Before the company, there was a habit
Grant Ashby spent his high school summers running freight for a regional carrier that worked the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel corridor, while his father was years into hauling freight off the Elizabeth River docks nearby in South Norfolk. Neither of them thought much of a crew that showed up without checking the tunnel schedule first. What Grant noticed, watching other movers over the years, was that the ones who struggled usually weren’t short on muscle, they’d simply never checked the flood line, the tide, or the tunnel timing before quoting a price. So when he opened Movers Chesapeake in 2015, he built the company around checking those three things first and writing the number down only after.
I watched a mover I knew get burned on a job over in Great Bridge once, quoted low on the phone, then hit the family with another four hundred dollars once he saw what was actually in the house. He lost them as customers for good over it. I decided early that one truck, people I’d vetted myself, and a number that didn’t move after we shook hands beat growing fast and losing trust the way I’d just watched happen. — Grant Ashby, owner
The company today
A decade after that first truck, the operation is still built the same way: same Portsmouth Blvd yard, same short list of people making the calls.
- Started2015 by Grant Ashby
- Fleet sizeSix trucks, titled to the company
- StaffingEvery mover is a W-2 hire, nobody subcontracted
- StandingVirginia-registered and insured to move households
- Yard4180 Portsmouth Blvd, Chesapeake, VA 23321
How the roster grew
Nobody got hired ahead of the workload here; each name below joined once the job list actually called for it.
- 2015: Grant starts the company with one truck and the flat per-truck rate it still runs on today
- 2016: Boone Ferris signs on and becomes the crew’s go-to for Deep Creek and flood-zone jobs
- 2019: Paige Donnelly takes over the office and starts writing every quote by hand
- 2020: Isiah Crenshaw joins, focused on South Norfolk and Indian River properties
- 2021: Theo Marsh steps into dispatch, routing crews around the HRBT and MMMBT
- 2022: Nadia Cross comes aboard for storage coordination as the fleet reaches six trucks
What a fly-in crew never catches
A crew that only shows up for one day ends up solving problems in real time, on the clock, on your dime. Ours gets there already solved, worked out during the routing and prep the night before, not improvised while your boxes sit on the lawn.
- Flood-zone conditions near the Great Dismal Swamp Canal get checked before dispatch even assigns a truck
- Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel rush-hour patterns get built into tomorrow’s route tonight, not discovered mid-drive
- Low ground and crawlspace foundations in Deep Creek and South Norfolk get checked before a truck ever tries to park close
- A PCS order shifting a date means the schedule moves a day, not a crew stuck at a gate with nowhere to park
The people behind your move
Six people keep this company running, each with a lane that doesn’t overlap the others.
- Grant AshbyFounder, still takes on the toughest flood-zone and tunnel-timed jobs himself
- Paige DonnellyOffice manager and scheduling, writes every quote by hand
- Theo MarshOperations and dispatch, plans daily routes around the HRBT and MMMBT
- Boone FerrisLead crew chief, runs flood-zone and cross-town jobs
- Isiah CrenshawSenior mover, handles South Norfolk and Indian River properties
- Nadia CrossMove coordinator and storage, manages closing delays and PCS reschedules
A decade in, I still walk a Deep Creek lot myself before quoting a flood-zone job, same as day one. Word travels fast enough in Hampton Roads that referrals do more for our schedule than any ad campaign ever has. — Grant Ashby, owner, Movers Chesapeake
