Movement mayhem as lockdowns slowdown relocations

Data from one of Australia’s largest moving companies reveals a massive run up in items in storage.

Ben Cohn cofounder and co-owner of Taxibox, at their storage facility in Erskineville in Sydney. Picture: Britta Campion / The Australian

Border lockdowns have caused havoc for people trying to relocate interstate and boosted demand for storage, a popular moving firm says.

Data supplied by moving and storage company Taxibox shows people have poured out of Melbourne in recent months, heading north to Sydney or Brisbane. The number of boxes in storage has also ballooned due to thousands of people being stuck overseas or unwilling to commit to a big move during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Interstate moves from Melbourne to Brisbane almost doubled between December 2019 and 2020. Trips from Sydney to Melbourne almost halved.

Taxibox’s figures show an almost immediate fall in movements when Australia was hit by its first wave of lockdowns as tens of thousands of prospective internal “migrants” put their goods into storage around the country.

The storage pandemonium was exacerbated by the tens of thousands of Australians trapped overseas with goods in storage with the company, unable to return and claim them.

Taxibox co-founder Ben Cohn said the numbers were stark and told a story of a nation desperate to break free.

“We had a super-busy March for new bookings and then April, May, June fall off a cliff in terms of our bookings.

“The redeliveries (back to people) doubly fell off a cliff.

“In August, September, October, November, huge growth in bookings but the actual redeliveries remained low and subdued,” he said.

He said December 2020 was the busiest month ever for the business.

“It went totally nuts for us around that period,” Mr Cohn said.

“We had lots of pent up bookings from March to December flushing out of the system.”

Mr Cohn said the COVID-19 period had exacerbated ongoing trends across the company, with average storage times for goods ballooning.

“We had four years of growth in boxes in storage in five months because redeliveries have been so low,” he said.

For Taxibox the blowout in storage times caused by COVID-19 has been a blessing, not a curse.

The secret to the company’s business model is not making money on deliveries or moving between cities, but on the cost per month to keep people’s goods in storage long-term.

“We’re all about wanting the boxes to sit in storage for as long as possible,” he said.

“Delivery is free and redelivery is free if you’ve got it in storage for three-plus months.”

The national average for storage at the company is now up to a year.

This is well above the typical six month storage and redelivery time frame Taxibox has normally dealt with.

“It’s a combination of people living regionally and not coming back to the cities and a whole bunch of people overseas or choosing to renovate,” Mr Cohn said.

The business charges between $99 to $139 per month per box.

Users of the service pay no fee for delivery or redelivery of their boxes if they store for longer than three months, a set-up Mr Cohn said was growing in popularity.

When the last five-day lockdown hit Victoria calls to leave jumped from 32.6 per cent of all Taxibox’s customers to 44.9 per cent.

Since the Victorian lockdown jobs booked to leave Melbourne have dropped back down to 25 per cent.

Mr Cohn said the numbers probably reflected many people looking at the looming lockdowns and making the call to get out.

“People have said ‘I don’t want to deal with this — I’m going away until this dies down’,” Mr Cohn said.