A Salute to Mike the Mover

Earlier this summer, I was on National Public Radio. In a 20-minute program called “Planet Money,” I was interviewed about a political fight I’d covered as a columnist at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer 25 years ago. And NPR did a fine story. They got everything right.

NPR’s story came about because Dylan Sloan, a 23-year-old intern at NPR’s Washington DC office, had been searching the internet for accounts of no-hope candidates who run for political office. The state of Washington has a whole tribe of them because it is easy to get on the ballot here. Among the names, one stood out: Mike the Mover.

The state printed his photo and statement in the Voters’ Pamphlet and mailed it to every registered voter. Free advertising!

His given name was Michael Patrick Shanks. “Mike the Mover” was his moving company. But when the state refused to put “Mike ‘the Mover’ Shanks” on election ballots, Mike went to court. He jettisoned “Shanks” and became “Mike the Mover,” complete with “the” as his middle name.

Mike wasn’t going to get elected governor, lieutenant governor, senator, sheriff, or any of the other offices he ran for. He wasn’t going to get past the primary. To Mike, running for office was marketing. The state printed his photo and statement in the Voters’ Pamphlet and mailed it to every registered voter. Free advertising! Mike also bought an RV and painted on a giant label, “Mike the Mover,” with a picture of himself and the words, “Urban Assault Vehicle.” Mike was also a Civil War reenactor. Sometimes he would dress up as a Union general — or a Confederate — and walk around downtown Seattle.

None of this made him worth a national story 25 years later. His significance was he had accomplished, which was to break open a 50-year-old state-imposed cartel of home movers.

That’s the story that appealed to Dylan Sloan. He had recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Bowdoin College in Maine, and had set out in a career in journalism. He had worked as an intern at Forbes. He knew the theory of regulatory capture — and Mike had faced a real example of it. The home movers, who had been regulated since 1935 in the heady days of the New Deal, had “captured” the regulators by bending the system to benefit themselves.

Earlier this year, Sloan tracked down Mike, who had long since retired. Mike led Sloan to me. Back in 1997–98, I had been a business reporter and columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The paper died in 2009, but for more than a century it had been Seattle’s morning daily. And in the two-newspaper town Seattle then was, I was the only member of the press who saw Mike the Mover as someone more interesting than a name on the ballot.

The home movers, who had been regulated since 1935 in the heady days of the New Deal, had “captured” the regulators by bending the system to benefit themselves.

“Mike is a marketing guy from headlight to hydraulic lift,” I wrote in the Post-Intelligencer of September 17, 1997. “Others have rolled quietly and illegally into household moving. Mike changed his name from Michael P. Shanks to Mike the Mover and put his picture in the Yellow Pages. In 1992 the regulated movers’ group, the Washington Movers’ Conference, complained, ‘Mike the Mover has made a mockery of our entire regulatory system.’”

That was Mike: Mock the system. Ignore the rules. The NPR “Planet Money” program quotes Mike recalling his first encounter with “the furniture police,” who tailed him and his crew and stopped them in a restaurant parking lot.

“They read us the riot act. I said, ‘Hey, I don’t know what you guys are up to, but we’re going to lunch, OK?’ ‘No, you’re doing an illegal move.’ I said, ‘No, I’m not. I’m going to lunch.’ They wrote me a citation, got in their car, and left. We went and ate lunch. I didn’t give a crap. I had a job to do.”

This happened many times. Once he even spent a night in jail.

It took a long time for the state to go that far. “Mike had started in 1981 with one truck,” I wrote. “When he painted his name on his trucks his competitors noticed him and complained. In 1987 the state cited him. In 1992 it hit him with a cease-and-desist order. In 1993 it slapped him with a court injunction to stop moving customers. He ignored them all. [State] enforcers wrote 89 tickets, each a gross misdemeanor, for operating without a license.”

Mike applied for a state license several times. “Here’s how it works,” he told me. “If you’re going to apply, you have to sign an affidavit promising not to operate while it’s pending.” The process takes a year. During that time, you have to prove you’re willing and able — and if you’ve stopped operating, the existing carriers will argue that you’re no longer able. You also have to prove to a tribunal that you are needed — that your competitors cannot serve every customer. They will tell the tribunal that they’re taking all the business they can get, which is probably true. And your application will be denied.

In 1987 the state cited him. In 1992 it hit him with a cease-and-desist order. In 1993 it slapped him with a court injunction to stop moving customers. He ignored them all.

Under that system, there had been no increase in the number of licensed movers in Washington from 1948 to 1998, a period of 50 years.

Unlicensed movers, beginning with Mike, had spread like little furry creatures in the age of dinosaurs. Mike led, and they followed — and the customers liked them, because they undercut the state-set prices that the licensed companies charged. And there had been a political change. For decades, the free-market economists had campaigned against the license system, arguing that it harmed the public. In the late 1970s, Congress and the Carter administration deregulated interstate trucking. The state of Washington was an island of price-and-entry regulation in an unregulated sea.

In April 1998, state regulators had a hearing about their proposal to open the market to new entrants. And at the hearing, one of the unlicensed movers, an African-American, stood up and said, “I don’t see much diversity here among license holders.”

A licensed mover replied, “Don’t blame me that my grandfather got a permit.”

“That’s exactly the point,” the black mover said. “Your grandfather got one and mine didn’t. All I want is a chance to compete with you.”

That was the story. Someone had to wrench open the closed industry — someone “unreasonable,” a party crasher.

And that did it. The regulators at the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission were not about to defend racism. They granted the man a license — and the door began creaking open. Seven months later, they opened the door to new entrants generally. Since then, movers are still required to have licenses, but the number of license holders statewide has increased by 50%.

Mike was not one of them. When he was finally offered a state license, he recalled, “I told them to shove it.” He never did get one.

Nick Fountain, the host of “Planet Money,” found Mike’s attitude baffling. Why not be a gracious winner? Well, Mike was not that guy.

“Maybe you need a person like Mike who’s willing to wage a battle that any reasonable person would drop,” Fountain said.

And that was the story. Someone had to wrench open the closed industry — someone “unreasonable,” a party crasher, a barking dog in the antique store. That was Mike the Mover.

When he was finally offered a state license, he recalled, “I told them to shove it.” He never did get one.

Mike ran his business for another 20 years, until his doctor told him his body was no longer good for moving furniture. Three years ago, he closed the company rather than sell it. Now 70, he has renamed himself Uncle Mover. “I have a lot of nephews,” he told me, “and they don’t call me Mike.”

He calls himself that, though. “There’s only one Mike the Mover,” he said.

In 1997–98, I got four good newspaper columns out of Mike and his fight to open up the moving industry. This year, the NPR intern, Dylan Sloan, resurrected the 25-year-old story to make a point about markets and the competitors who make the system work.

I was hoping the story would get him a job at National Public Radio, but NPR has hit a rough patch and has not been hiring. Sloan has left NPR and is working at a pizzeria on Peaks Island near Portland, Maine.

I called him and wished him luck finding work in today’s journalism.