San Diego movers refusing to help Chargers move

The Rams dealt with that 1,800-mile move to Los Angeles last season. And while the now-Los Angeles Chargers will cover a fraction of that distance when they officially make the journey from San Diego, the actual move may be a struggle.

San Diego moving companies are banding together and refusing to move the Chargers to Los Angeles. After all, there's so much stuff (from furniture to equipment, to really everything) that physically needs to be moved to a team's new home. If the Chargers can't find a local mover, it would place an extra burden on the franchise.

Ryan Charles, head of sales and marketing for HireAHelper.com, has been leading a campaign that, as of Tuesday, lists 27 San Diego moving companies on the wewontmoveyouchargers.com website. He considers the cause a final effort to keep the Chargers in San Diego, and companies have continued to join the protest.

"Yeah, we're continuing to add more companies every hour," Charles said. "We're still actively calling companies, and companies are signing themselves up through the link on that site. So yeah, I think it's definitely had an impact."

Charles is a lifelong Chargers fan and came up with the idea to stop the physical move after the team officially announced the relocation. The news hit him hard, but then he realized that his network of movers potentially had the power to stop the move - or, at the least, make it difficult for the team.

"It just hit like a ton of bricks," Charles said of the news. "But since we're a moving services company, we started thinking about the actual physical move. We kind of just said to ourselves that we wouldn't want to be a part of that."

When Charles launched the idea and reached out to fellow moving companies, most were onboard with the idea. Even the companies that weren't necessarily owned by Chargers fans viewed the protest as a way to stand up for the community.

Many remember when the then-Baltimore Colts moved to Indianapolis, the footage of the franchise's equipment being loaded onto moving trucks became an iconic symbol for American sports relocations. But it was a massive moving effort, and the Chargers' move would mean a lucrative opportunity to any mover to accept the job.

"If you're just talking strictly about their offices and their practice facility, that alone would be well over six figures - $100,000 or $150,000," Charles said. "Then once you add on the individual moves of the staff, team officials and players - let's say you moved all of them - it could be $5,000 a person. Not one company is going to get all of those moves, but that kind of gives you the idea of how big of a move this could be."

As the cause continues to grow, Charles has heard from movers in Los Angeles that have also refused to move the Chargers. So far, 10 LA-area movers have pledged to turn down any Chargers-related moving opportunities and he expects to hear from more.

The team, however, has not reached to his company about the move. The Chargers also did not immediately respond to For The Win's request for comment.

"This campaign has sort of kept my hopes afloat," Charles said. "I'm so caught up in this right now and trying to do this for San Diegans and Chargers fans as sort of one last stand … I feel like I'll only know when I see them take the field as the Los Angeles Chargers."