What It Takes to Run a Moving Company
Series: Built in Ottawa
The moving business looks simple from the outside: trucks, boxes, muscle. Marco Diallo says it's really a trust business — strangers handing you everything they own. We visit the Prestige Moving warehouse to talk about starting from nothing, the cash-flow scare that almost ended it in year three, hiring friends and what happened when he had to fire one, and how the company survives Ottawa's brutal seasonal swings. Marco also gets honest about pricing — why the cheapest quote is usually the most expensive move.
- From mover to owner in ten years
- The year-three cash flow crisis
- Hiring friends, firing friends
- Seasonality and surviving the slow months
- Why cheap quotes cost customers more
People aren't paying us to carry boxes. They're paying us to care about their stuff like it's ours.
Marco Diallo
Co-Founder, Prestige Moving
Marco moved to Ottawa at nineteen and took the first job he could get — carrying furniture. A decade later he co-owns one of the city's busiest moving companies. He talks openly about cash flow scares, hiring friends (and firing them), and why the moving business is really a trust business.