At Heritage Moving and Storage, we provide local moves, long-distance moves, residential moves, and commercial moves with care and excellence. We pride ourselves not only on being a family-owned Roanoke moving company that serves southwest Virginia, but also on having a strong history of experience, affordability, and professionalism so that we can meet and exceed all your in-home estimate, packing, moving, and storage needs.
In the spring of 1979, I still had one semester left before finishing my teaching degree. My football scholarship money was running out, and I needed to make some money during the summer. I had spent a lot of time around the moving business, and I had caught on to its profitability. I decided to leave Cook Transfer Co. and start a moving company on my own for the summer. My plan was to buy a moving truck, work all summer, then sell it before I went back for my last semester of college in the fall.
Tim Cook, my friend who owned Tyson’s Transfer, needed to make room for a new truck in his fleet, so he sold me his old truck, “Big Blue.” Tim and I agreed on a price for “Big Blue” of $1500. I gave Tim my Olympic weight set, worth $500, as a down payment and agreed to pay him the rest as soon as I made money.
I chose two places in northern Virginia, McLean and Barcroft, and started McLean-Barcroft Transfer and Storage. I had my first move on Monday, June 16, 1979. I serviced the D.C. area, getting my own moves and subcontracting from a number of different companies in the D.C. area.
I paid Tim back for “Big Blue” in the first month of moving jobs. And in the three months of that summer, I earned double what I would have made in nine months working as a teacher. The path I was taking was toward a degree in education. I really had no intentions of staying in the moving business. But after that summer, I knew that I had to continue to build my moving company.
I got a lot of questions and some resistance from family and friends who questioned my knowledge of running a business and who didn’t want to see me give up my passion for teaching. But I knew that the moving business was the way I could make money, and I decided that I would find other ways to influence kids and do my part to make a positive impact on my community. I decided not to go back to my last semester of college, and I moved forward with my moving and storage company. It turned out to be a great decision.