What would eventually become the Carolina Services Group of Companies began in 1955 as a modest moving and storage operation in Fayetteville, North Carolina, the city that sits at the front gate of Fort Bragg — one of the largest Army installations in the United States, home of the 82nd Airborne, and at any given moment, home to tens of thousands of service members and their families waiting on orders to move.
James Thornton built a business that would end up outlasting him and growing into something significant. When Mr. Thornton passed, his wife, Iris, stepped in and began running the company. As their two daughters married, their husbands joined the business. Together the family expanded the warehouse footprint, they added locations, and in a move that few operators were thinking about at the time, they grew the portfolio beyond moving and storage.
The company today looks much different from the one when it started. For decades, the portfolio grew without a unified identity. Individual companies under individual names, operating in parallel. The Carolina Services Group of Companies now operates under a single brand umbrella, and it’s worth noting that brand didn’t exist until just last year. The new brand, complete with a carefully designed logo and slogan, that took months to perfect, finally puts a face to everything the family built.
Generation by generation, decision by decision, what started as a single operation became something hard to define and far harder to replicate: a diversified family enterprise, built from the inside out. The business has been run by one family, and continues to last for six decades of continuous operation.
Thomas Kiser Jr, CEO, grew up in this business. He worked the dock as a kid, learned the rhythm of the operation from the ground up, and watched his father and uncle run the company before taking the wheel himself as a third generation mover. He has been CEO for nearly fifteen years bringing deep industry roots and a lifelong dedication to exceptional service. Today, Thomas leads with a focus on building lasting relationships and solutions designed and tailored to exceed expectations.
Heather Turlington, CFO, did not grow up in the moving industry. Her career ran through large-scale agriculture; Smithfield Foods, then Butterball, before pivoting into the private sectors of oil and mobile technical and specialty vehicles.
After joining The Carolina Services Group, what Heather found was an industry unlike any other, dense with acronyms, and steeped in tradition, cyclical in ways she hadn’t anticipated. What got her was not a program, a contract or a van line relationship; it was the people.
Josie Williams, accounting manager, has been with the company for twenty-seven years. Horace Gilbert, General Manager of Patterson Fayetteville, has announced his retirement for December 2026 after forty-three years with the company. Dwayne Cauley, General Manager of Troy Humphrey Jacksonville, has been with the company for thirty years. Longevity and commitment is what happens when a family-owned company, run by people who grew up in it, treats staying as something worth doing.
Stephanie Bittle, General Manager of Fidelity Fayetteville, fully embodies the culture of the company. “She isn’t just working for the company – she’s putting her name, reputation, and credibility behind it all every single day.” That distinction, employees who not only come to work but employees who own their work, is unique and rare. The Carolina Services Group is proud to say that they have many employees who truly own their work, and that’s what defines the place.
The company runs on an average of 120 people today, many of them working under a contractor model that Carolina Services shifted to in 2023. That shift allowed the company to operate more efficiently while maintaining the relationships with people that matter most. In a business where the summer surge is real and the off-season is relentless, they look to keep their best people year-round.
Walk into the Carolina Services office on S. Eastern Blvd in Fayetteville and you’ll find something you don’t find everywhere: the CEO, the CFO, HR, accounting, dispatch, and a working warehouse, all in one location. Every person who touches the business, from the first dock worker to the one who signs the financial statements, is right there, accessible, visible, and present.
Heather talks about this when she describes what real operational understanding looks like. In order to build a well-oiled business, you talk to the first person who touches the job, the people on the frontlines, and you work your way to the last. You don't build a business from the top of the org chart down. You build it from the dock up. That philosophy, baked into how she approaches her role as CFO, is also how the company runs day to day.
You can tell a lot about a moving company by the reviews nobody asked for. The ones that show up on a Tuesday, weeks later, from someone who just wanted to express how good the service was that they received. At Carolina Services Group of Companies, those reviews tend to mention the same things: a manager who was on-site on a Saturday, a crew that didn't cut a corner when cutting one would have been easy, the sense that someone actually cared how the job ended.
In a business where something easily goes wrong on a move, what the Carolina Services Group provides is peace of mind in every move as a trusted moving and storage partner.
The Carolina Services Group philosophy on growth is simple: you have to be better before you can be bigger. For most of its history, Carolina Services was a military mover. That’s how it was built, that’s where its relationships were, and for a long time, that was enough. Then the GSA’s Defense Personal Property Program reconfigured the competitive landscape. Rate structures changed, and the pressures multiplied. Companies that had built their entire business model around government moving found themselves facing a reckoning.
The Carolina Services Group felt it too, so they made a decision to pivot. Thomas and Heather used the disruption to their advantage, and they looked to what they already had for solutions. With the portfolio of warehouses, trucks, experienced crews, and relationships throughout the Carolinas, they knew they could begin diversifying their business even more.
They began providing Interior Design Support Services. They will soon open a premier contents restoration and remediation franchise in August 2026. Record storage and shredding, which is already in the portfolio, serves clients who need more than cardboard boxes, and real estate extends the asset base. Every new service line aligns with The Carolina Services Group's core business, reinforcing its foundation and expanding its capabilities in key areas.
Take the recent rebranding, it was all intentional. Until last year, twenty-two companies operated under twenty-two different names with no unified identity. The Carolina Services Group brand logo contains the chevrons representing the military, yet when turned becomes the foundation of a home, two moving or storage boxes strategically yet slightly hidden, and the arrow pointing permanently upward, it was the first time everything Thomas’s family had built could be introduced under one roof. This focus on uniting the company was a necessary realignment to slow down before speeding up.
The Carolina Services Group gives from within, the southern hospitality piece is real. The company has an average team of 120 people: drivers, warehouse staff, and office personnel spread across five Eastern, North Carolina locations.
They hold the community tight inside the company: flexibility, team luncheons, quarterly birthday parties, and annual Christmas celebrations. This culture of recognition extends from the president’s office to the dock.
Thomas Kiser Jr was awarded 2025 North Carolina Mover of the Year by the North Carolina Movers Association, recognition of service to the military moving community within the state. The Fidelity New Bern location received the 2024 Mayflower Customer Excellence Award in their category. Heather is active in the North Carolina Trucking Association and Women In Trucking as well the North Carolina Movers Association. The Carolina Services Group of Companies is being built into the industry’s conversation, event by event, relationship by relationship.
FOUNDED
1960s, Fayetteville, North Carolina
Leadership
Thomas Kaiser III, President & CEO (3rd generation); Heather Turlington, CFO
Van Line
Mayflower
Locations
5 (Fayetteville, Wilmington, Jacksonville, New Bern + 1)
Companies under umbrella
22
Employees
~120 (contractor model)
Service Lines
Moving & Storage (military, civilian, commercial), Record Storage, Real Estate, Remediation
Brand Tagline
“Moving What Matters”
Awards
NC Mover of the Year (Thomas Kaiser III, NC Movers Association); Mayflower Excellence Award (New Bern location)
Longest-tenured employee
43 years
