Help on the way
Third-generation mover aims to ease client’s stress levels
Steve Lamanna was proud to carry on his family’s moving business - with one big change.
Lamanna, 47, grew up watching his father, Raymond, build the moving business his father, Samuel, started in 1928 in Herkimer. As a kid, Lamanna folded moving pads and fetched water for the movers. At 18 he joined his father’s crew.
“I went to college for business, but I didn’t love it. I love my job, you have to love it or you wouldn’t do it. The days f ly by,” Lamanna said last week at a customer’s house in Halfmoon, in between packing boxes and coaching an employee on the best way to pack a box.
Samuel Lamanna was a fruit and vegetable seller who invested in a moving truck after his customers kept asking him to move this or that piece of furniture. When Lamanna took over the business in 2007, he faced a big pivot point: The business his father and grandfather carefully tended was flagging because business was drying up in Herkimer and the surrounding valley.
“I didn’t want it to go up in smoke,” he said. He made the leap to Albany, which meant breaking into a market already served by moving companies. Lamanna said he did it by buying advertising and relying on referrals from happy customers.
“After buying a house, the move is the most stressful thing you’re going to go through,” Lamanna says. “People are attached to their stuff and no matter what, we treat it like it’s our own.”
COVID-19 was nerve-wracking, Lamanna says. Like many other business owners, he wondered if it would put him out of business. He was worried about not only his own family, but his crew, his parents and his in-laws, all of whom depend on the business. But, pandemic or not, people still needed to move. Lamanna set new rules for moves - everyone wore masks, goggles and gloves.
He only allowed one person from among the client’s family to be present. Lamanna and his employees wore one set of gloves for loading out and a new pair for unloading at the client’s new home. He has eased safety restrictions slightly, but he and his crew still wear masks. He wants to keep clients safe as well as his employees, because if one of them is diagnosed with coronavirus, they all have to quarantine.
“COVID didn’t stop us,” he says, adding he did not apply for financial support through the Paycheck Protection Program, provided by the federal government to support businesses during the economic shutdown caused by COVID-19.
Josh and Trish Poupore moved in May, after they sold their house in Scotia and bought a new one in Niskayuna. After careful research, Poupore hired Lamanna and now they recommend the company to others.
“I was really happy with the work they did,” Josh Poupore said. “They showed up on time and everyone was wearing masks and gloves, I didn’t have to remind them. His crew worked fast, but didn’t rush. Everyone was very respectful and seemed to care about doing a good job. In fact, before they started moving me into my new house, one of the movers actually identified and fixed a broken hinge my storm door. That’s way outside the scope of the work they were hired for, but an example of what a good job they do.”
According to an analysis of census data by the American Moving and Storage Association, there were 30,234,000 moves from 2018 to 2019. Of these, 5,875,000 were either moves into the U.S. from abroad or interstate moves.
The moving business offers up unusual sights, Lamanna says. There was a time a cat hid in a couch and jumped out in the moving truck. Another time a man hired Lamanna to pack the contents of three storage units and move them. When Lamanna arrived, he found six storage units and several tractor trailers. No one got home until after midnight that day, he said. It should be noted: Lamanna charges by the hour, not the job. And then there was the job Lamanna turned down: The rooms were so packed with precariously stacked boxes, it posed a risk to his men.
Of his customers, Lamanna says about 70% hire him to move their belongings after they’ve done the packing, and about 30% hire him to both pack and move them. Younger people are more likely to rely on friends, whereas older people tend to call movers. One of the primary concerns clients have is theft and damage, he says. To make people feel comfortable, he wraps valuables (like a jewelry box) in plastic wrap in front of the client and unwraps it the same way at the destination.