A company with a working parts warehouse needed to relocate without losing the order of its inventory or shutting the operation down. Here is how the move was planned and run.
By Pablo Giordano, Owner, Ontrack Moving® • June 2026 • 9 min read
A Bay Area company was relocating its office and a working parts warehouse from the South Bay to the East Bay, and the priority was clear: keep the operation running and keep hundreds of numbered parts in their existing order through the move. This is an anonymized account of how Ontrack Moving planned and ran it.
In short: this was a combined office and warehouse relocation where keeping the inventory in sequence mattered as much as moving it. The warehouse held hundreds of numbered parts across several stocked areas, and they had to land at the new building in the same order they left the old one. The crew moved them on machine carts, library carts, panel carts, and speed-packs, kept each section's items grouped at the shelf level, and offered the company the option to move the inventory on its own equipment rather than boxing everything. The work was phased across multiple days so the business kept running through the transition.
Running it this way kept the parts in order and cut the pack and unpack time on both ends. For projects like this, see our Bay Area commercial movers and office relocation playbook.
The company was relocating from one ground-floor facility in the South Bay to another in the East Bay. The office side was straightforward enough, but the warehouse was not. It held hundreds of parts stored across several distinct areas, an inventory cage, a job cage, a service area, a spare-parts room, and a consumables area, and every one of those parts had its place in a numbered system the business relied on day to day.
That is what made this more than a furniture move. If the parts arrived at the new building jumbled together, the operation would lose time digging through unsorted boxes to rebuild its own inventory, exactly when it needed to be back up and serving its departments. So the real challenge was not just moving the contents, it was moving them in a way that kept the numbered sequence intact and kept the business able to function while the move was underway.
The instinct on a lot of moves is to box everything, load the trucks to the ceiling, and sort it out later. For a parts warehouse, that approach quietly creates the biggest problem on the back end: an unsorted wall of cartons that someone has to re-inventory by hand. Ontrack Moving planned this one the other way around. The priority was set up front, keep the inventory grouped and in order, and the equipment and the truck loading were chosen to serve that priority rather than raw speed.
The core of the plan was to move much of the warehouse inventory on its own moving equipment instead of repacking it. The crew used machine carts, library carts, panel carts, and speed-packs to roll stocked items out in their existing groupings, keeping each section's numbered parts together at the shelf level. Because preserving that order was the point, the trucks were deliberately loaded to keep the sequence rather than stacked to maximum capacity. It is a trade the survey identified and the company agreed to: a little more space used on the trucks in exchange for inventory that lands in order and goes back on the racks without a re-sort.
A move like this is planned on the floor, not on a spreadsheet. The owner and the project manager walked the operation to see how the inventory was laid out, how the areas connected, and what order the work needed to follow. Seeing the warehouse in person is what made the cart-based plan possible, because the groupings on the existing shelves are what the crew matched on the moving equipment. A project manager is assigned to oversee a job like this and to keep the client and the crew aligned on the sequence.
The survey also drew the line between what was moving and what was staying. Most of the desks and all of the cubicles were staying put, so the office side narrowed down to a clear list: the monitors, the chairs, a handful of tables, some metal job boxes, and a large plan table that needed disassembly. Scoping it that way kept the labor pointed at the items that actually had to move instead of handling furniture that was not going anywhere.
The heart of the project was the warehouse, and the heart of the warehouse was order. The crew worked it in stages over several days. Palletized stock moved on a pallet jack. Everything else rolled onto machine carts, library carts, panel carts, and speed-packs, loaded so the numbered sections stayed grouped at the shelf level. The instruction on the floor was simple and strict: keep the section numbers together, and do not leave a box or a part behind. Loading by section instead of by whatever fit next is slower per trip, which is why the trucks were not packed to maximum capacity, but it is what let the receiving crew put the inventory back in sequence at the new building.
For a stocked warehouse, repacking the whole inventory into cartons doubles the handling, you pack it at the old building and unpack it at the new one, and it scrambles the order along the way. Moving the parts on machine carts and speed-packs in their existing groupings keeps the sequence intact and removes a full pack-and-unpack cycle. It is not the right call for every job, which is why a crew scopes it during the survey, but for a parts operation that lives and dies by its inventory order, it is often the faster and cleaner path.
An operation that stocks and serves parts cannot go dark for a week. The project was sequenced so the business could keep functioning through the move: the office preparation came first, then the office relocation, then the warehouse in stages across several days. Moving the warehouse by section, rather than emptying it all at once, is what kept disruption to the operation low while the transition was underway. This is the same phased thinking laid out in our office relocation playbook and the protocol breakdown on the commercial moving hub.
Before the office items moved, the crew ran a preparation day to break down what needed breaking down. The large plan table and other items that called for disassembly were taken apart, and the monitors were protected in foam and loaded into machine carts rather than loose. Because most of the desks and all of the cubicles were staying, the office relocation itself was a focused list rather than a full tear-down, which kept it from competing with the warehouse work for crew and time.
A combined office and warehouse move puts a crew in and around floors, doorways, loading areas, and racking at two facilities. Ontrack Moving carried its $10,000,000 Combined Protection Tower for building and property liability across the project, which covers the premises and structures the crew works in and around at both locations. The inventory and equipment themselves are covered separately under standard $0.60 per pound per article cargo liability under federal FMCSA rules, with additional valuation protection available for purchase.
An asset-based carrier with a real $10,000,000 building and property liability tower, standard $0.60 per pound per article cargo liability, and a clean 0% Federal Out-of-Service record is built to stand up to the due diligence a business runs before it lets a crew near its operation. Ontrack Moving runs the work with its own in-house crews, not a subcontracted team booked through a broker.
| Coverage | What it applies to |
|---|---|
| $10M Combined Protection Tower | Buildings, premises, floors, loading areas, and the structures the crew works in and around at both facilities; general liability and workers compensation for the work performed. |
| $0.60/lb cargo liability | The inventory, equipment, and items themselves, per article, under the federal FMCSA minimum. Additional valuation protection available for purchase. |
| 0% Out-of-Service Rate | The federal safety record under FMCSA inspection, verifiable under USDOT #2551548. |
The office and the warehouse were relocated from the South Bay to the East Bay, and the inventory landed at the new building in the order it left the old one. Moving the parts on their own equipment kept the numbered sections grouped, the phased schedule kept the operation running through the transition, and the lean office list kept the crew focused on the items that actually had to move. The trade of loading for order over raw volume did exactly what it was meant to: it spared the receiving team the re-sort that an unsorted pile of boxes would have forced.
It is the kind of project that shows what an asset-based carrier brings to a working operation, the ability to plan the move around how the business actually runs rather than just hauling boxes. If your organization is planning a warehouse relocation, an office move, or a combined project where keeping the inventory in order matters, our commercial moving team and storage services can scope it with an on-site walkthrough.
Office relocations, warehouse and inventory moves, and combined commercial projects across the Bay Area, run by our own in-house crews. Asset-based direct carrier under USDOT #2551548. $10M Combined Protection Tower for building and property liability.
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