This article was posted in the Waterbury Republican in April of 2020.
Movers settle in: Daley Moving & Storage finds a home, with ample space…
TORRINGTON — For more than 60 years, Daley Moving & Storage (Owned by Cousin Gina & Jeffrey Bunch)… has moved the rich and famous from one house to the next. Now, the locally owned moving company has a home of its own, in the city’s industrial park, at 230 Ella Grasso Ave.
“We have been saying we’ve got to find our own place, because we have been renting, we’ve been paying so much money to rent and rent and rent,” owner Gina Mariano-Bunch said. “We just didn’t stop dreaming.”
Godin Property Brokers announced the $1.6 million sale of the 46,000-square-foot building last week. The building serves as the company’s headquarters as well as a warehouse, filled with wood crates and 7-foot vaults stacked three stories high. It also has three truck loading bays to expedite moves.
“This is my dream building, this is one of the only buildings in this industrial park that goes three high,” Mariano-Bunch said. “Most warehouses you can only get two stacked on top of each other.”
Daley Moving, which has offices in West Hartford and Palm Beach, Fla., has built a following among local residents and more than a dozen celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Denis Leary and Bon Jovi.
The company offers storage services for $47.50 per crate per month and moving services for $172 per hour for three men and a truck.
“We are soup to nuts. We do disposal, we do donations, we do clean-outs,” said Jeffrey Bunch.
Mariano-Bunch said the company could have found its forever home sooner, if not for two setbacks it suffered in 2009: the Great Recession and a fire that burned down a former warehouse location on Church Street, Torrington’s largest fire in at least 35 years.
“We had quite a business buildup, we had over 350 clients in our storage warehouse,” she said. “We lost everything to the ground. The only thing we had left was our Rolling Stock, a telephone line and my father’s desk.”
Daley Moving had been relying on the storage business as residual income to weather the economic downturn. With that gone, the company’s outlook appeared bleak. “We basically started over again with nothing,” she said.
The business relies on its good customer service and word of mouth. Now, it employs up to 20 people during peak moving months in the summer who go through training, including packing, lifting and padding classes. They give their customers time-saving tips to reduce the price of a move to fit a budget.
Daley Moving has been a family-owned business since Mariano-Bunch’s late father, Tony Mariano helped start the company in the 1950’s. Mariano-Bunch grew up helping her father run the business, and her office is filled with photos of him and mementos, like a hand-written note. She met her husband, Jeffrey Bunch, after he started working at the moving company.
The couple have five children, all of whom have worked at the business in some capacity during their childhood and young adulthood, including Lauren Bunch, David Bunch and Jeffrey Bunch, Jr., who were at the facility Wednesday.
“This is a hard job and so that’s how they go out into the world, as really good workers,” Mariano-Bunch said.
Who: Daley Moving & Storage
What: Moving and storage company
Where: 230 Ella Grasso Avenue, Torrington
When: Office hours 9 a.m.- 5 p.m.
Please give Gina a call to congratulate her on this Monumental Accomplishment. Her cell phone is 203.509.6191. We are all so proud f her for persevering through many obstacles, business, personal and financial… to accomplish completing this major purchase and undertaking. She would love for you to schedule a time to tour the new offices and warehouse at your earliest convenience.
Love… Cousin “Chucki Re”
