Being in the moving and delivery business takes muscles, sure, but it also takes a sense of empathy for clients going through transitions in their lives.

The wife desperately wanted to clear out the house before her husband learned she was leaving him.

Virginia Varsity Transfer fielded her phone call. No estimate required, she said.

“She said, ‘Whatever it takes, just come do it,’ ” recalled John Lugar, 41, a company co-founder who is now president and sole owner. “She was a basket case, worried to death that he was going to come home.”

Lugar joined the moving crew.

“We found out she had a loaded handgun on the front seat of her car,” he said. “We worked like heck to get her out of there.”

This “clear out” scenario happens more often than one might think, he said.

Moving people’s possessions “is not just about muscling stuff,” said Norm Pullen, 25, operations manager for Salem-based Virginia Varsity Transfer.

Related anecdotes from movers or delivery people range from sobering to humorous, from rigorous to risque.

Imagine, for example, attempting to relocate a hard-core hoarder. Or boxing up secrets stashed in a bedroom closet. Or vainly attempting to fit a sectional couch through a narrow door while a testy homeowner hovers.

For this article’s recounting of anecdotes, neither Virginia Varsity Transfer nor Grand Home Furnishings shared customer names, addresses or any other identifying details.

“People grant us their trust, by necessity or voluntarily, and we operate with discretion and confidentiality,” Lugar said.

Understanding for customers

In addition to brawn and brains, moving crews need muscular empathy, he said.

“You are dealing with people and their lives when they are at their most vulnerable,” Lugar said. “It can be very raw, very emotional.”

About Virginia Varsity

By Duncan Adams (Roanoke Times)
981-3324

Virginia Varsity Transfer traces its roots to November 1987. John Lugar was a freshman at Radford University. A budget-conscious family said they would pay $300, feed and lodge him for moving them to Florida.

Friend Steve Steorts joined in. The two teamed up again in May 1988 to move a family to an Atlanta suburb. That same month, they founded the company. Two years later, Lugar bought out Steorts’ interest.

Conjecture might conclude that the company’s history and Lugar’s obviously obsessive emphasis on empathic service started years before 1987.

Lugar said his family moved about five times.

“I remember one move very clearly. I was about 10 or 11 years old. I had spent weeks building this really elaborate bridge model out of toothpicks,” he recalled. “It was crazy — it was this spanning bridge with supports.”

One of the movers accidentally stepped on the bridge.

“That wasn’t the worst thing. The worst thing was that nothing was said. Nobody said they were sorry,” Lugar said. “Mistakes happen and that’s unavoidable. To me, it’s always been about how you rectify a move that isn’t perfect.”

At the start, Virginia Varsity’s hiring leaned toward college students. The company required a clean-cut look and favored workers who were personable and actually seemed to enjoy the packing and toting — a task most people find or imagine to be grueling.

The company later added the rental of storage units.

On Nov. 9, a youthful moving crew from the company parked a 28-foot Freightliner moving van on the street in front of the Roanoke County home of Jeanette and Bill Combs. She is 78. He is 87.

Until retirement, Bill Combs was a Methodist minister and the Combs family had previously moved 14 times.

The couple decided in recent months to relocate to the Brandon Oaks retirement community after each suffered a broken pelvis this year in separate incidents. At one point, both were using walkers.

“It was really a big decision,” said Jeanette Combs.

But the couple, who had hired Virginia Varsity before, seemed upbeat on moving day as the crew boxed up their belongings and lugged furniture out.

“They’re wonderful,” she said. “They really seem to have fun doing what they do.”