Street-Clogging Astoria Moving Trucks Come Under Residents' Scrutiny

ASTORIA, QUEENS — They're hard to miss: bright pink trucks have flooded Astoria's streets in recent years, loading and unloading items or just sitting empty on the curb. Most bear prominent advertising for their company: Piece of Cake Moving & Storage.

They are also flagrantly breaking city law, neighborhood advocates argue. The company frequently parks its trucks on Astoria's streets overnight, they say — violating a requirement that commercial vehicles not be parked on residential streets after 9 p.m.

"They’re commercial trucks which are essentially storing their property in what’s considered to be a civilian zone," said Mitch Waxman, an Astoria resident who also co-chairs Community Board 1's transportation committee.

In recent weeks, the community board has begun scrutinizing the company's practices, documenting instances of trucks parked overnight and asking residents to share their own photos.

The response has been overwhelming: a Reddit post made by Waxman on May 26 has generated nearly 100 comments from Astorians all too familiar with the pink trucks. Meanwhile, CB1 district manager Florence Koulouris rattled off a few of the locations where residents have found the vehicles parked overnight: Broadway near 43rd Street; 31st Street and 21st Avenue; in front of Immaculate Conception Church on Ditmars Boulevard; on Hoyt Avenue North and 24th Street; and in the parking lot of the Bel Aire Diner on Broadway.

Last week, Koulouris sent a letter to Piece of Cake's executives laying out the complaints, and issuing an ultimatum: if there was no "great improvement" by last Friday, the board would loop in the NYPD's 114th Precinct to conduct enforcement.

"This cannot continue. It is not legal," Koulouris told Patch.

She received a quick response from the company, whose leaders offered an explanation for the truck influx: 80 percent of its workers live in and around Astoria and Long Island City, and sometimes park the vehicles near their homes at the end of each day rather than returning them to a designated lot.

Reached for comment by Patch, Piece of Cake CEO Voyo Popovic confirmed that statistic, but said the street-parking pattern was limited to only 15 percent of the company's vehicles.

Since hearing from Koulouris last week, Piece of Cake has drawn up "a robust plan" to stem the truck tide, Popovic said in an email. On Aug. 1, Piece of Cake will move into a new Queens parking lot — its largest ever — located close to its workers' homes "to save them time and ensure our trucks are not parked on the street."

At a company-wide meeting last week, drivers were reminded that they "must return our commercial vehicles to their designated parking lots," Popovic said. If drivers must take a truck home for some reason, they have been instructed to park only on commercial streets.

"We recognize that Astoria residents are frustrated with local parking availability and the commercial trucks parked in the neighborhood, and we want our neighbors to know that at least when it comes to Piece of Cake’s fleet and our recognizable pink trucks, we’re taking prompt and concrete steps to correct the issue immediately," Popovic said.

Popovic did not respond directly to some of the non-parking-related complaints that surfaced on last month's Reddit thread, including allegations that Piece of Cake's workers have driven dangerously and damaged street trees.

One organizer for the 31st Avenue Open Street told Patch about an April 17 incident in which a moving truck pulled up to the car-free street just as it was being taken down for the day. Volunteers explained that barricades would be dismantled shortly — but the two workers inside the truck were apparently too impatient to wait.

"I hear a noise, and they were in the process of [driving] over the table," said the volunteer, who asked to remain anonymous. The table was destroyed. (The truck body bore the name of a different company, Simply Moving, which recently merged with Piece of Cake.)

Piece of Cake was first launched in 2018 and expanded rapidly during the pandemic, according to a 2021 profile by Fortune. By last May, it had a fleet of more than 50 trucks and more than 300 employees.

"As a whole, I’m very proud of our company’s track record and the positive impact we’ve had on the lives of our employees, customers, and the surrounding community," Popovic said Friday. "As one of the city's fastest-growing companies, we’re providing good-paying jobs for hundreds of New Yorkers, many of whom reside in Queens."

"Piece of Cake is a family-owned and operated company, and my wife, son, and I live in Queens, so being good neighbors and having a positive impact on the community we live and operate in is important to us," he added.

Koulouris, of the community board, said Piece of Cake's actions will speak louder than its words.

"My hope is that the senior partners of the company are genuinely sincere in the fact that they are going to have all of these trucks removed from the streets of Astoria so the residents can enjoy their peace and quality of life," she said.

Have an Astoria news tip? Contact reporter Nick Garber at nick.garber@patch.com.