Baltimore Storage Company will close its doors after 103 years, its owner said this week, the latest local moving company to fall victim to plummeting home sales and soaring fuel costs.
Sale of the company to Von Paris Moving and Storage, based in Savage, was completed Tuesday, said co-owner Don Hott. He blamed the company?s demise on two of the major economic forces affecting most local business.
“I would say the biggest thing is the housing market and the economy which directly drive our business, which has beenvery unforgiving over the last seven or eight months,” he said. “It had just come down to the point where we weren?t able to keep the doors open any longer and do our job properly.”
Hott said Baltimore Storage Company clients have been notified in writing of the change and have 30 days to authorize Von Paris in writing to pick up their items, or to collect their belongings themselves.
The company?s building at 2600 North Charles St. has also been sold, Hott said, to a national company that will convert it into a self-storage facility. The company employs 20 to 30 employees in the winter, up to several hundred during busy months.
Bill Wachter, president of Von Paris, said the deal has been in the works for about two months. He said items from the Baltimore company, founded in 1905, could be moved to Savage, Hanover, Arnold, or Gaithersburg but plans have not been finalized.
In recent months, Earle?s Moving and Storage in Annapolis and Whittaker Moving Systems in Hagerstown closed their doors. Each had been in business for several decades, Wachter said.
Downturns related to home sales are nothing new for movers, said Glenn Duvall, vice chairman of trade group Maryland Movers Conference.
“You?ve got a loss of revenue because of home sales, and a rising expense item [in gas] that can?t always be recaptured,” he said. “Baltimore Storage might want to charge a 12 percent fuel surcharge to stay alive, but if ? everyone else is staying between nothing and five percent, they can?t.”
Summer is traditionally the big season for movers, but Wachter said the worst might not be over for local moving and storage companies.
“I wouldn?t be surprised if, before this economic downturn is over, there won?t be a couple more [closures],” he said. “In a typical year, there?s a huge volume of business in the summer. I don?t think this is going be a typical year.”
