Local moving company looking overseas for summer help

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Apr 02, 2004 by Rombel, Adam

SYRACUSE - When the hired help arrives this summer at Syracuse-based Delaney Moving and Storage, Inc., some of it will come from far-away lands and speak with distinct accents.

The 15-year-old company, a franchise of United Van Lines, is for the first time* turning to foreign college students to help it during the busy summer-move season. Starting in June, at least four students from Ireland and two from Belarus will go to work for Delaney Moving and Storage, located at 7045 Interstate Island Road in Syracuse.

The company is hiring the international students because it's getting increasingly hard to find good summer help here, says Arthur Delaney, owner.

"It's very difficult to find good-hard working students. It's difficult to find students who want to put in 50 hours a week in the summer," says Delaney. "What we do is not the easiest thing in the world. And, we live in a culture here that says manual labor is not something we want to do anymore."

Delaney adds that the foreign students are motivated by the opportunity to see America and make some extra spending money for when they return to school back home.

The students are coming on 5-month work visas and will likely leave Delaney in late-Sept. or Early Oct. While here, they'll get paid $9 an hour to pack and haul boxes and load and unload storage containers and moving trucks.

United Van Lines helped Delaney to get these international students after the company's franchises in New York, Boston and other big cities had good experiences hiring foreign students.

Delaney Moving and Storage isn't completely doing away with homegrown help this summer. The company still expects to have 10 area college students on the payroll this season.

Delaney Moving and Storage had $2 million in sales in 2003. This year's sales are so far tracking slightly above that. At its peak in 2000, the company had $3 million in sales. Its business, along with other moving companies, was hit hard by the decline in the lucrative corporate transfer market after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the economic downturn. Many companies have cut back sharply on the amount they'll provide employees for moving expenses when they transfer jobs. Corporate moves once accounted for 60 percent of Delaney Moving and Storage's business but now make up only about 25 percent.

"It's incredible. Like most companies in this business we've regrouped," says Delaney.

The firm has regrouped by shifting its business toward highend residential moves and by expanding the storage services it offers customers.