Planet Money - Mike The Mover vs. The Furniture Police

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

In 1978, a young man named Mike Shanks started a moving business in the north end of Seattle. It was just him and a truck — a pretty small operation. Things were going great. Then one afternoon, he was pulled over and cited for moving without a permit.The investigators who cited him were part of a special unit tasked with enforcing utilities and transportation regulations. Mike calls them the furniture police. To legally be a mover, Mike needed a license. Otherwise, he'd face fines — and even potentially jail time. But soon he'd learn that getting that license was nearly impossible.Mike is the kind of guy who just can't back down from a fight. This run-in with the law would set him on a decade-long crusade against Washington's furniture moving industry, the furniture police, and the regulations themselves. It would turn him into a notorious semi-celebrity, bring him to courtrooms across the state, lead him to change his legal name to 'Mike The Mover,' and send him into the furthest depths of Washington's industrial regulations.The fight was personal. But it drew Mike into a much larger battle, too: An economic battle about regulation, and who it's supposed to protect. Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Planet Money from NPR. You know how, back in the day, people used to take last names based on their professions all the time? You had the Brewers, the Bakers, the Masons, a lot of Smiths. The other day, we met the modern equivalent. Alright, so Mike, sorry, Mover, I don't know how I refer to you. Mover. My mother even called me Mover. At birth, she named him Michael Patrick Shanks. But now he's, yeah, he's a Mover.

And everyone calls him Mover. It's his legal last name. He showed us his driver's license. That's M-O-V as in Victor, E-R. Mover as in Mover. Mover. Mike started a moving businessver as in mover. Mover. Mike started a moving business in Seattle in the late 1970s. And one day in 1987, he had an encounter that would change his life.

Mike and another guy spent the morning hauling furniture and boxes down flights of stairs, loading their trucks, and then they headed to the customer's new place. On the way, they stopped for lunch at the burger joint. As we were pulling into the parking lot, I noticed there was an unmarked car behind me with reds and blues flashing in the windshield. Uh-huh. I thought, what the hell could this be?

And they jumped out, and they had uniforms on. They pulled out their badges, and it showed, we're the furniture police. They weren't officially called that, but they explained to Mike they were state investigators for the Utilities and Transportation Commission. And their job was, in part, to enforce regulations governing the moving business. Yeah, so to Mike, the furniture police. Yeah, so to Mike, the furniture police. My partner, he jumped out of his truck,

and the officer, furniture police, said, let me see your ID. And my partner said, let me see your ID. So he pulled out his badge and shoved it in his face. And me, I just sat there basically wondering what the hell is going on here. They told Mike they were issuing him a citation because this move and his entire moving business were illegal. Under the rules and regulations of the state of Washington, Mike needed a permit.

And he did not have one. And the penalty he faced for this was pretty severe, a $5,000 fine and a year in jail. 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, okay? No, you're doing an illegal move. I said, no, I'm not. I'm going to lunch. And they wrote me a citation, got in their car and left, and we went and ate lunch.

How were you feeling at that moment? I didn't give a crap. I had a job to do. Mike would soon learn that getting his hands on one of those moving permits would prove nearly impossible. He didn't know it yet, but he had stumbled across a battle about regulation and what it's good for. It's a battle that plays out every day in nearly every industry, usually in kind of boring, lawyerly ways. But Mike is not a lawyer, and he is certainly not boring. For him, this wasn't about some big lofty ideal. He's just the kind of person who can't back away from a conflict, who even seems to enjoy it.

So this would get personal. Mike would launch a decade-long fight to settle a score. And fight himself caught up in a much bigger fight about who exactly regulation is supposed to protect. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Nick Fountain. And I'm Dylan Sloan. When the government sets out to regulate an industry, there is a spectrum of approaches it can take. At one extreme, let anybody come in and do business as they please. Try to promote a free market. There will be plenty of competition, which will drive down prices, and that will be good for consumers.

