How 87 Movers started
Tony Yee didn’t plan to start a moving company. He was doing labor work for another moving company in Las Vegas when he realized he could do it better — and that "better" was in desperately short supply in the Vegas moving market.
"Las Vegas has a unique moving market," Tony explains. "People here move constantly — not just relocating in, but moving within the city. Apartments, short-term stays, people following jobs. The volume is extraordinary. But the quality of movers here had always been inconsistent. I saw the gap."
The name 87 Movers comes from the number his grandmother called for emergencies when he was growing up — a combination of family memory and brand distinctiveness that’s paid dividends. "Nobody forgets 87 Movers," he says. "That was intentional."
The first two years: what worked and what didn’t
Tony launched with a single truck and two crew members, including himself. The first year was bootstrapped entirely from savings and revenue — no outside capital, no debt beyond the truck.
"The best decision I made in year one was obsessing over reviews from the very beginning. Not just getting them — but making every single move worthy of a 5-star review. I treated every job like it was being filmed. That sounds intense, but it became the culture."
The worst decision he made was hiring too fast in the second year when demand picked up. "I was turning down jobs because I didn’t have capacity. So I hired, and I hired too quickly. One of those hires damaged a customer’s furniture and I got a 1-star review — the first one I'd ever gotten. That review affected me more than it probably should have. But it taught me something important: the cost of a bad hire is much higher than the cost of a turned-down job."
From that point, Tony’s hiring process became more rigorous than almost any moving company of his size. A working interview on an actual job. Multiple reference checks. A direct conversation about his standards before the first shift. His crew turnover dropped significantly. His damage rate dropped to near zero.
The marketing approach that changed everything
For his first 18 months, Tony relied entirely on Google reviews and word of mouth. At 50 reviews, he started getting consistent inbound calls. At 100 reviews, the phone was ringing reliably enough that he stopped doing other forms of marketing entirely for a period.
"I tell every mover I talk to: get 100 Google reviews before you spend a dollar on ads. Just get 100 reviews. That will do more for your business than $5,000 in advertising."
The second major marketing shift was what Tony calls "becoming useful online." He started answering moving questions in Las Vegas Facebook groups and on Nextdoor — not pitching 87 Movers, just being genuinely helpful about moving logistics in Vegas. His name and company became associated with expertise.
"People started tagging me when someone asked for mover recommendations. I wasn’t paying for that. I earned it by being the person who actually helped people rather than just trying to sell them."
The systemization phase
By year three, 87 Movers had grown to three trucks and a full-time crew. The operational challenge shifted from finding customers to delivering consistent quality without Tony on every job.
"I had to systematize everything I did intuitively. The walkthrough process. The wrapping standards. The end-of-job check. The review ask. None of it happened reliably when I wasn’t there unless I wrote it down and trained it."
Tony created what he calls the "87 Standard" — a one-page operations document that every crew member gets on their first day and reviews quarterly. It covers the specific behaviors that 87 Movers is known for: the pre-move walkthrough, the furniture wrapping protocol, the customer update communication during long moves, and the post-job cleanup.
"The day I knew it was working was when I got a 5-star review that specifically mentioned my foreman — not me. The customer said 'Marcus ran the job exactly the way Tony would have.' That’s systemization working."
What he’d tell someone starting out today
We asked Tony what he’d tell someone starting a moving company in Las Vegas — or any market — today.
"First: reviews are the foundation of everything. Not just getting them — earning them. The way you earn them is by running every job like your reputation depends on it. Because it does."
"Second: hire slowly. I cannot emphasize this enough. One wrong hire costs you more than you made on 10 jobs. Take your time, do working interviews, check references. The best crew members you have will stay because the people around them meet their standard."
"Third: understand your numbers from day one. Know your cost per job. Know your margin. Know what it costs you to do a move before you quote it. I've seen movers run at full capacity for a year and have nothing to show for it because they were pricing without understanding their costs."
"And fourth: get online. Build your Google presence. Build your reviews. Build your GBP. The movers who own the top of local search own their market. Everyone else is competing for the leftovers."
87 Movers today
Tony runs a multi-truck, multi-crew operation that handles both residential and commercial moves throughout the Las Vegas Valley. His Google reviews — over 200 with a near-perfect rating — represent years of deliberately earned trust.
He’s also become a voice in the Las Vegas mover community, mentoring newer operators and occasionally contributing to moving industry discussions online. "There’s enough business for everybody who does it right," he says. "What I hate is the operators who do it wrong — because they make everyone’s job harder by making customers afraid to trust movers."
87 Movers can be found at 87movers.com.