Community Spotlight: Ben of Campbell Painting Interviews with the owner of Superman Moving-Chad Briley

Phone:
907-644-0307

Address:
A209 N. Post Road
Anchorage, AK 99501

This was our first time using a moving company and superman moving and storage did not disappoint. The crew was fantastic and the price was great. I would defiantly recommend them for your next move, I know we will…

– Robert and Sherry

John, Renaldo, Kim, and David just completed a move for us today. They were quick, careful, and personable. We will be calling them to do the next move for sure!

– Christina Ann

Red, Johnny, and David were super fast and very careful with our furniture moving into a tighter space, we would definitely use them again!

– Jonathan Meaden

John, Ben and Siu were awesome with our household move. They made fast work of our heavy and extra large items, and made it look easy. Superman is my go-to for all our moving needs.

– Cyndi Wardlow

Champion & his assistant were awesome to work with! You guys were a fantastic help! Will definitely have you guys back to help when I need it.
Dave Mabeus

– Dave Mabeus

[Ben Campbell] (0:00): Okay, so hello and welcome to today’s Community Spotlight where I interview local companies I know and trust and introduce them to you. I’m your host, Ben Campbell, and today I am with Chad Briley with Superman Moving Company.

[Chad Briley] (0:12): That’s right.

[Ben Campbell] (0:13): So, a little side note, Chad and I became good friends because we work out at the same gym with our buddy Nick Halverson. My motto is, do whatever Halvey does, but less. Yeah, basically.

[Chad Briley] (0:23): Rise Fitness. We’re sitting outside. We’re at Fox Hollow Golf Course. His gym is right below the chalet. It’s a personal training gym. Look him up, Rise Fitness. He’s the kind of type of trainer that…

[Ben Campbell] (0:36): He’ll kill you, but you’ll love it.

[Chad Briley] (0:37): And he is shredded.

[Ben Campbell] (0:38): Yeah.

[Chad Briley] (0:39): So, it makes total sense. He’s telling you, this is what I do, this is what I eat, this is what I work out. So yeah, he’s that trainer.

[Ben Campbell] (0:45): Yeah. So, okay, Chad. So how did you get into business, the Superman Moving Company? How’d you get into business?

[Chad Briley] (0:51): Yeah. So, I’ll backtrack a little bit, and then I’ll get into the moving side of it. I was in real estate after high school, went down to Arizona, lived there for three or four years, came back in 2004, I believe, started working for my dad, sold real estate, and then I was in that for six years, heavily on his team, and then I started getting into corporate rentals. So executive rentals before Airbnb.

[Ben Campbell] (1:20): Yeah.

[Chad Briley] (1:20): So, this was like 2008 or something. Yeah, yeah. I started getting a bunch of executive rentals, VRBO was out there, but Airbnb was not, and what I did is I started buying up and getting executive rental units, and I had like 57 units at the peak.

[Ben Campbell] (1:38): Holy cow.

[Chad Briley] (1:38): But what the hard part was is I would take them from a non-furnished unit to a furnished unit, and I would call up Bailey’s Furniture and be like, hey, I need to furnish four two-bedroom apartments. And at the time, Buddy Bailey was my sales rep.

[Ben Campbell] (1:52): Oh yeah?

[Chad Briley] (1:53): Yeah. So, I’d call Buddy up on his cell phone. I’d be like, dude, I need six or whatever apartments full of furniture, and he would text me pictures. How about these red couches and this? He would literally piece it together, like clean bedroom set, anyways, piece it together for us. Well, at that time, no one was really, they wouldn’t pick up your order from Bailey’s, deliver it to four different apartments or condos, break it out of the box, and assemble it. There was nobody really around that would do that. So, what I did is I bought a truck. It’s a picture of it in my office currently. Piece of crap. I paid $1,800 for it. And this was when there was really nice box trucks. This wasn’t like in the 70s and $1,800 went a long way. This was like, the door wouldn’t close. Some of my first guys still joke around about it. But we bought a box truck for $1,800. I put an ad up, got two college kids, and they came in and they worked in that delivery side. So, they would go to Bailey’s, they would pick it up. And as we assembled, and a lot of times in the courtyards, they would come in and they would say, we need 10 two-bedroom apartments, or 15, or whatever they needed.