But there's a downside, right? If you're letting just anyone in, shady operators can come in and take advantage of people. And if the government is worried about that, it can push things in the other direction and add regulations to protect consumers. And here's the peculiar thing. That more regulated world is often the world that existing businesses want. It's the world Mike found himself living in. And he was going to fight to change it. After he finished his burger, unloaded his truck, and folded his moving blankets, Mike started trying to figure out how to get a moving permit.

Because he wanted to fight this charge from the furniture police. Well, I wanted to prove to the court I'm just not your normal outlaw. I just want to know, how do you get a permit to be a mover? Mike figured, might as well show up and ask. I went down to the headquarters of the furniture police and I got... Into the belly of the beast. That's right. That is the Seattle Office of the Utilities and Transportation Commission, the UTC. They're the agency that regulates moving companies in the state of Washington.

And Mike told them he wanted to go legit to get a permit. They said, you're wasting your time. And Mike told them he wanted to go legit to get a permit. They said, you're wasting your time. Did you ask them to detail the process? Yes, and I also asked for an application form. They said, we're telling you, you're wasting your time. Mike says the UTC told them that they hadn't issued a new permit in a long time, like decades. We tried to figure out exactly how long. We asked the UTC about this, and they said their records don't go back

that far. But one former high-ranking UTC official told us that it is probably the case that when Mike visited the office in the late 80s, no new permits had been issued for like 40 years. So the message Mike is hearing is basically, we do not give out new permits. Tough luck. Not the answer he was looking for. According to him, he got pretty mad, said some mean words, eventually got kicked out of the office. And we should say, Mike is kind of a loose cannon. In fact, he's been known to drive around Seattle with a working cannon in the back of his pickup truck. That one's not loose. It's bolted to the truck. Also, to walk around downtown dressed as Civil War generals, both Union and Confederate, the UTC would eventually get an injunction against him after he sent some unsavory photos.

Yeah, he's a known figure. Ask any Seattleite of the flannel and Nirvana air if they know of Mike the Mover, and there's a decent chance they've heard of him, including Bruce Ramsey. I was a reporter, a business reporter and columnist at the Seattle Morning Newspaper, the Post-Intelligencer, for about 15 years. And then after that, I was an editorial writer and columnist for the Seattle Times for about 15 years. You had to write, what, a column a week for two decades or something like that? Yeah, I did. Mike was pretty good fodder for columns, huh?

He was. He was. Bruce was a business reporter. He loved a regulation story. And he's looked into the history of moving regulations in Washington. The regulations were first put in place during the Great Depression. And, like, for some good reasons. So that customers would know what they were going to have to pay, and so there would be some recourse if a mover lost or broke their stuff. And then for decades, nobody had really touched these rules. The state had grown, the economy

had grown, the population had grown, and the whole moving industry had been exactly the same. It hadn't grown. It had actually shrunk. Because it was hard to get a permit to start a new moving company. There was, like, technically a way to do it. You had to take some reasonable steps, like submitting some financial information, listing your equipment, and agreeing to regular inspections. And then you had to show up at a hearing. And when you finally got your hearing, this is where the process was so stacked against new entrants, it was almost laughable.

Here's why. It was on you to prove that there was a sufficient need for another mover in the area where you wanted to set up shop. And here's the kicker. The owners of the already established licensed moving companies would also be at this hearing. And they'd say, well, we don't need these guys. We can handle all the business. Yeah. I mean, who wouldn't say you don't need competition?

Well, that's it. And who's going to stand up and say, I think we ought to have new competitors to compete against me. And if those companies said there was no need for new movers in that area, that could kill your permit application. During this time, everyone who applied for a new permit was getting turned down, including Mike. His permit application was denied, the first of five times this would eventually happen, according to court records. Yeah, when Bruce heard about how the established movers could keep newcomers like Mike out of the industry, he thought, wait a minute, is there something fishy going on here?

It caught my ear because I had taken some economics courses in college and had heard the theory of how sometimes an industry which is regulated in order to supposedly protect the public and protect the consumers, how that regulation gets captured by the industry itself. And really, the regulation protects the people who are in the industry from anybody competing with them. So I'd heard the theory, and this was a case that seemed to fit that exactly. The term for this is regulatory capture.

