Get Out of theWay! 

To stop Brian Robinson, they'll have to bankrupt him, says a man who knows him. He pauses, thinking it through. No, he says. They'd have to kill him. Despite a nationally reported debacle that left a two-story house stranded on Providence Road during rush hour last summer -- a debacle that also cost him his house-moving license -- Robinson is once again a licensed house mover in the state of North Carolina. And once again, his vigilante-style approach to moving houses -- and to life -- has led him into head-on clashes with no less than four government bureaucracies staffed by folks who are coming to realize that if they tell Robinson he's not permitted to drive around an obstacle, he'll barrel through it -- and then blame them for the wreckage. By all appearances, Robinson, 30, has a persecution complex and a rare gift for persuasion, the latter of which could explain how he recently talked a high-ranking Department of Transportation official into overturning the decision of a department director who rejected Robinson's license renewal application.

The greatest obstacle to Robinson's success appears to be his inability to anticipate the consequences of his actions, follow rules, or even comprehend why they should apply to him.

"Brian's kind of a loose cannon," said Attorney Jeff Smith, who has sued Robinson in the past. "I think he means well, but I think he kind of does what he wants to do."

Most movers would have been sidelined by the state's refusal to issue them a license. Not Robinson. He says he moved two houses illegally during the two-month period after the state refused to reissue his house-moving license.

"I only got caught for one of those," said Robinson.

The status of Robinson's house-moving license hung in limbo until late October, when he snagged a power line and took out a utility pole on Highway 84 in Union County while illegally moving a house -- all of which, Robinson says, was the fault of the NCDOT.

"The line was supposed to be hanging at 18 feet and it was hanging at 14 feet," said Robinson. "They made more of a big deal out of it than it was. But here's the thing. It would have probably never happened if we wouldn't have been so tense. If they had given me my license, if they hadn't been holding it for no reason, I wouldn't have had to move the house the way I did (illegally) and this probably wouldn't have happened."

At any rate, the house, which Robinson was delivering to a Catholic church on Sandy Porter Road, wound up stranded on the side of the highway while Robinson, busted, once again wrangled with police and transportation officials.

"I didn't pay no attention to that house on the side of the road," Robinson later said. "It wasn't my house, so I didn't care."

That is, he didn't care until the house-stranding turned out to be a stroke of luck in disguise. Robinson, who had been dealing in vain with Tammy Denning, Director of the Oversize/Overweight Permit Unit of the NCDOT, finally got so steamed he called one of her higher-ups, Chief Operations Engineer Don Goins, and arranged a meeting with him in Raleigh. After the meeting, Goins approved Robinson's new license before Robinson made it back to Charlotte.

Despite our best efforts, Creative Loafing cannot make sense of what took place between the two men during that meeting.

Robinson's version of how he got his license back goes as follows: "I told them, 'I want my damn license or I'll see you in court,' and they gave it back to me," said Robinson. "When I left, she (the NCDOT attorney) undoubtedly said, 'Look you guys are crazy, you're going to get your ass sued off, give him his license back.' That must be what happened."

What we do know is this: in an October 1 letter to Robinson, Denning wrote that the NCDOT denied his permit because an investigation into the stranding of the 4,600-square-foot house on Providence Road revealed Robinson's company "falsified documents to obtain a permit, blocked the northbound lanes of traffic for several hours on NC 16 creating major traffic delays, received a declaration of public nuisance and order of abatement from the City of Charlotte, received two invoices from NCDOT for services rendered as a result of the incident and employed the non-licensed driver which was moving the house on July 10."

Goins said he pulled an informal committee of people together that "looked at the facts and made a decision" to reinstate Robinson's license. "Under the conditions in the general statutes pertaining to this, I felt like I should renew his license," said Goins.

But no matter how hard CL pushed Goins -- who calls the wording of the state statutes governing the licensure of house movers "liberal" -- for an answer, he would only say that the facts warranted a renewal of Robinson's license.

Robinson's version of those facts, the version he presented to Goins, is different from Denning's. He claims that he didn't falsify his permit to move the house 1,000 feet down the road to Providence Presbyterian Church, that he got permission to put it there from a church official who later changed his mind.

That's part of the problem with state law on house-moving, said Denning. It doesn't require movers to get written permission to move a home onto a particular piece of property before they can obtain a moving permit. This had never been a problem with other movers until Robinson began moving homes onto land not zoned for it or land owned by people who later said they never gave him permission to put the homes there.

