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Gaining Mainers By the Truckload

April 07, 2009 - Go figure. Despite what you may have heard from the doom-and-gloom bloggers, the apoplectic pundits and the perennially pessimistic pontificators, it turns out Maine is a people magnet.

That's right. More people are coming into this state than leaving – and lest you think that's just my inner civic booster talking, rest assured that I have hard, incontrovertible proof.

I heard it from U-Haul.

The annual U-Haul National Trend Migration Report came out this week and, for the second straight year, Maine was the top "small market" growth state in the nation. What's more, our rate of growth leaves every other state in the nation, large or small, in the dust.

"What we know is that we have more people bringing trucks into Maine than taking them out," said Joanne Fried, spokeswoman for U-Haul International Inc. North America. Asked why that might be, Fried replied, "I have no idea."

Here's how the U-Haul ratings work. Each year, the company looks back over its 1 million-plus one-way truck rentals all over the United States and comes up with two lists of states – those where 5,000 to 20,000 "families" moved in or out via U-Haul, and those where the moves numbered more than 20,000.

(For the record, they're not all necessarily "families." U-Haul uses that term to cover all one-way truck rentals because they "like the way it sounds," Fried said.)

U-Haul then compares each state's incoming and outgoing rentals to see which way the migration is flowing, and how much. The percentage difference is then used to rank the states – and that's where this thing gets interesting.

Among the states with 20,000-plus moves, Washington came out on top, with 6.98 percent more arrivals than departures.

In the 5,000- to 20,000-move category, the growth rate again was in the single digits (Delaware was second at 7.47 percent) – with one notable exception.

That would be Maine, where a whopping 16.28 percent more U-Hauls rumbled into the state than out. That's more than twice the growth rate of any other state in either category.

It's pitifully easy, of course, to rain on this parade.

Some will say Maine's roads are so bad that the professional moving companies don't dare send their trucks here.

Others will theorize that it's all those young adults who fled Maine and, unable to find work, are now moving back in with their parents.

Or, as one analytical type mused to me, "maybe all the outbound people are renting Ryders!"

Or maybe, just maybe, the conventional wisdom that Maine's population is on the wane is just plain wrong?

Gov. John Baldacci, for one, wasn't surprised by U-Haul's announcement.

"It's a story that people have a hard time believing," Baldacci said Tuesday. But, he added, it's a story he hears all the time.

"When I go to Washington County, there are people there from New Mexico and Arizona," Baldacci said. "When I go to Dover-Foxcroft, there are people from Atlanta, Georgia, and California. When I go to Lincoln County, there are people from all over the world."

Baldacci attributes much of the allure to Maine's natural beauty, clean air and water, and slower pace. But in a recent conversation with a couple who'd just arrived from Connecticut, he heard a different explanation.

"They said, 'Governor, it's the people,'" Baldacci said. "It's about the way people in Maine treat other people."

Whatever the reason, U-Haul's truck counters aren't the only ones who have noticed Maine's magnetism. Amanda Rector, an economist with the State Planning Office who is the state's liaison with the 2010 federal census, said Maine's estimated population grew from 1,274,923 in 2000 to 1,316,456 as of July 1, 2008.

And when it comes to people moving in versus people moving out, Rector said, the net in-migration during the same eight-year period was an estimated 34,624 people from away.

Less clear, of course, is who all these folks are, where they came from and what skills they bring to help grow Maine's economy along with its population. But before we let the doom-and-gloomers have at them, one thing should be noted about our newest arrivals.

At least they can drive a truck.

BILL NEMITZ, Portland Press Herald, April 2, 2009


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