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How to Use the Slow Season to Grow Your Moving Company

7 ways small movers can turn the off-season into an opportunity for growth. Training, marketing, equipment maintenance, and more.

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Just because things are slowing down, doesn’t mean that growth needs to stop completely. The moving companies that are nailing it are those that use the slow season to strategize and improve their company.

Here are some ideas for how small movers can turn the off-season into another opportunity for growth.

What should my crew be doing when work is slow?

When it’s busy, it can often feel like you’re simply surviving the chaos day by day. There’s no time to slow down, learn from mistakes, or work on new skills or training. The slow season is the perfect time to tackle some of these tasks.

Use this time to:

  • Refresh sales scripts and objection handling with the team
  • Practice estimate walkthroughs
  • Cross-train reps on scheduling, customer service, and ops
  • Review recorded calls to identify what’s working (and what’s not)
  • Build playbooks so new hires can ramp quickly in spring

This will help keep your team engaged and motivated, and ready to hit the busy season with full force.

Is it worth contacting past customers?

Reaching out to past customers can help you get referrals, secure some positive reviews for your marketing materials, or get repeat business.

When it’s slow you can use the time to contact previous customers and ask them:

  • How they are enjoying the new place
  • If there’s anything you could have done better
  • Would they recommend you?
  • Do they need help with junk removal, a small move, or a move for friends or family?

It’s easy to reach out with a quick email or phone call, and you might end up getting more business from someone you already know.

Which markets stay busy in the off-season?

The slow season is a good time to consider branching out into new markets. What do you already offer, what do your local competitors offer, and are there any gaps you could easily fill?

Think about:

  • Partnering with storage facilities
  • Real estate offices
  • Retirement communities
  • Piano, safe, or specialty move partnerships
  • Corporate relocations

If you have a lot of experience at moving something specific (like pianos for example) try to partner with companies who don’t offer that. Partnerships like this can help you stay busy over the slow season.

Should I cut marketing in the slow season?

This is a great time to focus on marketing. Use the downtime to learn as much as you can about marketing your company, particularly getting your head around the new world of AI search.

AI Search Optimization

AI tools like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity pull business recommendations based on:

  • FAQ content
  • Local authority
  • Niche expertise
  • Clear pricing pages
  • Positive reviews

Start to build out a pool of content that is AI-friendly. You can create new content or go back through old blog posts and make sure they’re optimized for AI models.

Think about content like:

  • FAQ pages (“How much does a move cost in your city?”)
  • Hyper-local blogs (“Moving in Madison this winter? What to expect.”)
  • Comparison pages (You vs other local movers)
  • Clear pricing and transparent estimate pages

Get on top of traditional SEO

  • Update your Google Business Profile
  • Add photos weekly of your crew in action
  • Collect (or at least try to) reviews from every move
  • Make sure your website looks good on mobile
  • Refresh old blog posts
  • Claim your listings on directories (Yellow Pages, Yelp, Moving.com)

Do off-season discounts actually work?

People love saving money so think about deals or discounts that could help get more customers:

  • Winter discount (5–15% off weekday moves)
  • “Book early for spring” deposits
  • Bundle packing + moving at a reduced rate
  • Offer junk removal or small-load pickups to fill the schedule
  • Pop-up ads on your site for off-season specials

When should I service trucks and replace equipment?

Many movers wait until Spring to discover their truck needs repairs. It’s much better to be ahead of the game and double check everything when things are slower.

  • Service every truck
  • Replace pads, straps, dollies, and tools
  • Review insurance and licensing
  • Audit your CRM or estimate software
  • Build SOPs for dispatch, ops, and claims

Should I actually take time off?

Burnout is real and summer is often brutal. Many owners never actually take a vacation so try to factor this in when it’s a little quieter. A rested team performs better, sells better, and delivers higher-quality customer service, without getting burnt out.

  • Take a real break
  • Give your team a long weekend
  • Hold a team lunch or activity day out
  • Reset goals for spring

Where should I start?

Winter is also the right time to fix the things you have no time for in July — pricing, hiring, and the systems you run on. The guide to starting and growing a moving company works through those in order, and where moving leads actually come from is the one to read if the quiet months are a demand problem rather than a seasonal one.

The slow season doesn’t have to be bad news, especially when you treat it as an opportunity to get ahead. The movers who treat winter as a season for growth and improvement are the ones who stay booked when others are panicking.

Ready to audit your tech stack? See how Zip can help you manage leads, schedule jobs, and grow your business.

Slow-season projects work best with a plan behind them. The free guide, How to Start and Grow a Moving Company, is the long version.

  • growth
  • operations
  • marketing

Common questions

Questions movers ask about this

When is the slow season for moving companies?

Roughly October through April in most of the US, with the deepest trough in January and February. Demand tracks the academic year, lease turnover and the weather, so summer carries most of the year's volume and winter carries the costs. The exact shape varies by market — a college town and a retirement market have very different curves.

How do moving companies make money in the off-season?

Three ways that work: chase the segments that do not follow the summer pattern — commercial moves, senior downsizing, apartment turnovers and insurance or relocation work — sell adjacent services like packing, decluttering and storage, and run targeted off-peak pricing that fills otherwise empty days rather than discounting work you would have won anyway.

What should I do with my crew during the slow season?

Train them and keep the good ones. Winter is the only time of year with room to teach wrapping, loading, customer handling and damage prevention properly, and the cost of losing an experienced mover over the winter is far higher than the cost of keeping them lightly occupied through it. Maintenance, equipment repair and facility work all absorb hours usefully.

Is the slow season a good time to switch moving software?

It is the only sensible time. Changing systems mid-summer means learning new software during your busiest weeks; doing it in January means the crew is fluent by the time volume returns. It is also why month-to-month software matters — a platform on an annual contract may not let you move when the window is actually open.

How do I keep leads coming in during winter?

Keep marketing running rather than cutting it. Reach back out to past customers, keep posting to your Google Business Profile, keep asking for reviews on the jobs you do have, and use the spare hours to build the referral relationships you have no time for in July. Leads in winter are cheaper to earn and the work compounds into spring.

Software that does what the advice says.

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