Commercial Movers Near Me
Published by Chris Townsend
Finding the right commercial moving services is a big responsibility. If you have been tasked with planning your company's move—whether across town or across the country—congratulations. Your boss has a lot of faith in your capabilities. You must deliver your office hauling with flawless execution while keeping your colleagues from pestering you too much about the new floor plan. Here are important tips to consider for a stress-free business relocation experience.
How do I find the best office movers in my area?
Planning an office move is much more complicated than moving your home, but the basics are similar. Everything gets packed up, moved, and unpacked. In a commercial move, many more people are involved; it has to be done all at once, and the stakes are pretty high if anything goes wrong.
Let's talk about local moves first, although choosing the right commercial mover will have the same elements, whether the planned move is local or long-distance. In a local move, you have the benefit of being able to walk through both spaces with the moving company. You will need their help in determining the move timeline, including whether any items can move ahead of the primary move day. Often, conference room furniture, filing cabinets, and other storage accessories can lead the way, reducing the material for the main move.
When interviewing commercial movers, discussing their prior experience in relocations is essential. If your company is large, with open-plan seating, you need a mover that can quickly break down and reassemble your cubicle system so that it isn’t wasting time. If your relocation is into a furnished facility, that familiarity isn’t critical, so it’s up to you to create a list of essential qualifications before you begin the selection process.
Can one commercial mover handle the whole move?
Most office moves include several dissimilar considerations: executive offices, cubicle or open seating, mail and storage rooms, conference rooms, possibly fitness facilities, food service and childcare. The relocation incorporates furniture, telecommunications, computer hardware, artwork, and other types of décor. Because the information is usually confidential, the company must be able to guarantee the security of the material being transported. If you want one company to handle all these pieces, you must find out if their experience encompasses everything your project requires.
A full-service commercial mover will offer you a list of clients with which it has worked successfully, and you should have in-depth discussions with several to ask about their experience. This strategy will be a good way of learning about the mover's abilities and will help you broaden your exposure to the move process. Talk about the services from which you can choose. In many relocations, the employees will pack their desk contents and personal items. This practice helps maintain confidentiality and offers an opportunity to reduce the relocation of obsolete material. If your company wants to have the desks packed up by the moving company employees, how do they screen their staff?
Another critical question to ask is about packing material. In many moves, the moving company will temporarily provide used boxes. It will drop off the boxes for packing ahead of the relocation date, and then pick them up when you have completed the project. This model saves your business from the cost of buying them and is environmentally friendly. A commercial carriers company is also expected to provide a free quote, an inventory-based estimate for the move's likely cost.
Depending on the type of business you are in, and the building you are moving to, you may have to consider services like the internet and phone. If so, that is outside the hauling company's scope, but if the mover gets everything in place and your employees can't work, you don't want to be the one who didn't think about the wireless access. A great office relocation consultant with a commercial relocating company will have that item on its checklist and remind you.
The movers you want to hire can also tell you how many people and trucks you need to complete your relocation overnight based on the number of employee workstations and other furniture and office equipment you need to move. The coordinator can help you create the floor plan if desired, and plan what goes where. This is why interviewing and walking through the building with potential move partners will help you choose.
You may already have experience with a business moving company, even if you haven't moved your office yet. Commercial dispatching companies will frequently engage relocating professionals for in-house relocations when personnel change, floorplans change, or the configuration requires a conference room to become an office or vice versa. Your experience with a vendor doing this kind of service will indicate its reliability and may lead you to consider it for more.
If you are starting your search for a commercial mover from scratch, you may want to ask for other companies' recommendations. Your real estate broker can refer you to clients who have moved, and you can ask colleagues at the Chamber of Commerce or other local business associations. Depending on the size of the metropolitan area, you may have many or few options.
What if I need to move an office across the country?
As with a local move, the level of complexity depends in part on the number of people moving and the readiness of the new facility. Transporting people from one office to another isn't as tricky if the destination office is prepared for occupancy. This status reduces the burden of the move to flat items instead of rebuilding an existing office footprint. If you are preparing for a large move, consider breaking it into stages and moving people into smaller groups. That will likely reduce the impact on service levels and minimize disruption.
You may be sending computer equipment, sensitive files, and other vital records, so again, you must select a company you can rely on for asset management to maintain security and communication with you during the process. The vendor will also need to provide documentation of insurance, licensing, and any required certifications for your industry. You may also use a moving company with commercial storage solutions in case you need temporary storage.
Suppose you are moving a large team to a distant office. In that case, you will need to rely on the haulers to support the arrival of the office furniture and other items in preparation for the opening. A high-touch operation will provide directions and make it easier for the transferees to find their way when they appear ready to work.