Moving sucks📦

Estimated reading time: 1 minute & 56 seconds

We all hate moving. Packing up all your crap and transporting it across town or even worse, cross country. Ugh, no one likes it.

Plastic boxes are a new trend in the moving industry. The advantages are clear:

• Standardized sizes

• More durable than cardboard

• No tape

• No box cutters or kitchen knives

• It doesn’t take half a tree

Nobody wants to buy 60 plastic boxes and keep them around for the next move though. That’s where your genius rental business comes in.

How to get started

Say you live in a town with a college nearby. At the end of the semester tons of people move in and out, so let’s start there.

• Buy some boxes. You could go the milk crate route and buy a pallet of 84 here. Or ULINE supplies these in groups of 3.

  • Buying multiple colors would be smart so that your renters can organize different rooms into different colors.

• You know here at the OG STR we are really into Facebook Marketplace, craigslist, and local classifieds for your marketing.

  • A well placed ad in buy/sell groups could get you your first clients.

• Since it’s the end of the semester, let’s make a design on Canva for a basic flier. 

  • You can print these for $1 a piece and leave them on cars, doors, windows,or bulletin boards on campus.

rentamovingboxes.com charges $189 for 80 boxes. Since you’re marketing to college students with smaller budgets and less stuff, I’d do a package of 25 boxes for $50. 

Once there’s traction then you can look into providing moving services, trucks, etc. Start in a narrow niche and build out from there.

Startup costs: $1500 ($1400 for boxes, $100 for fliers)

Seasonality: heavy

Sweat equity: low

Tweet of the week:

Nick Huber @sweatystartup

Small real estate deals are harder to do than large deals. More work, harder to operate. The big groups (who can pay more) avoid them and they’re cheaper from a cap rate standpoint. Do small deals. Combine 10 of them. Sell as a big deal. Make millions.

This tweet shows exactly our goal for this business plan, and can be applied to any of the businesses we’ve posted about here at the OG STR.

Big flashy exits are always glorified and seen as extremely sexy. But there are definitely riches in the niches, from axe throwing to portable hot tubs and even moving box rentals.

Start small, and take advantage of areas where no one else wants to put in the work.

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