But sometimes they would have special requests, like in the second bedroom, I need a desk set up. So, we’d have to take the bed out. So, we’re constantly moving stuff around. And so anyways, we did that for a long time, a couple of years, it felt like I didn’t know how to look. And then on the side, one day we put a sticker that said, two men and a truck, 80 bucks now. And I was trying to supplement what these guys were doing for us internally. And then we put a phone number on it, and then it just started, we put ads on Craigslist and whatever. So essentially, I got into the moving business because I was in the real estate business, which then went into the corporate rental business. And then next thing you know, a few years later, so this is our 12th year in business. So, I guess that would be like 2000, say 12. Yes, 11 when we were like, wow, we’re delivering for our own internal rental business. And now people are calling us that are like, there was a demand for it for sure.

[Ben Campbell] (3:54): Found a little niche there.

[Chad Briley] (3:55): Yeah, found a niche for delivery. And then it just kind of went like probably most businesses, you get into delivery and the next thing you know, somebody calls you a year after you delivered something for them. They’re like, hey, we’re moving now. Can you do that? And being that I’ve been in sales my whole life, it was like, sure, we can do that. And then you hang up the phone, you’re like, oh, we just said we booked six guys and we have two on payroll. So, we just kind of grew in that fashion. So that’s how I got it.

[Ben Campbell] (4:19): And grown substantially.

[Chad Briley] (4:21): Grown substantially in the last 12 years. Yes. Boom from 20 to now, like due to COVID, right? That was a huge boom for us, especially when we started shifting into moving out of state because what ultimately happened was, if you’re in the Anchorage market and the whole surrounding area, Kenai, Girdwood, everywhere, and you’re moving people from house to house for six, seven years, at some point somebody’s going to call you and they’re going to say, hey, I’m moving to Texas. And for a few years, a year, however long, we’re like, no, we don’t do that. And then finally we were like, okay, there’s a need and people were happy with our original service. Let’s go ahead and get into that. So, the growth did happen when we started moving people out of Alaska and then back into Alaska. In addition to our local work we do around here. Yeah. That’s a long answer, but we got there. You got there.

[Ben Campbell] (5:12): Good. So, okay. I mean, kind of goes off a little bit of it, but what’s, what’s one thing everyone should know about hiring or using your business?

[Chad Briley] (5:22): Yeah. So that’s a good question. So, with us, this is what we try to do. I try to show up in professional vehicles, uniform guys that have been trained and vetted by us. Now at this month and this year, it’s easier said than done to try to find somebody that’s going to show up for work long enough for you to train them to become a professional that they’re trained. So, in years past, it was not as difficult to find guys that wanted to be movers that you could train up. I’ve had, I’ve had guys that almost in the last year or two they’ve moved on, but I had movers that were, that started with truck one and they’re still here 10 years later.

[Ben Campbell] (6:01): That’s awesome.

[Chad Briley] (6:02): So, there, there was guys that wanted to make a career out of it. So, when I say we want to show up and be professional and uniform guys, does that mean you’re going to get a guy today that’s not in uniform? Probably. Sometimes that’s harder to manage, but when you book us, it’s a professional service.

I have a full staff in the office that, that answers your phone call every time you need something. We have dispatchers that dispatch the crew. We have quality check. Our surveyors go out and what they’ll do is, so if you want to move, what I always recommend to everybody is if you’re moving across town or across state, it doesn’t matter, call us up. We’ll send somebody out and give you a free estimate on how much we think it’s going to cost you rather than just booking it over the phone, which we do all the time. So, since we offer a service of free estimates, we also, those same guys that go out and do estimates, stop in and check on crews. So, we call it a quality check.