Robinson disputes that he caused the now-legendary rush-hour traffic jam, which he blames on NCDOT and CDOT officials who would not let him move the house once it stranded on the median. It would have taken him 10 minutes to get it out of the road, he says, if they had let him use his equipment, but they instead forced him to wait two hours while they sought official approval to use the equipment, which held up traffic. Robinson also said that from what he could tell, it wasn't necessary for them to have closed both lanes of traffic either, since the house was only blocking one lane.

But whatever the case, Goins apparently bought Robinson's arguments. Robinson still contends that Denning withheld his license for personal reasons.

"She doesn't like me, so she held my license," said Robinson. "She was trying to destroy me."

Now that Robinson has his license back in hand, he seems unconcerned about misdemeanor charges he faces in Union County related to the illegal house move in October.

"I had a court date for that, but I missed it," said Robinson. "They sent me a letter saying if I didn't do something, I can't remember what, they would fine me, so I knew it was no big deal."

Whatever the facts, Robinson, who has held an official mover's license for a total of four months, has had a profound impact on his industry, say folks who've been in the business for years.

"This has caused us to take two to three more days to get a permit because of all the red tape they've put on it now," says Emory Stephens, president of Crouch Brothers. "He's bad news. I feel sorry for a person that doesn't have any more judgment. We couldn't believe it either when he got his license back."

Reverend Tan Lee of St. Joseph Vietnamese Church on Sandy Porter Road was dismayed to learn the full details of Robinson's career last week. Lee, a Catholic priest who was supposed to live in the house Robinson stranded on Highway 84, said that the house, which now sits on church property, is still uninhabitable because Robinson has not completed work he was supposed to do on it according to a contract between Robinson and the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte, which purchased the house from Robinson months ago.

"Please tell him he needs to finish," said Lee, who paid for the move and the footer under the condition that Robinson would make the house livable after it was moved.

Pat Morgan, who issues house-move permits for the Charlotte Department of Transportation, has his doubts about whether the work on the house will be completed. "It will rot there, " said Morgan of the house.

Robinson has a more positive outlook on the current status of his business relationship with the diocese than Lee and Morgan do. "They want me to move as many houses as I can get moved," he says.

Trouble with neighbors

The residents of Tarawoods subdivision in Mint Hill were determined to keep a house Robinson moved onto a lot in their neighborhood from dragging down their home values. The homeowners' association raised money to sue Robinson, which forced him to bring the house into compliance with neighborhood standards, move it or demolish it. Or at least, that's the way the neighbors tell the story.

Robinson, again, tells a different version. It wasn't his fault that the house he moved to the neighborhood didn't meet the restrictive covenant standards, he said, because his lawyer gave him bad information. And though he did add on an addition to the house, he says he never had any intentions of allowing the neighbors to force him to move the house off the property.

"I'd have killed everyone in the neighborhood and killed myself before that happened," said Robinson.

Robinson claims that the real reason the neighbors sued had nothing to do with the condition of the house he moved into their neighborhood. He says the lawsuit resulted because Greg Brock, the neighbor who eventually initiated it, wanted to buy the lot he put the house on.

"I bought it out from under him, so he got mad," said Robinson. "I don't like his ass. I've been living here my whole life. He's some Yankee that thinks he runs something and he don't run nothing."

Given all of Robinson's troubles, one has to wonder if he is actually making any money. Robinson says he's still in debt from the Providence Road move, which cost him $95,000. That figure includes the $40,000 he spent to buy a lot on McKee Road for the Providence Road house and about $55,000 in fines, penalties, damages and other expenses.

But Robinson, who says he makes between $10,000 and $15,000 on every house he moves, insists he's still making money.

"I've got eight houses to move right now, at $10,000 to $15,000 a piece. I'll have them all done before June. I'm going to make a fortune. I have made a fortune. I just don't have no money. I been putting it all in these houses."

Robinson says he thinks the house, one of the three fixer-uppers he owns, will fetch half a million dollars from buyers once it is renovated.

"Eventually I'll have them fixed up and I paid cash for everything, so I'll be a millionaire," said Robinson.

Terry Hoke has some doubts about that.

"He's crazy," said Hoke, who lives next door to the lot where the famed Providence Road house still sits up on wheels. "It would cost him as much to fix up that house as it would to build a new one."

Not so, says Robinson. He gets very defensive about how the condition of his house is described, particularly in print. He's still steamed at local print and television media -- particularly the Charlotte Observer -- for describing it as "decrepit" and "crumbling."

