Underground Moving

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The big companies in New York City charge $40 to $50 an hour for three men and a van, but pay those men only $3-4 an hour. Is it any wonder that movers have a reputation for being gruff, careless, inefficient and even dishonest? They know they're exploited.

With our low overhead, we charged about one-third as much as the biggies while paying our helpers $4 an hour . . . more than union wages and exactly what we charged customers for the men's labor. We still made a fine profit from the use of our bus and from our own labor . . . but not by the sweat of others.

Another advantage of operating underground is that you don't have to pay income tax on your earnings if you don't want to. Just insist on cash payments from all your customers and keep your records to yourself. What Infernal Revenue doesn't know won't hurt them . . . or you. (Unless you get caught! This time-honored cash-payment method of getting around income tax is, of course, frowned upon by the IRS so, of course, I can't recommend it . . . but, of course, it is done all the time.—MOTHER.)

GETTING STARTED:

Our moving business was launched with a handful of yellow 5X8 cards:

STUDENT MOVERS
Light Moving in a VW Bus
Low Rates—Local and Long Distance
364-5744

My husband plastered the cards over every university, bookstore, and supermarket bulletin board in our neighborhood. We were fortunate to live near a university, by nature an extremely mobile community (students are always moving into or getting kicked out of apartments).

The fact that we were students ourselves—and made it clear in our advertising—got us lots of business. Everyone wants to help students finance their education and we even received a number of contracts with the university. If you don't live in a student neighborhood, you still should advertise there anyway.

We also tacked cardboard signs up on the windows of our bus (which was patently illegal because we were advertising a commercial service and didn't have commercial license plates) and we'd hold our breath when cops stared at the signs. No hassles. One of the policemen even jotted down the number and called us up to do a job.

Eventually we had our advertising Xeroxed (at about $3 for 100 sheets, three ads to a sheet) and spent a day pasting the pages all over town: at transient hotels, YMCA'S, churches, apartment complexes, other colleges and on outside walls and lampposts. Some got ripped down, but at that price it was no problem to replenish them. We also kept a bunch of these notices in our van to hand out to passersby who stopped us while we were on a job.

Finally, we began to advertise in the classified sections of the college paper and of other local newspapers. Each type of advertising paid for itself many times over and the jobs started pouring in.

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