[Ben Campbell] (6:52): So, that’s good.

[Chad Briley] (6:53): So, yeah, if we’re working for you today and it’s an eight hour job, the trick for us would be is we call you, my administrative staff, twice during that move just to check on you. And then most likely a surveyor will stop in personally and check to see how everything’s going.

[Ben Campbell] (7:08): That’s, that’s great. So, that’s really good.

[Chad Briley] (7:10): The, the idea is that the quality is what you’re getting when you hire us.

[Ben Campbell] (7:13): Good. Good. Okay. This is a fun one.

[Chad Briley] (7:16): Okay.

[Ben Campbell] (7:16): What’s your favorite movie?

[Chad Briley] (7:19): Well, so I have a bunch, uh, this video is going to be real long. So, I have a bunch. So as some people that know me know that my, my dad and my uncle owned video stores when I was a kid, they owned Briley’s video, six of them all around town. So, I was constantly watching movies all the time. Like on a day like this, it’s rainy or overcast, we’d go and get five or six movies and blow them out over the weekend. And so, I have a huge library in my head of movies that I’ve always watched. But I mean, off the, off the top, this is going to sound, this is going to sound stupid, but it’s probably because I have my younger two boys, 11 and 13. Right now, my favorite off the top would be Top Gun. Any version.

[Ben Campbell] (8:03): The one or two?

[Chad Briley] (8:04): Yeah. It doesn’t matter.

[Ben Campbell] (8:04): Oh yeah.

[Chad Briley] (8:04): Really good.

[Ben Campbell] (8:05): Oh man.

[Chad Briley] (8:05): And I know that’s popular right now. So that’s kind of like a cheesy answer.

[Ben Campbell] (8:08): No, but it’s fantastic.

[Chad Briley] (8:10): It’s dude, it’s any Will Ferrell movie. Right?

[Ben Campbell] (8:13): Oh yeah.

[Chad Briley] (8:14): Like seriously, Talladega Nights or whatever that one’s called.

[Ben Campbell] (8:15): My wife and I just watched Blades of Glory last night. We haven’t seen that forever. That is so funny.

[Chad Briley] (8:20): But if you were to ask my wife, I’m constantly one of those guys who like talks in movie quotes.

[Ben Campbell] (8:25): Oh, usually.

[Chad Briley] (8:26): Like always. I’m just like, you know this line. So, yeah, that’s funny that we talk about that. But for right now, probably Top Gun because that’s fresh on my mind, but I could go through all the 80s movies everywhere.

[Ben Campbell] (8:36): Good. Love it. Okay. And lastly, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

[Chad Briley] (8:40): So, our office phone, the main phone line is 644-0307. Quick Google, pull us up, Google Maps, Facebook, Instagram. But yeah, call the office. In the moving industry, we have online inquiries and you can send us emails and all that, but it’s most common to get a phone call because people do want to hear and they want to tell you what they got going on because every moving situation is super unique.

[Ben Campbell] (9:05): It’s completely unique.

[Chad Briley] (9:06): It’s like, I’m unloading a semi-trailer or, you know, I need a four-clipped piano, a hot tub. We were, my estimator was at a prominence point yesterday and they’re like, hey, we’re moving a hot tub from the second floor, hooking it up to a crane, bringing it down, put the new one on top. And it’s just all those nuances that you almost want to call us, have that three, five, 10-minute discussion with our office team and then we’ll dispatch somebody. So, phone is the most, even though that seems like an outdated way to call somebody.

[Ben Campbell] (9:30): No, no, no. I love calling them.

[Chad Briley] (9:32): Most people like Instagram us. It’s like, no, still call us. Look us up in the yellow pages.

[Ben Campbell] (9:39): Yeah, so, okay. Well, that is it. Let’s see what we can do to get Chad more business. Thank you for watching and we’ll see you on the next one.

[Chad Briley] (9:45): Later.

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