"Is there any way I can sue the cocksuckers?" Robinson asked a CL reporter over the phone. "They hurt my business when they describe the house that way."

"Does this house look decrepit to you?" he asks, holding up a picture of the barely damaged house right after it was first loaded onto the moving truck. The house in the picture, which was taken at a distance before the move, bears little resemblance to the crumbling, decrepit house that now sits on McKee Road, its porch dangling from its rear end.

The daily newspaper is one of a long list of folks Robinson says he's suing or plans to sue or would like to sue. Though he says he's not the type to sue people for no reason -- he doesn't believe in that, he says -- he claims to be involved in 15 to 20 lawsuits against people he says owe him money or are trying to destroy him financially, though CL could find no evidence of that at the county courthouse, where Robinson has no current civil cases on file.

Whatever the case, Robinson says he has no choice but to take legal action against the City of Charlotte, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, the Charlotte Department of Transportation and the state Department of Transportation, which appear to be his primary targets at the moment.

"They put me through so much shit," said Robinson. "I can't keep suffering losses like this."

Robinson said he has plenty of money to fight all these people in court because the people he moves houses for have lots of money.

"They thought the $100,000 cost of the Providence Road situation would break me, but there's $900,000 more where that came from," said Robinson.

This time it's personal

Robinson's issues with these agencies are as personal as they are professional. He claims that city officials, for instance, caused him such an inordinate amount of stress over the Providence Road situation that he suffered a heart attack that did permanent damage to his heart after a four-hour meeting with them during which they threatened to tear down the house he stranded on Providence Road.

"I had just won the whole thing," said Robinson of the July meeting. "I had made them all feel stupid. That's why they let me keep my house. But then when I left the (Government Center), they had towed my car. When I saw that, I had a heart attack and had to call the ambulance. Now my heart skips beats after that. This is documented."

Robinson blames city officials for the fact that his car was towed, because he says they didn't tell him the meeting was going to take four hours.

Robinson also has issues with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, which he says is deliberately trying to hurt him financially by charging him more for the police escorts required to move a house than other movers pay. That's because police captains David Grose and Glenn Avery make Robinson use on-duty officers rather than off-duty ones, which costs $5 more per officer per hour. Avery said Robinson recently refused to pay a $760 bill for two moves in November and December, telling him he'd sent the bill to his attorney instead.

"That's going to cost them," swears Robinson. "They're making me use on-duty officers simply because Grose and Avery both don't like me because I don't take no shit and I call them on the phone and I tell them what I feel. I don't care if they're a cop. You know how unbusiness-like police officers are because they are all so stupid. I think you have to have, I'm serious, a lower IQ to be a police officer. If it is over a certain amount, they won't let you be a police officer. That's the problem."

Captain Avery says Robinson is the only house mover charged for on-duty officers because of his past scheduling problems and lack of interest in paying bills he owes the department. Avery said Robinson has scheduled a move and then stood up officers on at least three occasions. Avery says the department needs at least two days notice to schedule off-duty officers for a house move, but for those two moves, Robinson called late in the day on the day he planned to move a house and asked for an escort. The only way the Police Department could provide an escort at the last minute was to use on-duty officers, which costs more, Avery said. Avery said Robinson verbally agreed to use the on-duty officers at the higher price for the two moves, then refused to pay the bill.

"We're willing to work with him and treat him very fairly and we think we have," said Avery. "All we ask is that he meet the criteria everyone else does."

Robinson doesn't just have issues with government bodies, but with some of his customers as well. He's currently threatening a lawsuit against Shawn Santee, who hired Robinson's company to move a house from one site in a development to another. Santee said he began to suspect something was wrong when he repeatedly requested that Robinson produce a mover's license, and Robinson didn't.

Santee said Robinson did thousands of dollars worth of damage to his home, including a hole he made in the side of the house when he damaged two bedroom walls by breaking wall studs with a backhoe. Robinson also damaged windows, gutters and water and sewer infrastructure in the development and held up its completion, Santee said.

So why is Robinson suing Santee? Because Santee fired Robinson after he learned of Robinson's ongoing struggles on Providence Road and discovered the damage to his house. Robinson claims he was not allowed to complete the job according to the contract he signed with Santee.

The irony of the situation is that when Robinson signed the contract to move Santee's home in March, neither Robinson nor his partner had valid movers' licenses in the state of North Carolina, and couldn't have legally moved Santee's house, according to NCDOT documents.

"It seems obvious that the NCDOT is not keeping a close enough watch on what's going on or what this guy is doing out there," said Santee. *