The moving franchising giant College H.U.N.K.S. has over 300 locations in North America. After visiting the company to learn how it keeps its service consistent, software provider Supermove sent in this report

Scaling your moving company isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There’s a real chance you might lose the great service that built your reputation in the first place. The more people you hire, the more locations you open, the harder it becomes to keep every move feeling the same. Your customers expect consistency, yet your people want to put their own spin on things. Before long, you can’t stay on top of everything anymore.

That’s the challenge Supermove set out to study when its team visited College H.U.N.K.S. Hauling Junk & Moving headquarters in Tampa. The software company, whose platform helps moving companies automate their entire operation, has been visiting moving companies across the US, to see what sets the best apart. They sat down with College H.U.N.K.S. Vice President of Operations Dan Whalen to unpack how this franchising giant delivers consistent service nationwide, and what other owners and operators can learn from it.

College H.U.N.K.S. Background
College H.U.N.K.S. began like many small moving businesses do. It was founded in the summer of 2003 by two college friends, Nick Friedman and Omar Soliman. The two had a borrowed cargo van and a dream.

Today, College H.U.N.K.S. Hauling Junk & Moving is a franchise network that operates more than 300 locations. What’s remarkable isn’t that they scaled the business; but that they never lost the culture, personality, and the service they started with.

That didn’t happen by accident. It came from two decades of taking what most moving company owners believe is intangible - culture, energy, and attitude - and turning it into something replicable.

Daniel Whalen, who currently runs franchise operations, knows this very well. Before stepping into his leadership role, he ran one of the College H.U.N.K.S. franchise locations himself. He grew it from $1 million to $5.5 million in just a few years.

“Moving is boring and stressful,” Daniel said. “We make it fun. We bring energy, professionalism, and a process that’s repeatable. But it’s always about the people.”

Culture meets process
When you walk through the College H.U.N.K.S. huddle room, you immediately feel the culture. Every milestone is there. The Shark Tank appearance, the first million-dollar franchise, the expansion into Canada - it’s all printed on the walls.

Many companies lose their sense of identity once the owners stop showing up on jobs, but College H.U.N.K.S. made their identity visible enough to remind everyone what they’re part of. Every day at 11:11, franchise owners join headquarters in this room for what they call “the huddle”. For those who rarely see the company HQ in person, this ritual keeps them feeling part of the team. You might not need a daily huddle, but even a weekly check-in can keep your people aligned.

“All our team members funnel out here,” Daniel said. “We roll through good news, praise, core value stories, metrics, and company-wide updates. It’s a way to keep everyone on the same page and keep our culture alive.” Cultural habits like these give direction, but what keeps service consistent are the playbooks.

College H.U.N.K.S. have one that they call “Steps to a Perfect Job”. It translates core company values  - Honest, Uniform, Nice, and Knowledgeable Service) into practical steps and checkpoints that must be followed on every job.

This playbook builds on non-negotiable brand standards. “How we show up, how we treat people, how we communicate … those are all things that are trained during our pre-opening and training process,” Daniel added. If you don’t have a playbook of your own yet, start by documenting your perfect move from start to finish.

Protecting standards across 300+ locations
When moving companies grow past a certain point, owners lose touch with what’s happening on the trucks. They start adding systems to hold people accountable, but it often backfires. Crews feel like they’re being watched, and managers feel like they’re losing authority. The other extreme - total trust - lets standards quietly slip. College H.U.N.K.S. lives in the hard middle.

“We’ve got a brand protection team internally that does a lot of proactive looking and insight,” Daniel said. “There are also various metrics that we look at in our proprietary software that act as leading indicators when things might be going off track.”

When the numbers hint something’s off, it’s enough to send someone for a closer look. “We’ve got franchise business coaches who are knee-deep in the data for each of their locations,” he explained. “They also go on site pretty regularly to perform operational audits, to make sure things are being executed the way we want them to.”

Franchise coaches sit in on dispatch and talk to crews on site. They also follow trucks out on jobs to see how movers are padding furniture, wrapping items, laying safety cones, and more.

“There’s some things that we can diagnose and detect via Zoom,” Daniel added. “But nothing takes the place of being there and seeing it with your eyes.” It’s a reminder for all of us. Stay close enough to see what’s happening, but not so close that it feels like surveillance. That’s how you protect your standards without breeding resentment.

The people who make it work
For Daniel Whalen, consistency starts with people. The best playbook in the world won’t save a branch led by the wrong person. “Having a good market is helpful,” he said, “but having the wrong leader will probably guarantee a loss.”

That’s why College H.U.N.K.S. has a rigorous process for vetting franchise owners. “Do they have the right expectations, the right capitalisation, and the patience to play the long game?” Whalen said. “You’ve got to be willing to be all-in. This is not an absentee type of thing.”

“You’ve got to be right there, boots on the ground with your team members in those first 24 to 36 months, knowing where every dollar is flowing through,” Whalen added. “That’s the only way you can catch bad habits forming in real time and choke them off before they become big problems.”

The philosophy is simple, but not easy. College H.U.N.K.S. look for owners who will care about the brand as much as the founders did. They give them the tools and training to make a location their own, but expect every job to be done the H.U.N.K.S. way

Final thoughts
At the end of the day, College H.U.N.K.S. makes every move feel the same because they made their service impossible to improvise. They documented it, drilled it, audited it, and expected franchise owners to be committed to enforcing it locally. And because those who do the work believe in what the company stands for, the service quality never drifts. It just stays consistently and recognisably H.U.N.K.S.

This story was based on Supermove’s visit to College H.U.N.K.S. Hauling Junk & Moving in Tampa. You can watch the full visit and interview with Vice President of Operations Dan Whalen on Supermove’s YouTube channel.

Photos:
Top - Daniel Whalen (left) runs franchise operations for H.U.N.K.S.
Bottom - The College H.U.N.K.S. huddle room celebrates important milestones.