Hilton Nyamayaro while on the job Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024. Photo by Anashe Mapuranga/Spoke Online
When Hilton Nyamayaro founded his company Elite Moving Services Inc., he saw it as an opportunity to have time for himself, his family and travel.
“I figured the best way to do this was to have a business that can run by itself and be able to fund my adventures and my lifestyle. And give me time to whatever I want to do, when I want to do it.”
Nyamayaro, who started Elite in 2006, primarily operates within Waterloo Region. He has seen massive expansion since he began his company.
“Now we’re evolved into more of a logistics company,” Nyamayaro said. “Day to day run ins… we start off by routing the trucks for the day. We have about five or six trucks running every day, doing delivery services for TA Appliances. We have a contract with them, so we have about 12 guys every day.”
“Then we have my dispatch manager to take care of most things that have to do with what happens on the job site, on the routes, and any issues that we have with the customers. So that’s a nutshell of what we do, mostly home deliveries, installation and a lot of customer service.”
Even though most small businesses in Canada fail very early, Nyamayaro attributed vision for why he’s gone strong for 18 years.
“It started with an end in sight, cause the main thing is what I want ultimately is just to be able to do what I want to do, to have freedom and time at the end of the day.”
However, that isn’t to say it’s been all smooth sailing during that time.
“The biggest thing is that I had no mentor, so I had to figure that out by myself for the most part. There was nobody to guide and give me instructions on how to do things, so I probably would’ve progressed a lot further had I had somebody to give that kind of mentorship.”
Nyamayaro also noted how the housing market has affected the moving department of the company.
“We got a lot of people that come from apartments. They’re not moving a lot, because the rental rates have gone up significantly. There’s a big decline in the moving business right now, because nobody’s really moving.”
“If people are buying houses, we’ll move them in; if they aren’t buying houses, we don’t move. But right now, we do a lot more deliveries, like appliance deliveries so people are always doing renovations, so they keep us busy.”
And though Nyamayaro mentioned how COVID-19 was rough for everybody, it seemed it didn’t affect his business drastically.
“When things are good, people move and when things are bad, people move, so we always stayed busy. So, either when the economy’s bad, people are downgrading, when it’s good, people are upgrading.”
Dennis Maria, who’s been working with Elite for eight years, said he’s had a great time working as a member of Elite.
“There’s ups and downs, luckily mostly ups. It’s been great for a while. I can’t even call it work for me. It’s pretty much almost a hobby now. But it’s been awesome working at the company,” he said.
Maria noted how much the company has grown since he started working for them.
Maria said when he first joined the company there were only one or two trucks. He continued saying the company has grown because many of the jobs are creating contractors and more workers. “We’ve also diversified the work we’re doing; we’re not just sticking to one kind of work. So, we’re pretty much just a jack of all trades,” he said.
On his relationship with Nyamayaro, Maria called it like working with a mentor.
“He knows way too much than anybody should know and it’s like I’m just milking knowledge from the mentor. It’s been a learning curve if anything; I’m just trying to learn as much as I can.”
While competing with other moving companies in the region such as U-Haul can be tough, Nyamayaro believed he fares well.
“Everybody is different, but it’s a similar structure in terms of the business model… you separate yourself by being an individual, focusing on customer service and retention of previous business and give room for continued growth with new partners.”
Regarding the outlook for the company, Nyamayaro mentioned growth.
“We’re hoping to expand our fleets, at least add maybe two or three more trucks in 2025 and just going to branch out more into installations. Right now, we just do more appliance deliveries, without doing any installs. So that’s going to be a different facet of the business, more installations and more warranty services.”
