AAction Movers

The Origin Story

In 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression, a small delivery outfit called Ted's Transfer set up shop in Bismarck, North Dakota. It all started with just a truck, a work ethic, and a city that needed things moved.

For twenty-five years, Ted's Transfer operated independently as a hauler. Then, in 1957, the company became a United Van Lines agent, setting the foundation for everything that would follow. Somewhere in the 1960s, the family that then owned it did something that made perfect sense at the time and makes people laugh today: they renamed the business AAction Movers. Two A's. Not one. The thought process was to get to the top of the phone book. In an era when Yellow Pages placement was like being near the top of a Google search, it worked.

Fast forward to 1975. Steve Herman came from a modest blue collar family. He joined the Air Force to put himself through college in Bismarck. After school he began working for a competitor of AAction Movers down the street. At the time, the son of the original owner of AAction was running the company, and he had no desire to continue growing it. The company was actually going under. Someone approached Steve with an offer to buy AAction Movers. He laughed, because he didn't have a penny to his name.

A banker caught wind of this situation and took Steve out to breakfast. Over an old-fashioned handshake, the bank offered Steve a 100% loan. There was just one condition: his father and father-in-law had to co- sign. Herman agreed, but he didn't like it. So he negotiated a side arrangement with the bank stating that if he turned a profit in year one, even one dollar, the co-signers would be removed. He almost didn't make it, but he ended up pulling it off that year. The co-signers came off, and the company was officially his.

What followed was a decade of aggressive growth. Through the late 1970s, Steve expanded across both Dakotas, into Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona. In 2005, the company added a new dimension: a Go Mini's affiliation, giving customers the choice between full-service and do-it-yourself portable storage. From a Depression-era delivery outfit to a multi-state moving enterprise, the foundation had been laid by the time the next generation arrived.

The People

Scott Herman, Steve's son, spent 17 years in Arizona. He told anyone who asked that he was never going into the family business. He'd started a security company in 2006 selling burglar alarms & video surveillance, built it from the ground up and scaled it over multiple states. He was happy running his own venture, but then 2009 happened.

His father was in a serious motorcycle accident and lost a leg overnight. His brother, a lifer in the moving business who had been running the Phoenix agency, moved back to Bismarck to take over as President. And Scott, still running his security company in Arizona, started getting the calls.

He held out until 2012, but that year, he sold the security business. His brother called, and Scott asked what the job involved. The company needed help on the sales and marketing side which fortunately was Scott's strong suit. He joined, and a year later they restructured. They wanted him in Bismarck in the President's seat. He told his wife they were moving from Phoenix to Bismarck. She was not thrilled to leave Arizona to move to North Dakota to say the least, but Scott took on the challenge.

The culture of the company when he arrived needed serious work. The office had a mindset of waiting for the phone to ring, and Scott being a sales and marketing guy came in and shook things up in a good way. Simultaneously, Scott was learning the moving business from scratch in real time. The employees assumed he would know everything about the moving business given that his father was the previous owner, but that was far from the case. Learning the complexity of interstate moving, especially as a vanline agent, was quite the learning curve.

But the complexity didn't discourage him, he had other reasons to be excited. He came from an industry that demands a constant pursuit of finding your customer. This usually looked like knocking on random doors trying to convince people to buy products and services they don't even know they need. The great thing about the moving industry is that the customer is already identified, and they're already buying what the company is selling. Scott saw the blessing in disguise, and things began coming together.

The people who've been at the company longer than Scott has been alive are part of what keeps him going. AAction's operations manager in Bismarck has been with the company since 1978, one of his father's very first hires, dating back to 1976. Scott kept him on board for a decade after the man first mentioned wanting to retire. That kind of loyalty is a reflection of the character of the company.

Then there's Brady Tudahl, a driver who has been with AAction for years and earned the highest individual honor in the Unigroup network: Van Operator of the Year. Scott flew to St. Louis in early March 2026 to celebrate with him. Of all the accolades the company has accumulated, Scott esteems this one the most.

