Helena moving company closes after more than 70 years of family service

Capital Transfer & Storage closed its Helena doors on July 1, ending a 76-year run that made the company a familiar name for moving, warehousing, shipping and storage at 1316 Bozeman Ave. The shutdown removes one of the city’s long-running family businesses and leaves local customers looking for another place to handle household moves, commercial relocations and storage needs.

The company said on its website that it had served Montana since 1949 and was started by John Horne’s grandfather and father. Horne’s grandmother and mother also worked in the business, and Horne said he began working full-time there in 1971, followed by his brother in 1974. His son also spent time at the company, extending the operation across three generations of one family in Helena.

The business described customer satisfaction as its central goal and said decisions were made with customer wishes in mind. Horne said the company was never just about hauling furniture or keeping boxes in a warehouse, but about service, relationships and repeat business built over decades. Inside the building, boxes, old photographs and walls covered with thank-you cards reflected that history and the steady personal contact that helped the company last.

Horne said the closure became harder to sustain after COVID-19 changed the labor market and made it more difficult to find competent workers. The company’s website listed eight employees, including two with more than 19 years on the job and six with more than three years of experience, showing how much of the company’s day-to-day knowledge was tied up in a small staff. For Helena and Lewis and Clark County, that means not just the loss of a longtime employer, but the disappearance of a local option that had handled both residential and commercial moving work for decades.

The company has begun auctioning off equipment and remaining items from the building, with another auction scheduled for August. As Horne oversees the final emptying of the warehouse, the end of Capital Transfer & Storage closes a business that had been woven into Helena’s commercial life since the late 1940s and leaves its customers and workers to move on without it.