Steve Jordan looks at the benefits of experience and the impetuousness of youth and considers what it is the moving industry needs now.
So how long have you been in the industry? 30 years, 40, 50? The very nature of the moving business lends itself to long service. It’s an industry built on family businesses. Even if you look back at the origins of some of our foremost moving companies, those that lead the market today, many of them started on grandma’s kitchen table. What’s wrong with that? Nothing, in my opinion. The problem may be however, what happens next.
The general process of succession associated with family businesses tends to run something like this: grandma and grandad start the business; dad joins in when he’s old enough and takes over when the old man dies; son joins the business but is only partly committed because the world has moved on and he has other interests; grandson is not interested so the business gets sold. Sometimes it’s daughters, but the sequence is the same. They say that if a family business lasts beyond its fourth generation it will last forever. Not true, but you can see why people think that way ...