The Actual Family Behind Every Family Time Moving Job

My name is Dale Hutchins, and before I tell you anything about how we run moves, I should tell you where I’m from. I grew up on my family’s land off Old Kansas City Road, just outside Osawatomie — the same road our office sits on today. I was hauling hay and running equipment before I ever backed a truck up to a loading dock.

I spent about ten years doing odd-hauling and small local moves out of a borrowed flatbed, the kind of work you pick up by word of mouth in a county this size. Somewhere in there I got tired of watching Miami County get treated like a drive-through on the way to Kansas City — movers from out of town who didn’t know a gravel lane from a paved one, quoting jobs sight unseen. So in 2009, my wife Carol and I started Family Time Moving with one truck and a rule we haven’t broken since: the person who quotes your move and the person who carries your couch should be the same people, every time.

That first year, Carol kept the books at our kitchen table and I drove the one truck we owned to every job myself, whether it was a studio apartment in town or a farmhouse full of three generations of furniture. There wasn’t a choice about who’d show up — it was me, or it didn’t happen.

It’s Still Us, Just More of Us Now

Seventeen years in, that rule hasn’t changed — it’s just grown a little. Carol still answers the phone herself most days and keeps the books. Our son Tyler joined in 2017 as our estimator and dispatcher; he’d rather walk a house in person than quote it off a photo. Our daughter Megan came on in 2019 and runs most of our long-distance jobs, out toward Kansas City and beyond.

There’s no office in another state deciding how your move gets staffed. There’s no rotating bench of day-labor subs we call in when we’re short. There’s us.

Growing Without Losing the Point

We’ve had people over the years suggest we franchise this, or at least add a second location outside the county. We’ve turned it down every time. Four trucks and nine people is the size where I can still tell you, honestly, exactly who is going to be at your house on move day — a tenth truck would mean a stranger behind the wheel, and that’s not the business Carol and I set out to build.

Who Actually Shows Up

Cole Isn’t Blood, But He’s Family By Now

Cole Whitfield grew up two farms down from us, and he’s been running crews for Family Time Moving since 2013 — longer than either of our kids have worked here. He’s not a subcontractor and he’s not seasonal help; he’s been at Thanksgiving. When people ask if “family-owned” is just a phrase on our trucks, Cole’s the answer. Thirteen years in, we don’t treat him any different than we treat Tyler or Megan, and neither does he.

“People ask me what makes us different, and it’s not a slogan I had to come up with. It’s that I know Cole’s kids’ names, and he’s known mine since they were little. That’s who’s going to be in your driveway.” — Carol Hutchins, office manager, Family Time Moving

What This Actually Changes on Your Move Day

It’s easy to say “family-owned” and mean nothing by it. Here’s what it actually means when you book with us:

• No call center. Carol answers the phone, and if she’s busy, she calls you back — not a scheduling service in another time zone
• No franchise territory rules. We don’t answer to a corporate office that caps our crew sizes or dictates our pricing from out of state
• No rotating temp labor. The five people above are who staff your job, not whoever a staffing agency sent over that morning
• Local knowledge that isn’t rehearsed. Cole and Tyler both grew up around these gravel roads; they’re not learning your address from a GPS pin the morning of

A Few Things People Ask Us

Will you personally be on my crew? For local jobs, often yes, or Cole will be running it. I still ride along for folks I grew up around.

Who’s driving if my move is long-distance? Megan runs most of our long-distance jobs herself, start to finish.

Do you ever bring in outside labor? No. Four trucks, nine people, all of them ours — that’s the whole operation.

What happens if Cole or Megan is out sick on my move date? Between the five of us and our regular crew, we’ve never had to hand a job to a stranger, and we don’t plan to start.

Why not just grow faster? Because the whole point was never to be the biggest mover between Kansas City and Wichita — it was to be one a Miami County family could trust with everything they own.

Curious what a move actually costs with a crew like ours? See our 2026 pricing breakdown. Living somewhere with a long gravel lane? Read what to expect on a rural move.