Pacific Coast Business Times: SLO Brothers Bring Success to Meathead

Pacific Coast Business Times
SLO brothers bring success to Meathead
By Emily Rancer
Staff Writer

At San Luis Obispo-based Meathead Movers, the business is a mix between a sports team and a professional high-end business, according to President and Chief Executive Officer Aaron Steed, 27.

That’s because brothers Aaron and Evan Steed, who founded the company in 1997, hire mostly athletes. And the combination has proved successful, as Meathead Movers has become the Tri-Counties’ largest moving and storage company.

“The big national brands, they are all pretty much the same because they have subcontracted truck drivers and they have subcontracted their day laborers loading and unloading,” Aaron Steed said. “Where with us, you have carefully screened, interviewed-multiples-times, clean-cut athletes who come from good families…That’s how we’ve grown to be, by far, the biggest moving company in the Tri-Counties.”

The Steed brothers both wrestled in high school and Evan Steed, now 25, also played football. They began their dabble in the moving industry by helping family friends load and unload U-Haul and Ryder trucks in high school. Before long, the brothers realized they’d hit on “something special” and began taking their jobs more seriously. Though Aaron Steed studied at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and Cuesta Community College, neither brother graduated.

“School kind of got in the way of us growing our business,” Aaron Steed said. “…We started saying ‘no’ to too many moving jobs and we didn’t want to pass up the opportunities.”

So the brothers applied their approach toward sports to their business – and came out on the winning side. In 2007, they accomplished more than 2,350 moves. While Aaron Steed serves as CEO, Evan acts as chief financial officer and chief operating officer.

In January 2007, Meathead Movers opened a second office in Camarillo. Aaron Steed said their roughly 150 athlete employees are hired from all the major area colleges: Cal Poly, UC Santa Barbara, Cuesta College, Moorpark College, Oxnard College, Ventura College, California State University Channel Islands and California Lutheran University.

The Steed brothers also recognized early on that having a successful business doesn’t stop at the profit line – it includes helping out the community. For the past eight years, Meathead Movers has donated its services to women in domestic violence situations. It also collected goods and trucked them to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and again to San Diego during the fires.

“I’m always so impressed that someone in the younger generation has a maturity with his business that he’s doing so much with the community,” said Mary Verdin, president of Verdin Marketing Ink, who nominated Meathead Movers for the award. “…And it just impresses me that these guys have, from day one, been successful businessmen but have always included that giving-back philosophy.”

Aaron Steed said Meathead Movers expects to expand next year with the opening of a third office in San Diego.