Steve Jordan talks to Andy Marshall as he settles back into life in the agent-to-agent world of international moving.
It was almost 40 years ago that Andy Marshall, now the president and COO at Asian Tigers in Thailand, took his first steps into the moving world. Like so many others, Andy had no idea what he was getting into, and could not imagine the opportunities and adventures this industry would offer. During that time, he’s spent longer living away from England than in his native land. It’s been a roller-coaster, of course, but one that has turned out well enough for this particular Englishman abroad.
Andy was born and raised in Chelmsford, England. Chelmsford is the ‘home of radio’, the location of the famous Marconi factory. “At the time it was almost a given that you would walk out of the school gates and into the Marconi factory, or one of the other major employers in the town,” he explained. It was with this backdrop that Andy took up an engineering apprenticeship with the firm. Unfortunately, technology was already messing things up. Andy had signed on as a mechanical engineering apprentice, but the switch to electronics had already started. “There were over 60 electronics apprentices and just four of us doing mechanical engineering. I guess I just joined the wrong queue.”
So, in 1984, with his apprenticeship heading for the long grass, he answered a small add in the local paper. It turned out to be for a clerk’s position at Pickfords. Within a few years he was running his own branch and became the company’s youngest ever branch manager.
But, even then, Andy must have had a little of the wanderer in him. A suggestion that he might go to work for the company in Australia, that came to nothing, served only to fuel his ambition for travel. So when he spotted an advert in the BAR’s Removals and Storage magazine, offering opportunities in Asia, he applied. This advertiser turned out to be Transpo in Bangkok, so Andy moved to Thailand in 1994.
That was only the beginning of his globetrotting ...
Photo: Andy Marshall.