What Makes Them Special

Ask Scott Herman how he trains his crews and he'll tell you about his father's Air Force years. The lesson was drilled into him as a kid shoveling the driveway and mowing the lawn: do things right the first time. Safety first. Every time. Scott has a hands-on approach to training new hires. AAction replaces passive screen time with active mentorship. New hires are paired with experienced crew members from day one and taught to do things right, not just fast. The philosophy is simple: mistakes will happen, but they shouldn't happen because nobody showed you the right way to do it.

The standard Scott holds his crews to is what he calls the "Mom Test." When something goes sideways such as a difficult customer, a property claim, a crew decision in the field, etc. The question he asks is always the same: Would you be comfortable with this happening in your mom's house? It's a simple standard that resonates.

On the customer side, what sets AAction apart is transparency, especially about the parts of moving that competitors prefer to leave vague. He'll walk a customer through released value protection versus full value coverage before they sign anything. He goes into realtor offices and leads with the uncomfortable stuff: how claims work, what happens when something breaks, what six cents per pound actually means for a crystal vase.

"People respect somebody who's willing to talk about the bad things," he says. The more knowledge he shares, the more trust it builds. And trust, in a business built on access to someone's home, is the whole game.

The proof shows up in Google reviews. The notifications he prizes most are the five-star reviews where customers name a crew member by name. That's his quality signal. If the review says "the guys were great," he's satisfied. If it says "Marcus and Tyler were incredible," he knows the crew introduced themselves at the door, ran the job like professionals, and left the customer feeling taken care of.

The Leadership Philosophy

When it comes to growth, Scott Herman aims to get better, before getting bigger, always.

He learned this the hard way running his own company. He grew fast, and with fast growth, sometimes processes don't keep up. Things that should be tight get sloppy, and customers feel it before you do. So at AAction, growth is earned. It follows excellence, it doesn't precede it.

The most significant strategic decision of the last several years has been diversification. For a long time, AAction was heavily weighted toward military and household goods. That's a comfortable business when the housing market is healthy and government budgets are stable. But the last several years have demonstrated exactly how exposed a single-segment mover can be. Interest rate increases hit the housing market, and government shutdowns stop military orders cold. AAction watched both of these things happen and decided not to let it affect their business next time, so they placed major focus into diversifying into other verticals such as commercial & corporate relocation.

Moving the Community

AAction Movers is a Move for Hunger partner. Throughout the year, and especially in Bismarck, where their community roots run deepest, the company runs donation drives collecting non-perishable food alongside moving jobs and delivering it to local food banks. Every move generates a moment where someone is clearing out a pantry, deciding what makes the trip and what doesn't. AAction turns that moment into a contribution.

The Go Mini's containers get a second life beyond storage. Each year, the company donates containers to local churches during their community drives, creating collection points for goods to distribute to people in need. It's a quiet, practical form of generosity; no press release, just a container in a parking lot and a community that knows it can count on AAction to show up.

Institutionally, AAction is a member of the North Dakota Motor Carriers Association, connected to the state's transportation industry and its advocacy work.

Every November, AAction Movers hosts one of their most meaningful annual events: a full Thanksgiving meal served to veterans and first responders at the Elks Lodge in Bismarck on Veterans Day. The event sells out every year with hundreds of attendees. AAction show up as servers giving back to the people who gave first.

The company has also donated its services every Fourth of July to the Bismarck/Mandan Symphony's annual fireworks show helping with transporting, setting up, and tearing down all the chairs, stands, and orchestra equipment that make the evening possible.

Then there's the Shrine Circus: each year bicycles are shipped to AAction's facility and the crew transports them to the circus, where they're given away to kids in attendance.

The servant spirit of the organization isn't just built around formal programs or named initiatives. That instinct, to serve rather than just perform, is what connects the way AAction treats customers to the way it shows up for its community. It's the same heart beat. It just wears different clothes depending on the day. Moving is one of the most stressful moments in a person's life, a truth that sits underneath every job AAction's crews run. Getting it right matters, and taking that stress away from someone, even for a few hours on a difficult day, is work worth doing.