It's just like Bruce said, when an industry is able to influence the regulations that are supposedly keeping them in line for their own benefit. And to Bruce, it seemed like Washington's movers had done just that. Under this system, they got to go to these hearings and have a direct influence on who got a license. They could tell the state to keep their competitors out. And furniture moving was such a niche industry that nobody really noticed or cared enough to change things. Yeah, like maybe this was hurting consumers by making their moves, I don't know, $200 more expensive. But how often do you move? Most people are just going to shrug it off and say, you know what? Moving's the worst and not think about it for a while. And most would-be movers are just going to say, fine,

if I can't be a mover, I'll try out plumbing or teaching. Seems better. But not Mike. No, because Mike, remember, does not back down. He kept on moving illegally. And as soon as Mike returned to business, the furniture police were onto him. How long did it take for you to be on first name basis with them? Oh, probably a month or two. It was like the furniture police were following him. How did they find you? Like, how did they know where you were? Well, that's a great question. It's called stealing a customer. Stealing a customer. Here's what he means. If you ever hired a mover, you know you got to shop around for quotes.

But that was kind of pointless in Washington at the time, because all the licensed moving companies charged exactly the same rates. The regulations forced them to. But if a customer were to call Mike, he could undercut the other movers. He wasn't licensed. He didn't have to abide by the rate regulations. He didn't have to pay for as much insurance, could wriggle out of payroll taxes. So he was cheaper.

He'd steal the big company's customers. And then, according to Mike's theory, he would get suspicious. And they called the customer and said, who did you decide to pick as your mover? Oh, Mike the mover. So they knew exactly where the house was. They knew what day they were moving. And all they had to do was get those furniture police in a squad car and sit outside the house and watch. What was the standard interaction with the furniture police like?

Give us a scene. Very ugly. They would try to act tough, but they weren't like my movers. We're all a bunch of beasts. It's not like it ever came to fisticuffs. They would just take the ticket and finish the move. And to be clear, there were other unlicensed movers out there. There were a lot of them, but Mike just seemed to be the favorite of the furniture police. Maybe because he didn't exactly try to keep a low profile. I mean, he had a bunch of employees driving big trucks with Mike the Mover painted on the side.

But it got bigger and I had more employees. My employees were now getting cited. So the number just kept growing and growing. And I'd go down to court and they said, the judge, Mr. Mover, you have a total of 22 citations in this court. Mike was cited at least 57 times, according to court documents. He spent a lot of time in court. He had to pay some fines. He even had to spend a night in jail.

But as soon as he got out, he got right back to it. Here's Bruce Ramsey, the journalist from before. He had no fear. I mean, usually, you know, when the state government threatens to confiscate your trucks and shut you down and take your office equipment and fine you and maybe even throw you in jail, usually, you know, people kind of get pretty meek at that point. And he didn't. No, he didn't. In fact, Mike just kind of got more brazen over the years. In a minute, Mike tries to change the moving regulations from the inside and finds the biggest bullhorn in Washington state.

Back in 1988, when he was getting cited by the furniture police all the time, Mike decided if he couldn't beat him or join him, maybe he could pull the rug right out from under him and fight the rules in a way that no one expected. He decided to run for office. Mike didn't know anything about politics, but he registered to run for lieutenant governor on a Democratic ticket. His campaign platform was extremely simple and also definitely kind of petty. To expose these guys.

You say, like, expose these guys. The furniture police. The furniture police. Nobody in the state of Washington knew what was going on. So what does that mean? Your platform for lieutenant governor was there are furniture police? Well, that was part of it, but I talked about a lot of things about government. The lieutenant governor doesn't do anything. Is that why you wanted the job? No, because they run the Senate.

