About Us

Carney McNicholas moves families, high value products, libraries and artifacts, and other shipments across the street, across the country and across the world.

Winning dozens of honorable mentions and awards of excellence, Carney-McNicholas, Inc. has a superb reputation and according to United Van Lines provides high-quality service. Being a family business since 1906, Carney McNicholas is preparing its fifth generation to adapt, expand and continue to succeed in its 100+ years of service.

J.V. McNicholas

It was shortly after the turn of the century that John Vincent "JV" McNicholas entered the transportation field as the result of situations he did not approve of in the steel mills where he was working near the city of Youngstown. He borrowed one-hundred dollars from his mother and began hauling travelers’ baggage and personal belongings from the city’s railroad stations.

At age twenty seven, JV began to branch out into handling freight from the railroads, and added more horses and wagons and officially organized the present company in 1906. The firm was one of five original transportation companies in the city and is the only one still in the same family. JV was the president of the firm and in the mid 1950s, he moved up to Chairman of the Board for JV Transfer Company. JV McNicholas died of infirmities on October 27, 1969 at age 91. He served over three decades as a loving father and successful entrepreneur.

Henry McNicholas

Henry McNicholas, JV’s son assumed operations and changed the name from JV Transfer Co. to McNicholas Transportation. At age 41, he was running the new firm with his nephew Jimmy due to the death of his two older brothers, Jack and Paul, in 1960. McNicholas Transportation continued for many years as a successful and diversified flatbed, van, truck leasing and household goods moving company.

Jimmy McNicholas

Jimmy drove trucks for McNicholas Transportation and by the 1950’s he had worked himself up to Vice President of Labor Relations and represented company management at union negotiations at the local, state and national levels. He was Henry’s right-hand man. During the late 1970’s third generation McNicholas Transportation family managers anticipated the challenges for union trucking companies in advance of federal deregulation.

Tom Carney

Henry's niece and Jimmy's cousin, Mary-Rita McNicholas married Thomas J. Carney who became interested in the family transportation business after working for a time at SEARS. Tom became manager of the household goods moving division. While McNicholas Transportation was struggling with a changing steel transport market, a disruptive Teamster element, and the eventual deregulation of trucking, Tom borrowed money from the bank and took the McNicholas household goods moving division over as a new company. He solidified the agreement already in place with United Van Lines and changed the moving company's name to Carney McNicholas Inc.

"The letter C comes before the letter M, so when customers look in the yellow pages for a moving company, they'll see Carney-McNicholas first," says Carney. Tom was president for over two decades when he retired in 1999. His two sons, TJ and Greg took over the company operations and expanded the offices outside of Youngstown into Canton and Cleveland. TJ is currently the President of Carney McNicholas while Greg runs the household moving division in Youngstown.

As president, TJ has been faced with a lot of challenges that accompany the moving industry such as fluctuating fuel prices, economic deficits, weather conditions and asset acquisition . His dreams of expanding Carney McNicholas, Inc. into more than just a household good relocation company came true when he began investing in the expediting and relocation of special commodities, trade show exhibits, medical equipment, fine art, and libraries. In 2007, TJ bought his own 40,000 sq. ft. building in Sheffield, Ohio. Thirty-six thousand of that square footage is warehouse storage.

By the time each of them were 14, TJ’s three sons John, Ben and Tim began working for the company; cleaning the offices, sweeping the warehouse, loading the trucks and when they were old enough, move a household good shipment. At age 21,TJ’s eldest son John began driving a tractor-trailer around the country with his CDL in preparation for learning the business. John has now been working for the company for nearly 20 years and is currently the Vice President of Special Services where he oversees warehouse storage projects, the expedition of special commodities and is the local dispatcher for the Cleveland office. His brother Tim followed in his footsteps and began running the road in a tractor-trailer with his CDL in 2009. John, along with his wife, just recently added the 6th generation to CMCN with their son Deagan Ross Carney, born October 21, 2010.

TJ’s nephew Matt Hagan also started working for CMCN as a teenager and after graduating from college in 2001, Matt was introduced to the abstract science behind relocating a library. Shortly after that, he began finding, bidding on, mapping out, dispatching, and executing the relocation of library collections as large as 1.5 million volumes. In the summer of 2009, Matt and a crew of 40 other workers including CMCN's library relocation personnel moved The Ohio State University's collection in its entirety from local storage facilities into the newly renovated Thompson Library. The company repeated a similar move again in 2010 at the St. Louis Public Library. These were the highest profile moves in the history of the Company and Matt's career; however he never stops seeking jobs of similar multitude and complexity. Matt is now the Vice President of Commercial Business at Carney McNicholas, Inc.

Together, John and Matt are following in TJ's footsteps in the moving industry and represent what is now the fifth generation in this continuously owned family business established by JV McNicholas in 1906. Additional family members are also considering careers with the firm. TJ's other children Tim and Anna are employed by Carney-McNicholas, Inc. in various capacities including finance, billing, move coordination, driving, project leading, and general labor.

TJ, his younger brother Greg, son John and nephew Matt have high expectations for the sustainability and continuation of this family enterprise as they prepare a plan for the eventual transfer of operations and ownership to the fifth generation. The staff at Carney-McNicholas is continuously finding ways to create differentiation for CMCN’s future as a business and a family.

Please check out our photo gallery for a better picture of what we do.