Jeff’s story
Jeff Nowicki grew up in Highland, where his father worked the blast furnaces at Gary Works and a shift change could rearrange the family’s whole week. He spent his high school summers loading freight for a regional carrier out of the Hammond rail yards instead of taking a lifeguard job like his friends. He noticed early that the crews who struggled weren’t the ones short on muscle, they were the ones who never checked the freight-elevator slot, the driveway width, or the state line before quoting a number.
That’s the standard he built the company on: a price only counts as fair once somebody has actually confirmed a building’s paperwork, measured the driveway, and mapped the Skyway crossing, and done all three before writing anything down.
I kept hearing the same complaint from neighbors about their last move: a cheap number on the phone, then a much higher one once the truck sat on the Skyway during rush hour. I bought my first truck in 2010 so nobody would say that about my own company. — Jeff Nowicki, owner
Where the company stands now
Fifteen years in, everything, the trucks, the crew, the paperwork, still runs out of the same yard off Ridge Road.
- Started2010 by Jeff Nowicki
- Fleet sizeFour trucks, titled to the company
- StaffingEvery mover is a W-2 hire, nobody subcontracted
- StandingIndiana-registered and insured to move households
- Yard3801 Ridge Road, Highland, IN 46322
Growth, one hire at a time
Every addition to the crew tracked actual demand, nobody joined ahead of the workload.
- 2010: Jeff starts the company with one truck and the flat per-truck rate it still runs on today
- 2015: Andre Petrovic signs on and becomes the crew’s specialist for downtown Chicago high-rise and state-line jobs
- 2016: Denise Kaczmarek takes over scheduling and starts writing every quote by hand
- 2017: Tomas Zielinski joins, focused on Region ranch and split-level homes with packed basements
- 2018: Marcus Delgado steps into dispatch, routing crews around Skyway and Borman backups
- 2020: Brianna Wozniak comes aboard for storage coordination as the fleet grows to four trucks
What an outside crew misses
A crew parachuting in for a single day is stuck improvising as problems come up. We’d rather have most of it figured out in advance.
- Freight-elevator windows and insurance paperwork for downtown Chicago buildings get confirmed before dispatch even assigns a truck
- Skyway and Borman rush-hour patterns get built into the route the night before, not discovered mid-drive
- Narrow driveways and packed basements in Highland, Griffith, and Munster get measured ahead of time, before a truck tries to back into one
- A lake-effect snow forecast means a date gets moved a day, not a crew stuck on I-65 with nowhere to park
Who actually handles your move
Six people run this company, and each one has a specific job that doesn’t overlap with the others.
- Jeff NowickiFounder, still takes the toughest state-line and high-rise jobs personally
- Denise KaczmarekOffice manager and scheduling, writes every quote herself
- Marcus DelgadoOperations and dispatch, plans daily routes around the Skyway and I-94
- Andre PetrovicLead crew chief, runs high-rise and cross-town state-line jobs
- Tomas ZielinskiSenior mover, handles Region ranch and split-level properties
- Brianna WozniakMove coordinator and storage, manages closing delays and winter reschedules
Fifteen years in, I’m still the one walking the driveway and checking the forecast before anything gets written down. It’s exactly why people call us directly instead of shopping three more estimates. — Jeff Nowicki, owner, Jeff’s Movers