Mike wasn't in it to run the Senate, but he really did campaign. And how did you feel going into the election? Did you think you were going to win? No, I thought I would do pretty well, but I only got 2%. So you actually wanted to win this thing? Well, I wanted to do better than 2%. He actually did do a little better than he remembered. He got 3.5%. But soon, Mike began to realize that the election might not have been a total loss. After all, even if they didn't vote for him, everyone who voted in the Washington State Democratic primary saw his name on the ballot. Over time, I started figuring, hey, I'm making money off this. When did you first realize that?

this. When did you first realize that? Well, instantly within the time period I had filed for office and the time of the election, my business was starting to go through the roof. Mike had gotten into the game to expose the furniture police, and he was doing that. A lot more people were hearing about this whole moving regulation situation, but he'd also unintentionally stumbled upon a business idea. Running for office was a way to basically just promote his business for free. In the ad biz, this has a name, earned media. And Mike really went for it. Most people that run for office the first time, they lose and it crushes their ego. And I thought, I'm not losing. I'm winning every time I run. I'm getting free publicity. Yeah, the list of races he's entered is extensive.

Even he kind of has trouble keeping track. I've run 19 times. Again, he's underestimating. We checked state records. It's actually 21 times. Lieutenant governor, U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, governor, mayor of Seattle, mayor of Edmonds,

Snohomish County sheriff, King County Executive, State of Washington. For a while, Mike tried to get his name to appear on the ballot as Mike, quote, the mover, Shanks, to keep a consistent brand when advertising his business. But the state told him that his nickname couldn't have anything to do with his line of work. So in 1990, he just changed his legal name to Mike the Mover. He actually changed it again a few years ago to Uncle Mover, but he still goes by Mover. And every chance Mike or Mover got, he would rail against the fat cat moving companies and the regulators supporting them, including Don Lewis. You're sort of like the chief of police. Correct.

The chief of the furniture police. Well, that's your words. Mike's words. Okay. Don worked at the UTC for 25 years. Started off inspecting trucks at the Oregon border, then became an investigator, a.k.a. furniture police, then special investigator, a.k.a. furniture police, then special investigator, a.k.a. special furniture police.

By the time Mike started getting pulled over, Don was the boss of the entire furniture police force of the state of Washington. And other than the name furniture police, Don pretty much agreed with what Mike said about how this would all go down. The furniture police did have squad cars with lights. They did pull people over and issue citations. They even did stakeouts when they heard that an illegal mover might be in the area.

Stakeouts, love it. Stakeout, oh yeah. I'm picturing it like a Western film showdown. You got the furniture police against the outlaw movers and there's tumbleweed going by. It was kind of like that. Well, not in the city of Seattle or King County. There's no tumbleweeds here.

Don told us he had plenty of interactions with Mike. He said they were mostly cordial. He did end up testifying against Mike at a permit hearing at least once. And Don, he thinks of himself as a by-the-book kind of guy. He even knows the exact line of the administrative code that governs movers. Chapter 480, it was seared into my memory. And he said, remember, those moving regulations did have a reason for being. The reason was to provide the consumer with an authorized mover that had a safe operation, who had charged the correct rates, did not hold household goods up for hostage.

And, you know, everybody played by the same rules. Did you ever start to feel that the rules were less about consumer protection and more about protecting the incumbent movers, the ones who already had the licenses? I don't know that I would say that it was about protecting them. It did protect them to some extent. And, you know, but they had gone through the process and then you had somebody that was, you know, just Joe Blow around the block,

buys a truck and says, hey, I'm going to get in the household good moving business. And it really, the consumer would be the one that really loses in the long run. I mean, not if Joe Blow follows rules and regulations. The problem was that Joe Blow couldn't even get a permit if he tried, right? That's true. He, you know, many years went by that no new applicant got a household good license. For decades, nobody had cared about that fact. But by the late 90s, the tide was turning. Industries like trucking had been deregulated federally, and Washington state legislators were starting to take a hard look at what was going on in the moving world, thanks in large part to Mike's

rabble-rousing. And in 1998, the Utilities and Transportation Commission called a big hearing to consider upending half a century of Washington state regulatory tradition. Bruce, the journalist, was there and said it was tense. The regulators packed everyone into a room. There were the licensed movers and then Mike and the other illegal movers. I don't know what movers wear on a day-to-day. Did they break out the suits for this? I think the attorney for the movers were wearing a suit, but those movers, I mean, they were beefy guys.

