The beginnings of Bob Romano’s ownership of a moving and storage company weren’t auspicious. His only truck broke down on its first delivery.
“Very first move we did, the truck ended up blowing an engine and I had to go buy a new truck. Right into the fire,” Romano said recently, recalling the first days of Coutu Bros. Movers.
The start was in 2000, when Coutu Bros. had one truck and two men. Now it has a small fleet of seven vehicles and 15 employees. The Warwick-based company expanded recently with the purchase of a North Kingstown moving company, MGM Express Movers.
Romano got his start through an acquisition. He was a meat-cutter who helped his brother’s moving company on the weekends. Then an opportunity arose to get into the business himself.
He bought an existing Pawtucket-based business, Coutu Bros., and later added a storage component when it became clear that that side of the business had a potential for growth.
Rhode Islanders, like all Americans, have a lot of material possessions that often need to go into storage in the process of a move. About six years ago, Romano purchased a storage facility that he used in conjunction with his moves. He doesn’t lease out those facilities to the general public. It simplifies the process for moves in which possessions may not immediately have a new home.
“This way the customer deals with the company for everything” instead of a moving company and a storage company, Romano said.
The moving business tells him a lot about where people want to live.
His company moves both locally and interstate. Typically, more people are moving out than into Rhode Island, he said, often to locations in the South or West. On an afternoon last month, he had a crew heading out to Arizona.
On those moves, the company will pay for the meals and lodging of the employees, which gets passed on to customers in quotes.
More typically, moves are regional. But overall, the number of moves completed by Coutu has been rising. Romano said the company had 1,300 total moves in 2019, which was an increase from the prior year.
“Unfortunately, they’re moving out [of state],” he said when asked the direction of most of the moves last year.
The company also increased its commercial moves, which tend to be regional. “Providence to Johnston,” he said. “Providence to Cranston.” Here, the trend is out of the city and into the suburbs, Romano said.
And the company also completes the moves requested by Operation Stand Down, a nonprofit that provides services to veterans. It offers moving services to them, free of charge.
When the company acquired MGM Express Movers, it expanded its territory into the southern areas of Rhode Island. Romano said he was interested in hiring all of the previous company’s moving employees, but none of them wanted the job. They found other jobs closer to home.
“They were in South Kingstown, which, I guess to come to Warwick, was [too far],” Romano said.
OWNER: Bob Romano, president
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Moving and storage of business and household goods
LOCATION: 2 Greco Lane, Warwick
EMPLOYEES: 15
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2000
ANNUAL SALES: WND
Mary MacDonald is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Macdonald@PBN.com.
