Moving and Storage Business News

The News Review:

- NJ Div. of Consumer Affairs slaps moving companies
- Energy facility to boost Stephentown
- SemGroup Energy Partners files 2008 annual report
- Advocates are back with real health care stories
- New chamber chairman discusses Asheville growth
- Cisco Won’t Take on Amazon in Cloud

NJ Div. of Consumer Affairs slaps moving companies
newjerseynewsroom.com
The firm also will pay $5323. 50 in civil penalties and cost reimbursements to the state. The consent order with A Atlantic Plus is the seventh settlement that the division has reached with moving and storage companies this year. ?The period between Memorial Day and Labor Day traditionally is the busiest time for moving and relocating. We urge consumers to know their rights under New Jersey law before hiring a moving company? said Consumer Affairs Director David Szuchman. ?We continue to monitor the industry and act against those who attempt to take advantage of consumers. ?All companies conducting moves within New Jersey are required to be licensed with the division’s Regulated Business Section.

Energy facility to boost Stephentown
Troy Record
“With this anticipated federal funding and expected plant construction we will make a major transition from development and pilot operation of our flywheel technology to full-scale commercial deployment. For New York initially and later other regions where plants could be built it will also signal a dramatic shift to a cleaner more sustainable method of providing frequency regulation on the grid. ”Beacon is one the leading flywheel energy companies in the country. Flywheel energy storage works by accelerating a rotor a cylindrical machine to a very high speed and maintaining the energy in the system as rotational energy. The flywheel is then slowed down converting the energy back. The system functions as a kinetic battery storing energy that is instantly available when needed. Beacon’s Smart Energy 25 the firm’s fourth generation flywheel can instantly take in and inject up to 25 kilowatt hours of electricity in response to power grid requirement.

SemGroup Energy Partners files 2008 annual report
Tulsa World
The third-quarter net loss totaled $11. The parent company had allocated more than $100 million in annual revenues to its spinoff by moving oil and asphalt through SGLP fee-based storage and terminal facilities according to reports. The public entity was forced to find more third-party customers for those services. Third-party storage and transportation revenues rose from $5 million in 2008?s second quarter to more than $13 million for both fourth-quarter 2008 and first-quarter 2009 according to the earnings report. SGLP still has not released its overall first quarter 2009 figures. The company?s release also did not say whether SGLP executives planned to hold a conference call as is common with most earnings reports to talk about the business.

Advocates are back with real health care stories
The Associated Press
But it’s getting harder and harder and harder to do. “Derbyshire owns a moving and storage company started by his father in 1956. He employs 35 workers in Aberdeen Md. and covers all of them and their families. But he said he will soon give in to financial pressure and offer only individual coverage not family coverage to new hires. “My role is to tell how serious it is” he told The Associated Press.
Related from Bizvideomail: Advocates are back with real health care stories

New chamber chairman discusses Asheville growth
Asheville Citizen-Times
Local businesses took center stage in the rest of the night’s awards like Robie Campbell’s Go Mini’s Portable Storage in Arden. Campbell was awarded the HomeTrust Bank Small Business Leader of the Year Award for businesses with 15 or fewer employees. Go Mini’s delivers units to homes for onsite storage or moving. His branch in Arden was recently named the top franchise among 220 territories in the U. Mexico and Canada where the company has a presence. Campbell said the key for surviving a recession as a small business is changing your priorities to meet the changing needs of customers.

Cisco Won’t Take on Amazon in Cloud
PC World
Cisco will leave the business of selling raw capacity to others while supplying the infrastructure for those kinds of companies Warrior said. With Cisco-based cloud infrastructures available for hire enterprises will be able to hold on to some of their own resources while tapping into public clouds and smoothly moving data applications and computing workloads between the two according to Warrior. Cisco’s Unified Computing System which combines the company’s new blade server platforms with networking and storage elements is a step toward that capability she said. It’s a pre-integrated architecture that removes the burden of manual integration from the enterprise IT department according to Cisco. The company has already sold UCS to some customers Warrior said. Cisco doesn’t intend to have a completely closed system between enterprise and cloud-provider networks she added. Where the infrastructure on one end isn’t Cisco’s the company’s goal is to work with other vendors’ systems she said.