back. And you're going out there with the full truck rental. Maybe you're flying the driver back and you're dead heading back. You know, you've got to charge a lot more. So you're out pricing yourself. So start with a regional route, get used to it. You know, kind of pick some nearby Cities, you know, 300, 700 miles, under a thousand, for sure. And then from there, cultivate your interline agreements. In the moving CEO, Facebook group, at our live events, you've got the ability to meet interline partners or even referral partners. Somebody's in your same city. You do long distance. I don't do long distance. Hey, why don't I send you my jobs? Give me a cut. Okay, great. You know, but the interline agreements is you want to have, you know, you want the ability to give your jobs to somebody else again, you keep responsibility. They do it on your pay. Your bill of lading, it was on your estimate. Or you're heading out of state, you need a shipment coming back. If you've established some relationships with other companies, like, hey, we do a really good job, check us out. We've got good ratings, we go to your area a lot. We'd love to haul some shipments back for you, you know, heading back out east. Let's have a conversation, get to know each other, get an interline. And now you can get shipments from them as well, right? Like, you know, ultimate, biggest long distance companies, the van lines and some of the major independent van lines as well, right. That aren't part of the traditional van line system. That did have a network like I'm talking about, right? That's, that was the original. That's the appeal of being a van line agent is that there's someone in every city that could help you get some jobs. But we also live in a time where you could, you know, you could communicate and you're in this Group and you know, people all over the place to where you could kind of cultivate those relationships. Oh, they a good company, they do a good job. Let me check them out, let me vet them. Make sure you're vetting these companies really well and start to get back calls from them. Have them handle yours as well and you'll build that up from there. This is the step by step, by the way. This is the step by step of how to get started. Give me 10 steps. If you're missing some of it, watch the replay. Alright, next one is build your interstate team. Build your interstate team. At this point in the process, you have started to, you know, scale up a little bit. It's more than just let me price out a job, tell the driver to call me when he, when he needs me type of thing. An interstate team really looks like a move coordinator. Sometimes people will call their estimator a move coordinator. When I say move coordinator, I'm talking about someone who will interact with that customer along the way in their journey, let them know where their trucks, when their truck's going to be there, what to anticipate their point of contact after the move is booked. All right. You also have a dispatcher slash trip planner. In bigger companies this could be two positions or multiple positions. But at first the dispatcher and trip planner, basically the dispatcher is the one that's dealing with the crews, talking with the crews, giving them the jobs, receiving the information, helping collect payment, all of that. It's very similar to local, but the trip planner is actually planning the trips. You know, when we talked about logistical issues, you know, to be able to do trip planning and route your truck, it's like, it's fun. It's, you know, if you've got a lot of jobs, you're like, okay, how do I, I could pick up this job in Atlanta, then we could head over to Charleston. Okay, he's gonna have to wait two days, but if he doesn't, okay, we can drop that shipment off, come back like that, somebody who's sitting, routing these shipments to be able to make as much money as possible. Ooh, we need £4,000. Let me reach, let me send a message to all my interline carriers, all my, you know, agents and partners, and see if anybody's got anything in that vicinity to fill. Oh, wow, perfect. We filled that spot on the truck, right? That's a trip planner. You know, a lot of you are in long distance. You're using the trip planning feature right in smart moving to be able to go ahead and plan that out and map that out. That's a big deal. And then customer service right now, when you start, maybe your move coordinator, your dispatcher, trip planner and customer service is all one person, right? But as you scale, they start to become their own people, right? Their own people. Then from there, I know we're getting into a lot today, but it's like I want to, I want to give you, I want to give it all to you, to have you. You know, I know people are thinking, do I open another office? Do I get in the long distance? Do I do this, do I do that? I want to make sure you've got what you need. The next one is expand your route to cover demand. So, you know, you started with the regional, you know, and maybe you stick with that. But again, we're talking about, you want to scale it, you now could start expanding the coverage and maybe you're still regional, but you have a lot of coast to coast. You know, you got a lot of California to Florida type stuff. You could expand to meet the demand, right? You're doing it because you're tracking all the demand, right? That was at the very beginning. You're identifying and you're tracking the demand for where the people that call you want to move. So you're not just like, oh, we're going to start going coast to coast. It's like, no, you've got data and you've got information that tells you this is kind of where we're at. It looks like we could actually, you know, fill some, you know, fill some trucks and make some money doing this. So you'd expand then from there, cherry pick the self hauls and interline the rest. Meaning if you feel confident at this point that you've got a good route, you know, you've got good drivers, you've got good interline agreements with solid carriers that you can count on to execute on that job just as well as if you were doing it yourself. Now you could really ramp up your bookings and book more. You book the jobs. Think about it like this. And when we first started, and then it became, you know, digital when we first started, it went up, everything went up on a whiteboard, right? We had it all mapped out, name of the customer, the date, where it's from, where it's to the weight, all that, right? And then from there, the trip planner is looking at it going, well, we'll put this one with this one, this one with this one, this one, okay, that's a trip for that driver. This one with this one, this one with this one. That's a trip. I like that you've already booked these jobs, you already have them. So you cherry pick the ones that are good for your trucks, and then the ones that are left, you reach out to your interline partners. And it's not that they're bad jobs, because hopefully you're not booking any bad jobs, hopefully you're not booking low profit margin jobs. It's just that they don't line up with your. You know, you can't say, I want this many jobs going from here to there, and I want them all to be this weight and they're going to fit perfectly in my truck. It's like you're taking what you have and you're trying to figure out how to get it where they want it to go so that it's profitable for you. There's not downtime, that the customer is not waiting beyond their delivery spread. You know, ideally that they're there at the front end of their delivery spread so that they're happy about it, right? And so from there, you're in a position of like, that's where you're really rocking and rolling with long distance. You know, you've got a good amount of trucks. Again, you could be independent, you could be a van line agent. Either way, got a good amount of trucks, you're servicing some jobs, you're cherry picking. The really good ones are the ones you feel comfortable handling, and then you've got somebody to handle the rest. And then after that, proceed with caution. That's all. Proceed with caution. You know, this could get out of control really quickly. You know, you've got trucks that are across, you know, far away. You know, there's a lot that could happen I'm not going to get. We went into it, we got into it, right? So it's like, if you want to do it and after hearing everything that we talked about today, and I gave you kind of the steps of where to go, then do it. You know, if you're like, Louis, I was just on another call with another group before this, and we're talking about business optimization. And it's like, we all want to do that next thing. We all want to do that new thing, but we really need to focus in on optimizing the business that we have. So if you're like, look, I've optimized what I have. I know what I want to do. I want to scale. I don't really want to open more offices. I get a lot of demand for long distance, then listen, go for it, right? There's a, it's a lot, you know, there's a lot of extra money to be made in long distance. Typically, a company, let's say if a company's doing, you know, two and a half million in local moves, they could probably do another million, million and a half in long distance moves. You know, on top of that, you know, the ratio typically ends up, if you are a local, if you're handling all local moves, typically your local moves will be more revenue. Unless you're just putting more focus onto the long distance. Hey, my friend, before you go, you've got to hurry and watch these next few videos over here. They will absolutely help you take your moving company to the next level. Go watch them now and I'll see you over there.
