Plan it backwards. Fix the date and the hour you have to be open at the new address, then count back from there: building paperwork first, quote second, labelling third, furniture last. The truck is the cheap part of a business move. The hours you are not open are the expensive part.
Almost every commercial move that goes wrong went wrong in that order. The furniture was handled and the paperwork was not. This is the sequence we use on commercial jobs across Boise and the Treasure Valley, written out.
Start from the hour you open, not the hour we load
A move that has to be finished by Monday morning is a different job from the same furniture with an open week around it, even though the truck and the crew are identical. So the reopening date goes at the top of the page, and everything else is scheduled against it.
Plan forward instead — starting from “when can the movers come” — and you get a schedule that is one signature away from collapsing. The signature is never yours.
Six weeks out: the parts somebody else has to sign
These are the items a house move does not have. None of them are difficult. All of them take longer to arrange than people expect, and any one of them can stop a move on the morning it is meant to happen.
- A certificate of insurance naming the building. Usually at both ends, not just one. We provide the COI when building management asks for it. Ask your property manager now what they need on it. With a week it is a phone call. On the morning of the move it is a cancelled move.
- A loading dock that has to be booked, and a freight elevator that has to be reserved. Most buildings book those days ahead, and some pad the elevator for you rather than letting a crew do it.
- Building management signing off on what hours the work can happen. Some buildings will not allow a dock to be used during trading hours at all.
- Somebody who can let the crew in and lock up again if the work runs past closing. Name that person now, not on the day.
If the building needs paperwork we cannot get in time, we would rather tell you while you are still choosing a mover than in the lobby on moving day.
Four weeks out: get a quote that means something
Four answers make the number accurate: how many workstations, what floor you are on at both ends, whether there is a dock or just a door, and the date you have to be open again.
Notice what is not on that list. Square footage is not on it, and neither is your headcount. We will not tell you how many hours an office your size takes, because that number does not exist. What decides the hours is the real volume, stairs or lifts at both ends, and how much of it is packed and ready before the crew arrives. Two offices with the same floor plan are not the same job.
Tell us the system your workstations use and roughly how many there are. Partitions and cubicles come apart, travel flat and go back up at the new address, and that count is what sets the crew size more than anything else in the building.
Three weeks out: write the labelling plan
A labelling plan is the difference between a desk landing at the right person’s spot and a desk landing in a pile. Number the rooms or zones at the new address, put those numbers on a printed floor plan, and label furniture and boxes with them. Not names — names change between the plan and the day. Numbers do not.
Tape the floor plan to the wall at the new address before the truck arrives, and give the crew a copy.
The week before: the parts only your staff can do
This is the week that decides the size of the bill on an hourly job.
- IT disconnects, labels and backs up. Machines, monitors and racks travel with us, but a moving crew should not be guessing at which cable came out of which port. This is the piece that most often goes wrong when it is left to the morning of.
- Filing cabinets, pedestals and desk drawers get emptied. None of it can be lifted loaded.
- Decide what is not going. A crew standing still while somebody makes that call is billed the same as a crew carrying.
- Book packing if you want it. Blankets, straps and shrink wrap are included with the move. Boxes and packing paper are billed separately, and packing help is worth a half day for the fragile end of a fit-out.
Moving day: authority at both ends
Somebody at the new address needs the authority to decide where things go. Not to relay questions to somebody else — to answer them. Without that person, everything lands in the nearest open space and gets carried a second time, on your clock.
What it costs
The same as a house move: $100–$150 per hour for a crew of two, scaling with the crew. Most movers price commercial work higher on the assumption that it comes out of a company budget rather than someone’s pocket. Ours is the number a homeowner gets. If we can drive out, do the job and get back the same day, it is billed by the hour. When the truck has to stay out overnight, it becomes a flat quoted price.
What we will say no to
Weekend and after-hours work is possible by arrangement, but it is not our standard schedule — ask early rather than late, and do not build the plan on it before we have agreed to it. Sundays we are closed.
We do not store anything. We will load and unload a storage unit or POD that is yours, and that is the whole of it.
And some heavy equipment is a rigger and a crane job rather than a moving crew job. Send the make and the rough weight and we will tell you which one it is now, rather than on the day.
When to call
Retail is the tightest version of all of this. The gap between closing at the old unit and opening at the new one is often a weekend and sometimes a single night — the pattern we see most in the Meridian storefronts around The Village. Those get planned backwards more carefully than anything else we do.
We answer the phone Monday to Saturday, 7am to 9pm. Tell us the number of workstations and the date you have to be open again, and we reply the same day with a straight number. Ask for a quote as soon as your reopening date is real — not once the boxes are ready.
If your date has already collapsed and you need a crew this week, say that on the first call. Short-notice work is often possible, but not if the building is waiting on paperwork nobody has started.