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Local spotlight
Mom-daughter team moves to new heights
Women behind the Two Men franchise in Roseville succeed with feminine touch.
Connie Howe, left, and daughter Lisa Hessling saw the revenues from their Macomb County moving franchise grow 20 percent to $1.5 million in 2004. The team is shopping for a larger location and acquired a second franchise in Florida.
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ROSEVILLE -- Connie Howe was a CPA working at a leasing company when she bought a moving company franchise in 1991. Even with no experience in the industry, a woman's touch has proven successful in the traditionally male occupation.
Howe, 61, and daughter Lisa Hessling, 39, run the Macomb County franchise of Lansing-based Two Men And A Truck. Last year their annual revenues grew more than 20 percent to almost $1.5 million.
With 11 24-foot straight trucks and 30 movers, they've outgrown their location on 13 Mile and will add two more trucks as soon as they find a bigger location. They've acquired a second franchise in Fort Myers, Fla.
Men still move the furniture and heavy boxes, but women have done very well on the management and ownership side of Two Men And A Truck. The parent company is run by another mother-daughter team, and half the franchises are owned by women.
"Women are very detail-oriented," Howe said. "A lot of our customers are women and there's a comfort level knowing the company is run by a woman."
The franchise chain emphasizes customer service with its "Grandma Rule" -- employees are trained to treat every customer like their own grandmother.
Two Men And A Truck got its start when founder Mary Ellen Sheets helped her two teenaged sons set up a moving service with a pickup truck. She kept getting calls after they went to college, so in 1985 she bought a 14-foot truck and hired two movers. In 1989, she awarded the first franchise to her daughter, Melanie Bergeron, now the company's president.
Bergeron said women are well-suited to the moving business because they are providing a service. "It comes naturally to women to want to take care of their customers and please people. It's not so much about the bottom line," she said.
Double-digit annual growth that pushed revenues to $149 million in 2004 demonstrates that the women at Two Men And A Truck also nurture the bottom line. The company has grown to 151 locations in 27 states and is expanding into Canada this year.
While the industry's biggest names are known for interstate moving, Two Men And A Truck has taken aim at local moves, which is a far bigger market. Of the 40 million people who moved in 2003, 59 percent stayed within the same county and another 19 percent stayed within the same state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The 2003 government survey showed that about a third of people ages 20-29 had moved within the past year, and the same was true for renters. Baby boomers are moving at a higher rate now that their children have grown, according to Bergeron.
In Macomb County, customers pay $80 an hour for a two-man crew, a truck and moving equipment. They can hire the crew to do all the packing or just move a few pieces of furniture. More than 90 percent move within the country.
The average move costs $350 to $400. "Many people don't realize how relatively inexpensive it is to hire us compared to doing it themselves," Howe said.
Eric Pope is a Metro Detroit freelance writer.
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The Detroit News.
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