The point of this piece? Sean asked me the other day during a move if the industry had changed much. I said no, that as long as american culture and architecture predisposed us to live as we do, someone would always pull up out front, and move the "stuff" from old house to new. Oh, materials had changed, equipment had changed, home sizes had changed, but the basics were unchanged from the teamster era of post civil war.
Sean then had this "out of the box" thought: What if people had no need to move any more; if the definiton of work changed, and "work" was no longer a place outside the home. Would the moving industry be impacted?
Now, I know the internal problems the moving industry has and is facing. The inability to attract new people (and retain them), the shrinking margins, the changing cultural makeup of the workforce, the decade old deregulation that has splintered the industry, the lowered quality levels, the increasingly "static" market, etc,etc. It makes for a siege mentality, but did not address Sean's basic question: How will this industtry respond to exterior social changes, as the world turns? Would moving change much? I said yes, quite loudly, but much more than the moving indusry would be changed. Relocation changes that drastic would just be following radical social and cultural shifts.
I would be interested in what you , the reader, think about future changes,. How will this internet, this digital age, this movement out of the industrial age affect us? How will our home/ work parameters be changed? How will the moving industry be affected?
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