Many members attended the meeting in February in New Orleans; this meeting was a great success. At this meeting, the topics that caused the most attention centred on the impact the moving industry was having towards education and the continuing development of the current membership for the association. To add to this success the meeting in California between April 29th and the May 4th is going to be another event in the moving business that you will not want to miss.

Fraud cases where customer’s belongings, held hostage for higher and inflated premiums, have been reduced. This is great news for the customers and the businesses themselves. With regulations in place, it has proved important in the prosecution of these companies who act outside the law.

Individuals and businesses are eligible to claim expenses for certain instances, including traveling for medical reasons and moving. These rates have had a decrease this year, the IRS has taken the step to reduce the amounts that individuals are able to claim; the rate per mile has decreased to 23.5 cents. As with all tax cuts, this will have an impact on your business.

This conference was hailed a success, there were presentations from a number of different organizations including the FMCSA, the California Moving & Storage Association and American Transportation Research Institute. This three day event was well attended by those in the moving industry, who were keen to learn of new developments, in a variety of different topics. These topics included the most up to date technology devices available in the removal business.

As with all cases of fraud, the FMCSA has taken action against those movers that have failed to provide the service that they charged customers for. It has been found that these companies, which are situated in Florida, South Carolina and Maryland, have failed their customers and have therefore shut down five companies because of their bad practice.

As there have been several notable achievements within the moving industry in recent months, we thought that we would take some time to tip our hats to the people who put in that little extra effort, to make our industry something so very unique and special. Here some of the achievements of Arpin Group and Interstate Service Group.