SIRVA Brand Guidelines: Allied, northAmerican and a Name Built From the Latin “to Serve”

Two van lines, one new holding name.

SIRVA is a moving and relocation group based in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, outside Chicago. English Wikipedia says the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice formed it in 1998 to buy North American Van Lines from Norfolk Southern, and in 1999 added the Allied and Pickfords businesses; the combined group first traded as Allied Worldwide. The van lines it brought together were older than the group itself: English Wikipedia dates Allied Van Lines to 1928 and North American Van Lines to 1933.

The new name followed. On 11 February 2002, English Wikipedia says, Allied Worldwide was renamed SIRVA, Inc., a word coined from the Latin servire, “to serve,” and the company went on to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SIR.” In its first year as a listed company it reported operations in 40 countries and more than 7,700 employees, according to the same article. The group also bought relocation businesses in those years, including the relocation arm of Cooperative Resource Services in May 2002, Rowan Simmons in the UK later that year and PRS Europe of Belgium in 2003, when it also opened an office in Hong Kong.

The listed years were short. In February 2008 SIRVA entered bankruptcy and reorganised, emerging in May 2008 as a private company, English Wikipedia says; Private Equity Professional reported in May 2018 that it had since been a portfolio company of Aurora Resurgence and Equity Group Investments. The group kept growing abroad, adding Peninsular Properties in Hong Kong in 2011 and Concept Mobility Services of São Paulo in 2012, and opening an office in Doha under the Allied Pickfords name in 2013.

Private equity, lenders and a mixed-case name.

Ownership changed again in 2018. Private Equity Professional reported on 24 May 2018 that SIRVA had agreed to be acquired by Madison Dearborn Partners. At that point the magazine described SIRVA as having 55 offices, 620 agent locations and more than 2,600 employees operating in 170 countries, with brands including Allied Van Lines, North American Van Lines and Allied Pickfords. By early 2023 the company was trading as SIRVA BGRS, and its later releases name Madison Dearborn Partners and Relo Group as its equity sponsors.

On 20 August 2024 the company announced that it had completed a transaction with the support of its lenders and those sponsors. Its release says the new ownership group is led by credit funds and accounts managed by KKR Credit Advisors, Evolution Credit Partners, BlackRock Financial Management and Indaba Capital Management, and that the operating and leadership teams stayed in place.

Today SIRVA describes itself as a relocation and moving company serving corporate clients and consumers, with 69 locations serving more than 190 countries, according to its website in November 2026; its August 2024 release gave 77 locations. Its family of brands, as the site lists it, runs to Allied, northAmerican, Global Van Lines, Alliance and Sirva Mortgage alongside the parent name. The corporate side covers home sale and purchase, temporary housing, destination, visa and immigration support, intercultural training and expense management, and the company says its RiskGuard programme offers a fixed fee for US home sales.

Recent launches are dated by the company itself. In May 2026 it introduced Signature Moves, a concierge relocation service for consumers, and on 26 October 2026 it announced a strategic alliance with the tax and mobility firm Vialto Partners. It also reports industry awards: it says it was named Americas Relocation Management Company of the Year at the Forum for Expatriate Management’s EMMAs in Dallas in May 2025.

Vans, crates and service programmes.

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.

A coined name above older van lines.

The name is the centre of the identity. English Wikipedia’s account of its Latin root, servire, makes SIRVA a word that was built for the group rather than inherited from one of its parts. In 2023 the company changed how it writes that word: on 1 March 2023 SIRVA BGRS announced that its new name would be Sirva, with “a refreshed look and revitalized logo,” and its website and releases have used the mixed-case spelling since. This guide uses the capitalised form, SIRVA, which the company carried from 2002 until that change.

Underneath the parent name, the older van-line names keep their own identities. The website lists Allied and northAmerican as brands in their own right, written in the forms the company uses, next to Global Van Lines, Alliance and Sirva Mortgage. Its about page organises the group around four words it calls key principles — “Smart. Helpful. Human. Responsible.” — and its menus split the offer into corporate relocation services, personal relocation services, moving services and technology solutions, with a platform called Connect+ under technology. The design task is one of hierarchy: a corporate relocation name for programmes, service pages and client reporting, and a set of moving brands that keep the names they had before the group existed.

For a design guide, SIRVA shows how a holding name coined in 2002 can sit above van lines from 1928 and 1933, and how that name moved to mixed case in 2023. Compare Pickfords, the British removals name that English Wikipedia says joined the group with Allied in 1999, and Crown Relocations. For this guide we use an ink blue, a harbour teal and a warm crate tan with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep SIRVA’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.