Family-Owned Robbinsville Company Celebrates Its 100th Anniversary
The moving and storage industry has changed dramatically in the last 100 years since Bohren’s Moving & Storage Company opened for business in 1924 with one Model T Ford truck based at a small warehouse on Chambers Street in Princeton. But through four generations of family ownership, the company has demonstrated its resilience, savvy and foresight, looking for new opportunities while also adapting to many changes over the past century.
In this 100th year of operation for Bohren’s United Van Lines, President Denise Hewitt and her father, Chairman of the Board Ted Froehlich, are grateful for their overwhelming success in the moving category. They are also thankful that decisions made over the decades to diversify the brand have allowed them to keep up with the times.
Hewitt, an Allentown, N.J., resident, and Froehlich, a Princeton resident, intend for 2024 to be a year of celebration and sharing with their employees, customers and the public. Over the year they’ll look back over the decades but also keep an eye on the future, an approach that has kept the business successful for so long.
In the beginning, E.L. Bohren delivered baggage for Princeton University students and did small moves with his Model T truck. By the second generation, Bohren’s son-in-law Warren Froehlich expanded the business and in 1955 became an agent of United Van Lines. His grandson Ted began working for Bohren’s every day after school when he was 12. By the time he was 17, he was driving trucks on routes from New York, Boston, or Pittsburgh to Washington D.C. on a regular basis.
When Ted Froehlich was 27, his dad passed away. Ted had three brothers, but none were interested in running the business. Ted was intrigued, even though his experiences at that point were limited to being a dispatcher, a claims adjuster and, of course, a truck driver. Seeing an opportunity to take on and shape the business, he stepped into the CEO role. He immediately hired management consultants to help him make the business more efficient and professional, the first of his many strategic and prescient decisions.
Another important key step to expanding and increasing the profitability of the company was to become a stockholder in United Van Lines (UVL). As a part owner of UVL, Froehlich and his business became eligible to make moves across the 48 states as well as Canada and Mexico. This made Bohren’s a major player in the moving and storage business as the firm moved families and commercial entities across the country. Throughout this period of growth, excellent service was always his top priority. Froehlich said it took 12 service members in a variety of jobs, from customer service, to sales, to crews, to provide outstanding customer service for every single household move.
Over time, he noted, a shortage of long-haul drivers was becoming a major issue for the industry. It forced Bohren’s to re-evaluate some of the long-distance moving capabilities. Local and tri-state moving and storage still remain a specialty today.
In 1985 and 1989 respectively, Ted’s daughters Denise and Louise joined the business. Louise managed the Human Resources Department and served as Vice President until her departure in 2021 to pursue other interests. Denise worked in virtually every position in the company before she became President in 2002 and Ted became Chairman.
Denise and her father quickly realized the benefits of Bohren’s being a woman-owned and operated business at that time, welcoming the opportunity to become certified as such by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council the following year. That certification gave the company access to hundreds of corporate clients and government agencies providing a percentage of contracts to women- and minority-owned businesses.
Following in her father’s footsteps, Denise focused on increasing efficiency and expanding new opportunities. One example of that came as Bohren’s customers with residences in the Hamptons and Long Island inquired about the transport and storage of their art collections. Denise recognized the unique need for a trusted, reliable vendor and capitalized on the company’s strengths in those areas. Bohren’s Fine Art Transportation & Storage was created to handle the personal collections of their residential clients but quickly grew to service major art galleries and museums.
In the past century, Bohren’s has expanded from its original humble warehouse in Princeton to as many as five locations in New Jersey and Florida. But again, Froehlich’s instincts told him at a certain point that consolidation would make sense, and in 1999 the father-daughter team brought it all into one 12-acre facility at 3 Applegate in Robbinsville, where they operate today.
One hundred years in, Bohren’s has morphed from a single-owner shipper to Bohren’s Companies, encompassing three divisions: Bohren’s Moving & Storage, Bohren’s Fine Art Transportation, and Bohren’s Logistics. Their services range from household and commercial moving and storage, to trade shows, to transport and storage of art as well as high-valued electronic and medical equipment. Bohren’s has moved and/or stored everything from microwaves to Elvis Presley memorabilia, Andy Warhol art to Apache helicopters, and RCA communications satellites to Rothko sculptures.
The company is looking forward to what the leadership of the fifth generation will do to expand the future of Bohren’s into the next century.
More information: www.bohrensmoving.com. See ad, page 19.
