CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

ServiceMaster

Cleaning and restoration service

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ7455651
Source-derived summary

ServiceMaster Brands is an American privately held company owned by Roark Capital Group that provides residential and commercial services. Its headquarters are located in Atlanta, Georgia, after moving there in 2020 from Memphis, Tennessee.

Brands operated by ServiceMaster include ServiceMaster Clean, ServiceMaster Restore, Merry Maids, Two Men and a Truck, Indoor Science and Aftermath Services. The core services of the company are disaster response and restoration, janitorial services, professional home cleaning and Bio Hazard Cleaning.

ServiceMaster has more than 7,000 company-owned and franchise locations around the world. It has 13,000 corporate employees and a franchise network that independently employs over 33,000 additional people.

History

ServiceMaster was founded in 1929 by Marion E. Wade, a minor league baseball player, as a moth-proofing company in Chicago, Illinois. It was incorporated in 1947 and expanded to franchised carpet cleaning in 1952. Its movement into business services makes it a large outsourcing company.

In the 1980s, the company acquired several branch and franchise-based service companies, including Terminix, TruGreen (1991), Merry Maids (1988), and American Home Shield (1989).

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “ServiceMaster” as cleaning and restoration service. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around ServiceMaster, Cleaning and restoration.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2020, 1929, 1947, 1952—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1929. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with ServiceMaster, Cleaning and restoration providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “ServiceMaster”, the useful work is to connect “cleaning and restoration service” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7455651. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 1929, 1947 and 1952.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “ServiceMaster”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow ServiceMaster primary sources, ServiceMaster archive and ServiceMaster research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “ServiceMaster”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from ServiceMaster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.