They don't wear suits and ties to move furniture. No, they weren't wearing suits. The regulators heard arguments from both sides. Most of the licensed movers, of course, said these rules are good for customers and we don't need the licensed movers was mentioning that the Port Angeles market, that's a city out in the Olympic Peninsula, there's only enough business for two movers. And he said, well, if somebody new moves in, one of the two would have to get out. And the regulator asked, well, how exactly would that hurt the public interest? Litter asks, well, how exactly would that hurt the public interest?

And, well, he says that the people who were employed by that company would no longer be employed. And Mike jumps up and says, hey, that's how it works in business, folks. So he added a little spice to the proceedings. Mike was saying, let competition do its thing. A.K.A. get rid of these licensing rules. He'd been saying that for over a decade, ever since he first got pulled over. And finally, the UTC, which had been sending its investigators after Mike for years, they decided Mike had a point.

Regulators had to try to strike a balance between protecting consumers on the one hand and letting in a new generation of movers on the other. And after these hearings, the UTC decided that balance was off. It should be easier to get a moving permit. Mike won. These days, if you want to hire movers in Washington state, you have many more choices than you would have had 30 years ago. And adjusted for inflation, it's cheaper now than it used to be to move. It's also easier to get a moving permit. You have to submit a bunch of paperwork and go through a criminal background check, but then that's it. No hearing. $550 and a webinar later, and you can have a provisional license and start doing moves the next day. Loosening the requirements does mean that some bad actors slip through the cracks, though.

I talked to a woman from Washington who, a couple years ago, hired a licensed moving company she found online. They showed up. She paid them a little over $6,000. They loaded her life's possessions onto a truck and then just vanished. She got to her new house and they just never came. It sounded absolutely awful. As for Mike, he kept his business running for a while longer. And as for his permit? They offered me a permit and I told him, I told him to shove it. If you can't catch me after 10 years, 11 years doing this, you're never going to get me. And

why should I accept a permit that I didn't apply for? You just handed it over to me. I didn't apply for. You just handed it over to me. I'm not going to lie. That's weird, Mike. It's weird that you fought against the system that wouldn't give you a permit for so long. And then when they made it easier for you to get a permit, you just didn't do it.

No, because I was beating them so bad that they deserved the beating. So why would I go along? But what beating? What point were you making by not getting the permit? Well, hey, can I take that over?

Sure. Sure. As you can probably tell, Mike is not acting here in the way that most people would act. And his victory, it came at a high cost. He pursued this fight over lots of other things in his life that he could have been doing. But here's the thing

about a system like the one Mike was fighting. The benefits are concentrated. They go to just a handful of people, the incumbent movers. But the costs are spread out. Sure, everyone's moves get a little more expensive and a handful of people decide not to become movers. And that's what makes this kind of system so hard to change. If you're one of the people bearing that small cost, it's not logical for you to spend your whole life fighting it. So to fix a problem like that, maybe you need a person like Mike

who's willing to wage a battle that any reasonable person would drop. This episode was produced by Willow Rubin and edited by Sally Helm. Fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineered by Maggie Luthar. Will Chase helped with the research. Jess Jang is our acting executive producer.

Special thanks to Tim Sullivan, Brian McCulloch, Bill Brown, and Diane D'Altremont. And many, many thanks to you, Dylan. Dylan pitched this story when he was an intern. He's made hundreds of calls on it, really got into the details of moving regulations in Washington state. Thank you, Dylan. Thank you. I never thought I would know so much about moving. Tell the people what you're doing next. Next couple months, I'll be slinging pizzas

at a small outdoor pizzeria on Peaks Island off the coast of Portland, Maine. And beyond then, who knows? Sail in the world. I'm Nick Fountain. And I'm Dylan Sloan. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

And a special thanks to our funder, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, for helping to support this podcast.