Graebel Brand Guidelines: One Wausau Truck in 1950 to a Colorado Relocation Firm

A local mover in central Wisconsin.

Graebel began in 1950 as a local moving company in Wausau, Wisconsin, started by David Graebel. English Wikipedia says he began with a single moving truck and in the early years did the scheduling, driving, loading and unloading himself, before the business branched out to serve customers across the state. The company’s own timeline gives the same year and the same town, and calls the founder “Dave Graebel.”

Growth came through long-distance work. English Wikipedia says that the company served customers across the United States and became an independent van line in the early 1980s, and that around the same time it moved its headquarters to Colorado. Graebel’s timeline lists the launch of international moving services in 1981 and of commercial workplace services in 1991. English Wikipedia places the global headquarters today in Aurora, Colorado; the company’s September 2026 announcement carried a Denver dateline.

The move into managing relocations for employers followed. The company’s timeline dates its relocation and assignment management services to 2000, while English Wikipedia dates the launch to 1996, so the two sources differ. Under the founder’s son, Bill Graebel, the company says, it widened its global footprint and its range of services; Bill Graebel now serves as chair of the board.

From van line to relocation management.

Graebel’s business today is managing moves rather than driving them. It describes itself as a full-service relocation management company that helps corporations move employees and teams, and says plainly that it now contracts other companies to move the household goods. Its timeline traces the spread of offices: an EMEA headquarters in Prague in 2008, an Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore in 2009, a Shanghai service centre in 2012, and offices in Munich, Geneva and Bengaluru in 2020.

The moving fleet was the earliest part to go. Graebel’s timeline says it divested its US van line in 2014 to focus on talent mobility and workplace relocation; English Wikipedia and Go By Truck News, a trucking trade site, give 2015 for the divestment of Graebel Van Lines. In April 2017 Go By Truck News reported that Graebel Van Lines, by then based in Dallas, was shutting down its offices and liquidating its assets, and noted that Graebel Companies was no longer affiliated with it, although both were often simply called “Graebel.” English Wikipedia says the van line closed in 2017.

The workplace business followed in 2023, when Graebel sold Graebel Commercial Services, its workplace and commercial moving unit, to Hilldrup, a family-owned moving, storage and logistics company, according to both the company’s timeline and English Wikipedia. What remains is a services and software company. Its site names the globalCONNECT mobility platform, the Luminate technology product, CitySwitcher, a programme for employees who manage their own moves, and the MQI diagnostic for mobility programmes. The about page counts more than 800 people and service in 165 countries; the September 2026 announcement gives 190 countries.

The service list kept growing after the trucks were sold. The timeline adds extended business travel services in 2016, a Mobility Strategy division in 2018 and a diversity, equity and inclusion consulting service in 2022. The strategy team runs a programme called PathBuilder, a set of workshops on mobility goals, return on mobility and engaging stakeholders inside client companies. On 24 August 2026 Graebel announced Switch, an AI-powered virtual relocation assistant built into CitySwitcher, which suggests neighbourhoods to employees moving to an unfamiliar city and gives them destination information. Earlier, in 2021, the timeline records a new website and a larger service centre in Houston, Texas.

How movers present themselves.

Moving and relocation companies present themselves in two registers at once. One is physical: vans, trailers, crates and containers that carry a company’s name along streets and across borders. The other is corporate: service pages, client portals, apps and reports written for the human-resources and mobility teams that commission employee moves.

Livery is the older of the two. American van-line names such as Allied and North American date from 1928 and 1933, according to English Wikipedia, and groups that later bought them have kept those names in use: SIRVA, formed in 1998 and 1999, still lists Allied and northAmerican as brands in their own right on its website. Crate and container work shows up in the service lists themselves: SIRVA’s website menus separate household-goods, commercial and specialty moving, and a May 2026 Cartus release lists fine-art wrapping and transportation, temperature-controlled wine shipping and pet transportation among the services of its executive programme.

The corporate side is mostly software and programme names. Cartus lists its CartusMobile app and its MovePro360 hub in its own timeline, and SIRVA lists a technology platform, Connect+, beside its relocation services; both describe home sale and purchase, temporary housing, immigration and destination support as parts of one managed programme for an employer.

Corporate pages carry the rest of the story: networks of agents and partners, owners, offices and depots, and the countries served. Those figures change with each acquisition, merger or refinancing, so this guide gives them only with the date and the source that reported them, and marks clearly what rests on a company’s own word.

Truth, love and integrity.

Graebel still presents itself as a family business. Its about page says that generations of the Graebel family have worked at the company and sums up its values in three words: “Truth. Love. Integrity.” The page explains each one at length: it says the company would rather overdeliver than overpromise, admits that love is seldom seen as a company value, and defines integrity as doing the right thing when nobody is watching. The same page tells the company’s story in a few plain lines, from hauling household goods in 1950 to organisations moving people across oceans, and closes with the line that the company is “just getting started.” Ron Dunlap, who had been with the company for 15 years, became chief executive, the company says, as Bill Graebel moved fully into his role as board chair.

Ownership changed in 2026. On 2 September 2026 Graebel Companies and Reside Worldwide, a Seattle provider of short- and extended-stay accommodation, announced that they had combined under common ownership, backed by the Canadian private equity firm Westbridge Capital together with continued investment from the Graebel family. The announcement says both businesses continue as operating entities, with Ron Dunlap as chief executive of the combined companies, and that Reside’s 3Sixty corporate-housing platform will be brought together with Graebel’s technology and services.

For a design guide, Graebel shows how a moving company’s name can travel from the side of a truck to software, service pages and policy consulting once the trucks themselves are gone. Compare Cartus and SIRVA, two other corporate relocation companies in this series. For this guide we use ink blue, slate teal and birch with an amber accent and a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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