Just as attention-getting as Collins Brothers Moving Corp.”™s 100th anniversary this year is an anecdote offered by company owner and CEO Frank E. Webers regarding a trio of Collins workers.
“When I bought the business in 1972, it consisted of two vans and three employees,” Webers said. “Those three stayed on and are with us today: Tom Hoffa is warehouse manager in Brewster. Robert Beitler is a sales representative in Larchmont. And Gary Nichols is commercial supervisor out of Larchmont.” The company now employs 300 of whom Webers said: “They are caring, dedicated pros who understand customer service and what it takes to get the job done.”
The now-interstate private company also owns 300 pieces of moving equipment.
In the world of business relocation, that scale and dedication result in a point Webers calls critical: “That the employees go home Friday night in one location and Monday morning when they show up in a different place, everything will be in place and the company does not skip a beat.”
Webers and company President Therese (rhymes with Lisa) M. Ferretti recently assessed the state of their company and the state of shipping and storage in the era of the Great Recession.
“The entire transportation industry was hit hard; 2009 was a very challenging year for the industry,” Webers said. “Commercial diversification led to ”™09 being a growth year for us.
“We are starting to see the strengthening of business activity, but it has a way to go yet,” Webers said. “In all my years in business, I”™ve never seen anything remotely like this.”
The company owns and operates its own trucks and is an agent and corporate part-owner of Atlas Van Lines, where Webers sits on the board of directors.
Whether under the Collins or the Atlas banner, Collins”™ contracts amount to goods transported “over a million miles per year for sure,” Webers said. “We move people worldwide, pretty much to any country in the free world.”
Collins owns 300,000 square feet of storage space, including three facilities in Suffolk County, one in Dulles, Va., and one in Dallas. The Brewster facility with its 150,000 square feet of space is the company”™s largest storage spot, augmenting two more in the metropolitan region (Larchmont and New York City).
“When a person entrusts everything they own to a storage company or a business entrusts its corporate records and furnishings to a storage company, it should be the safest, most-secure facility available in the industry,” Collins said in a prepared statement celebrating its anniversary.
All spaces are climate controlled.
The company also stores records for any length of time. “We store records for several law firms and we store them for however long is needed,” Ferretti said. “Some records have to be stored forever. We really go along with whatever the customer wants.”
Collins could well be the consummate anti-“who me?” company. Again from its anniversary literature: “Collins Brothers provides drivers who pack, load, transport your goods, unload and unpack at destination. This single responsibility makes for world-class relocation.” Each shipment is monitored by a Collins coordinator, providing a start-to-finish contact for every job.
And when the entire office is ordered to Argentina or Dubai: “Our international division provides the whole package: competent field representatives that will visit your home to estimate the move requirements and costs, inside coordinators who will monitor the progress of the shipment from origin to final destination, and professional movers around the world with whom we have long-term working relationships.”
Collins divisions include:
- domestic household;
- international;
- hospitality installation;
- storage;
- commercial moving and storage; and
- home delivery for new furniture lines.
The do-it-yourselfer could face unseen obstacles, as put forth by the website eHow.com, which offers five detailed steps for a relocating business to consider, including alternate plans and brand protection focused on the motto: “Business as usual.” The fifth step begins, “Hire a business relocation service ”¦”
