National Van Lines traces back to 1901, when F.J. McKee started delivering ice and coal around Chicago with a wagon pulled by a single pony. Word spread about how carefully he handled things, and the ice-and-coal business turned into a moving business almost by accident: soon McKee was moving vaudeville sets for touring acting troupes, including sets for Charlie Chaplin. By 1916, that word-of-mouth reputation had grown into an entire fleet of trucks.
The company's first real test came in 1917, when a fire destroyed McKee's warehouse and left him down to a single truck. Not long after, McKee was diagnosed with tuberculosis and moved his family west to recover. He came back to Chicago at 50 to rebuild the business, only to run straight into the Great Depression in 1929.
In 1931, F.J. McKee passed the company to his son, F.L. McKee, a Hollywood tenor who'd performed alongside Bing Crosby and Shirley Temple before choosing the family business over the stage. F.L.'s daughter, Maureen Beal, took over as CEO in 1993, becoming one of the few female CEOs in the moving and storage industry, and ran National for 26 years, growing the network past 400 agents including its military and domestic partners, before retiring at the end of 2019.
Tim Helenthal took the Chairman & CEO seat in January 2020, capping more than 35 years at the organization: 18 years at National Forwarding, then seven years as President of National Van Lines itself. In 2011, National made the leap to full employee ownership, a structure it's now in its fifteenth year of operating under. "We've survived three generations of family ownership, and now we're in our fifteenth year of being an employee-owned company," Helenthal says. "In order to be around that long, you must be doing something right."
Doyle explains a van line as a simple analogy. "We're sort of like an airline, but for a customer that needs to move long distance," he says. "You're not going to get on your private jet, you get on an airline, which is shared space with other customers. Then we bring that value to you in service and economics to deliver quality."
Helenthal extends the metaphor further, framing it as the connective tissue across a move rather than any single piece of it. "Think about putting together a shirt." he says. "For a move, you've got an origin agent, somebody that's going to pack, somebody that's going to load, somebody that's going to drive it, somebody that's going to store it, somebody that's going to deliver it. If you're a consumer operating on your own, how do you navigate that? That's what we do as a van line. We're the seam that binds the pieces together."
"National was one of the first coast-to-coast van lines on a single authority," says Mark Doyle, President. "Since then, it's gone through several iterations, and new agents joining. Where we've landed is a van line that consists of a traditional agent family, plus a hauling partner network and an affiliate network that includes local movers and independents."
Ask President Mark Doyle and Tim Helenthal what keeps agents loyal to National, and both will tell you that it's access. Every agent in the network has both of their personal cell phone numbers. "We're reachable 24/7," Doyle says. "There are no layers of bureaucracy."
That accessibility shapes how National recruits and retains agents in the first place. Rather than a single mold, the network flexes to fit whoever's in front of them, a sales-focused agent in one market, a hauling partner running under National's authority in another, an independent who only wants a regional relationship somewhere else. "We'll take a look at all those different scenarios and how they would benefit National based on the geography of where they're at," Doyle explains.
"Every van line has a big gigantic book of rules, and we're no different," he says. "But when a new situation comes up, we take a look at it with fresh eyes and don't go in prejudiced. Quite often we'll support smaller independent owner-operators to help give them a better deal, so they're not getting crushed by some weird rule that doesn't really apply anymore."
Helenthal says "We operate as a small company with big company resources, small company values, big company resources." National doesn't shy away from the label, either. "We like to position ourselves as a boutique van line," Doyle says.
National's international division earned FIDI-FAIM Quality Certification in 2026, one of the moving industry's most demanding quality standards, following a year-long compliance and audit process. It's the kind of credential that validates a philosophy Helenthal and Doyle describe as central to how they run the business day to day: fairness, accessibility, and a refusal to treat every situation the same way.
As independent operators reshaped the industry over the past decade, showing up more visibly inside groups like IAM and the independent-mover ranks of AMSA's MSC, Doyle and Chairman & CEO Tim Helenthal decided National needed to build for where the industry had actually gone, not where the old rulebook assumed it would stay. "We need to embrace where the industry has gone to, not where it has been," Doyle says.
National recently acquired an AI company to support strategy, customer acquisition, and logistics, and brought on a fractional CMO to rebuild its marketing approach system-wide, an investment Doyle notes benefits not just National corporate, but every agent and affiliate carrying the brand.
National's association involvement runs deep. Helenthal is chairman of AMSA's MSC Government Traffic Committee, sits on its executive committee, serves on its government, congressional, and regulatory affairs committee, and sits on its DAP management board after three years as chairman. Doyle sits on the board of directors for IAM, where Sue Staszewski also serves on the executive committee, and Mike Wilson represents National as an ambassador for the Movers for America group. National is also a member of the Better Business Bureau.
Community giving stays close to home in Broadview. For years, National has sponsored Aspire of Illinois, a nonprofit that runs programs helping people with developmental disabilities live independently. Beyond financial support, National sends volunteers for at least one day a year for hands-on projects like painting and landscaping, and has recently started providing moving services directly to Aspire's group homes through Mighty Moving, a sister brand under National's parent holding company.
Nationally, the company supports Canines for Warriors, funding service dogs for wounded military veterans, and Ronald McDonald House Charities. "We try to do quite a bit of charity, and we always try to make sure we have someone that's local, right in our backyard," Helenthal says.
FOUNDED
1929 — Chicago, Illinois
Headquarters
Broadview, Illinois
Leadership
Tim Helenthal, Chairman & CEO | Mark Doyle, President
Ownership
Employee-owned since 2011, 15th year; three prior generations of family ownership
Network
About 100 traditional prime agents | 800 affiliate partners | 200 hauling partners
Services
Residential/COD (primary), GSA, corporate accounts, international, military (via National Forwarding)
Recognition
FIDI-FAIM Quality Certification (international division, 2026) | Maureen Beal, IAM Hall of Honor and MSI Lifetime Achievement Award | Multiple Top Workplaces (Chicago) rankings
Associations
IAM (Board of Directors), AMSA/MSC (Government Traffic Committee Chair, Executive Committee, DAP Management Board), Movers for America
Community
Aspire of Illinois, Canines for Warriors, Ronald McDonald House Charities
