Listen to this article

New Jersey remains a major corporate headquarters hub — especially for the pharmaceutical and financial service industries — and the state’s economy benefits when corporations are encouraged to base their operations here, said Peter Toscano, whose Elizabeth moving company relocates corporate executives to the state nationally and…“We do a lot of moves for national accounts, Fortune 2000 companies with headquarters in New Jersey and New York,” said Toscano, chief executive of Reliable Van & Storage, an agent of Allied Van Lines.  Allied named Reliable its Agent of the Year for 2014.

Toscano said his company moves executives and their families across the country, from places like Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta and Charlotte.  “They come to Bergen, Middlesex, Westchester — generally 40 or 50 miles [from] New York City,” he said

Toscano said Reliable does about 8,000 moves a year. About half are inbound moves to the New Jersey metropolitan area and half are outbound moves.  His company’s trucks operate in 48 states.

International moves are about 40 percent of his business, led by the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and South and Central America.

Toscano said he has about 80 regular corporate clients whose “world headquarters are right here, in either New York or New Jersey. And there is always an influx of people coming back to the home office.”

His clients include major banking, pharmaceutical, telecommunications and accounting companies, and encouraging them to be here “is absolutely of major importance” to the state.

Toscano advocates state incentive programs that bring headquarters to New Jersey, noting that the economic benefits that flow from the corporate headquarters stimulate a wide range of business activity for the state.

Toscano said his grandfather Pietro Toscano founded the company 85 years ago. And the family’s fourth generation, his son Peter Jr. and daughter Patrice, now work for the company.

“My grandfather delivered ice with a horse and wagon in the 1930s,” Toscano said. “When the refrigerator was invented, he didn’t know what to do with his horse and wagon. People kept asking him to move things — so he went into the moving business.”

In the spirit of his entrepreneurial grandfather, Reliable continues to explore new opportunities, Toscano said. For example, the company has ventured into providing “last mile” delivery of products ordered online from Lowes and handles deliveries for companies that refurbish hotels in the metropolitan area.

Over the past decade, corporations have been moving away from directly relocating executives, and instead giving executives a stipend to hire their own moving company, he said.  So these executives “are now on the Internet looking for a moving company,” Toscano said. “We have gotten involved in advertising and maintaining our website so that we can attract people who are really corporate relocations, but who are doing it on their own.”

He said this has been “a learning curve for us but we’re doing very well.”

That segment of his business has grown more than 25 percent a year over the past five years: “We have to keep reinventing ourselves and looking outside the box.”

ALSO ON NJBIZ:

Former Genova Burns name partner joins established firm

Devils paired with winery in latest business partnership

Industry Insights blog: Gaming in North Jersey will save Atlantic City, Lesniak says