U-Hold : Moving Firms Overwhelmed by Summer’s Surge
Deborah Baran discovered that it’s hard to leave California behind--especially when you can’t find a moving truck.
The company hired to cart the Baran family’s belongings from the Antelope Valley to Wyoming at the end of June ran out of transport trucks, a situation many moving companies are facing as more people are picking up and leaving Southern California than are moving in. So, instead of heading off to a new home, Baran was marooned with her in-laws in Goleta while the family furniture sat in a Palmdale warehouse.
“We are imposing on our in-laws,” said Baran, nearly a month after her move was to have taken place. “We don’t have the money to stay in a hotel. We are stuck here.”
Many of the thousands of Southern Californians who are moving out this summer are finding the exit from the state fraught with delays and frustrations worthy of a rush-hour SigAlert. Summer is traditionally the period when more than half of the nation’s household moves take place. But moving companies were not prepared for this summer’s surge in people heading for the exit door.
“There are not enough moving men. There are not enough trucks,” said Berneice Spencer, a clerk at Oxnard-based Lord Moving & Storage. Despite hiring additional employees, the firm has still had to turn away some customers.
Because of a slowdown in business in previous years, many moving companies cut back on equipment. Meanwhile, more stringent licensing qualifications have limited the pool of available drivers, industry executives say. Those developments left many movers ill prepared to handle the unexpected heavy demand this summer, as a spate of springtime home sales and military and corporate cutbacks sent residents packing.
“We just went bananas,” said Ken Hite, owner of Coast Valley Moving & Storage in San Clemente. The small moving company transported 20 households in June--twice its usual number. Workers have toiled past midnight to complete moving jobs for aerospace and engineering employees headed primarily for Northern California and the Midwest.
“People are just going where the jobs are,” Hite said.
Most of the Southern Californians moving this summer are not wandering beyond the state line. During June, about 70% of the Los Angeles area residents who rented U-Haul equipment were destined for other California cities, with San Diego topping the list.
The volume of outgoing Californians, however, has continued to grow and surpass the number of people moving into the state--a trend that began about two years ago. During the first half of 1992, Mayflower moved 7,003 households out of California but trucked in only 5,287.
The imbalance between incoming and outgoing Californians complicates the logistics of an out-of-state move by restricting the number of available trucks.
“You can’t get the trucks back into California so you can’t get the next shipment out,” Spencer said. “You have to pay to get them back empty.”
Jack Doody, vice president of Blue Chip Mayflower Moving & Storage in Hollywood, said: “We couldn’t get trucks to the West Coast fast enough.” The company recorded a 25% increase in household moves in June and “it looks as if July will be as busy as last month,” he said.
The shortage of trucks has also forced many moving companies to store household goods before shipping them to their final destination. That extra step delays the moving process and complicates what is already a stressful situation for customers.
After nearly a month in storage, Deborah Baran’s belongings were unloaded from a Bekins delivery truck last week at her new home in Glenrock, Wyo. Although her refrigerator was moldy and a cedar chest was cracked in the move, Baran was eager to start unpacking.
“It’s great out here,” said Baran, whose husband’s layoff from a Canoga Park aerospace firm forced them to seek out a new life elsewhere. “Once we settle in, everything will be OK.”
