According to Steve Hill, there’s no better motivator to taking care of business – and taking care of customers – than putting one’s name on the door. Or, in Hill’s case, on his door, his trucks and his storage facility.

Hill, together with his son Mike, owns Hill’s Moving Services, Inc., a Poulsbo-based moving and storage company that, since 1986, has been moving people and their belongings all over the world.

Steve says deciding to open the company with his son made perfect sense. Steve spent his entire life in the moving industry, both as a driver and as a dispatcher for a large moving company. Mike, also a lifelong mover, put his business degree to work and serves as the general manager.

Although the two opened the business on Bainbridge Island, they moved to Poulsbo in order to facilitate the company’s growth.

“There just wasn’t the kind of warehouse space for expansion on Bainbridge Island that we needed,” Steve says. ‘The decision to move the company to Poulsbo made sense for what we envisioned for the company’s future.”

And what Hill Moving Services has become is a company that offers customers more than just household moving services. It also offers full-service records retention, extensive office moving capabilities that include several 300+ people moves, as well as logistics services and packing materials that are 25 to 100 percent stronger than industry standards.

With more than twenty full-time employees and over 60 pieces of moving equipment, the company has come a long way since Mike and Steve opened the firm out of their home with just one truck.

three million in annual sales, the company’s come a long way since Mike and Steve opened the firm out of their home with just one truck.

“I guess you could say that we’re the original rags-to-riches story,” Steve said. “When we began it was with one truck. There wasn’t quite enough business just moving people locally at first so we began doing long-distance moves. Next thing you know, we had two trucks, than five.” The rest, as they say, is history.”

Today, Hill’s Moving Service is proud to be bucking the industry trend of small mom and pop moving companies becoming agents for large van-lines. In fact, Hill’s independent van-line status is one of its best marketing tools. Customers say they like the firms flexibility and ingenuity in dealing with a cornucopia of moving situations.

“Right now, international moves make up the smallest portion of our business but these are areas that we expect to see growth,” said Steve. “We already do a solid amount of military business, moving military personnel and their families around the country.”

According to Mike, the company’s strategy is paying off. Business has grown at the rate of over 20 percent a year for the past five years.

The company occupies more than six acres in Poulsbo, with a 36,000 square foot state-of-the-art warehouse facility that features a world class fire suppression system with twin diesel booster pumps.

“We sweat the details,” Steve likes to say, “because our name’s on the truck. We’re quite definitely a family business and it’s our reputation that’s at stake every time we deal with a customer.”

Besides co-owners Steve, 60, and Mike, 38, two and a half other family members play a role in the day-to-day running of Hill’s Moving Services.

Steve’s youngest daughter, Kay Hill Cook, serves as the company’s administrative and financial manager and coordinates most of the company’s military moves, while Steve’s wife Debbie, a certified claims analyst, handles everything from customer service to human resources. The half-pint family member occupying the company’s headquarters is Kay’s one-year old toddler, Sarah.

According to Steve, one of the big pluses of a family-owned business is having the next generation of movers learning at an early age. Sarah is around daily.

“She’ll come in first thing in the morning, take off her little coat and have a chat,” Steve said. “That’s one of the biggest joys and benefits of having your own company.”

One of the biggest challenges, he admits, is knowing when to turn off business chit-chat outside of business hours. “Both Mike and I have been told periodically to not ‘talk shop’ when we’re out of the office. We have to constantly work at separating work from home.”

In the meantime, the company treats each move as a challenge, especially with specialty items that are normally the bane of moving companies – like moose heads and antique pianos – providing Mike with the opportunity to test his ingenuity.

“Believe it or not, Mike just loves pianos,” chuckles Steve. “We’ve used cranes to swing them over fences and houses, lowered them down through the roof, you name it. If you’ve got a piano, Mike will have fun trying to figure out just how to put it right where you want it.”

After all, his name’s on the truck that’s parked out front.