Commercial Moving Company: A Complete Guide to Planning a Business Move

A commercial moving company plans and carries out the physical side of a business relocation: walking both sites, sorting out the building paperwork, supplying crews and trucks, packing, taking workstations apart and rebuilding them, and clearing out whatever is not coming along. Choosing one comes down to how well it handles your buildings and your downtime, since the driving is the easy part. For anything over about thirty workstations, start six to eight weeks out, get the plan and the price in writing, and use the office relocation checklist below for everything else.

In Toronto the buildings usually set the pace. A downtown tower typically wants a certificate of insurance on file, a booked freight elevator, a timed dock slot and security sign-in for every crew member. A converted brick-and-beam office in King West may share one small freight elevator with every other tenant. A unit in a Scarborough or Etobicoke business park may have a dock at the back and no elevator at all. Whatever you are leaving and wherever you are going, the plan has to fit both buildings.

What a commercial moving company handles, and what stays with you

A full-service commercial mover takes the physical work off your team. A typical scope looks like this:

• a walkthrough of both sites to count workstations, measure awkward items and see the access;
• a written plan with a schedule, a crew size and a cost;
• certificates of insurance for the building you are leaving and the one you are moving into, with the elevator and dock bookings coordinated around them;
• packing, or packing materials for staff who pack their own desks;
• dismantling benching, cubicle panels and desks, labelling the parts and rebuilding them to the new floor plan;
• moving monitors, docks, printers, network gear and server racks;
• decommissioning the old space, including furniture you are not keeping and general junk;
• storage for anything that cannot go straight into the new space.

Other jobs stay with you or your other vendors, whoever moves you: the lease and its handback conditions, the internet circuit and phone numbers, disconnecting and reconnecting the network, telling staff, clients and suppliers, and updating your address with governments. On most office moves in Toronto, the crew moves the hardware and the physical racks, while disconnecting and reconnecting the network itself stays with your IT team or provider, and the move is scheduled around them. For a sense of what belongs in a full-service price, see our article on what a full-service moving company includes.

Ontario’s consumer rules for movers don’t cover an office move

Ontario has clear rules for hiring a mover, but they are written for consumers. The province’s business guide to the Consumer Protection Act defines a consumer as an individual acting for personal, family or household purposes, and says the term does not include a person acting for business purposes. Under Ontario’s rules for hiring a mover, a household gets a written contract for any move worth more than $50 and a cap of 10% over the estimate unless it agrees to extra supplies or services. A company booking an office move should not assume those protections apply, and should write the equivalents into its own contract. If you are unsure where your business stands, ask your lawyer.

The terms worth putting in writing:

• the mover’s name, address and contact details, and confirmation that its own crews will do the work;
• the scope, floor by floor, including dismantling, rebuilding, disposal and storage;
• the rates, the estimate and how an overrun is handled;
• the dates, the move windows and the access arrangements at both buildings;
• the payment terms;
• insurance: the certificate for each building and the cover on your own furniture and equipment, which are separate things;
• how and when damage is reported and claimed.

That insurance point catches businesses out. The federal Office of Consumer Affairs notes that a mover’s certificate of insurance does not apply to your goods unless you buy replacement value protection from the mover. The certificate is the document your landlord wants, because it shows the mover carries liability insurance for damage to the building. Your desks, servers and files need their own cover. On Moving Co. jobs, standard coverage is included at $0.60 per pound per article, which is the industry standard, and a full replacement-value upgrade is available. Check what your own business insurance covers in transit as well. Our explainer on how moving insurance works in Canada covers released value and replacement value.

How to choose a commercial moving company

An hourly rate tells you very little about an office move. These questions tell you more.

1. Who will actually be on site? A broker arranges the move and hands it to subcontractors. The federal moving advice calls subcontracting a major source of consumer complaints and warns that it can leave a confusing trail of responsibility. Moving Co. does its moves with its own crews and uses no brokers or subcontracted crews.
2. Will they walk both sites before quoting? A quote for a thirty-desk office written from a phone call is a guess.
3. Can they issue the certificates your buildings want, with the right names as additional insured, before the date? A missing certificate can get a crew turned away at the dock and cost you the elevator booking.
4. Do they work evenings and weekends, and is there a surcharge? Get the answer in the written quote, because an office move often runs into the evening or the weekend.
5. Do they dismantle and rebuild your kind of furniture? Benching systems, cubicle panels and height-adjustable desks each come apart differently.
6. Can they take away what you are not keeping, and store what cannot go in yet? One company covering the move, the disposal and the storage means one schedule instead of three.
7. Do they, and any subcontractors, carry workers’ compensation coverage? The same federal guidance suggests checking.

Moving companies are not licensed by the province, so questions like these do the screening. Our guide on choosing a moving company in Ontario goes deeper on what to look for and what to avoid.

Office relocation checklist, week by week

The timings below assume an office of roughly thirty to a hundred workstations. A small office can compress the early weeks; a multi-floor or multi-site move should stretch them.

Twelve weeks or more before the move

• Read both leases: the notice owed on the old space, the condition it must be handed back in, and the date you get access to the new one.
• Name one move coordinator who can make decisions on the day, plus contacts in IT, facilities and HR.
• Order internet and phone service for the new address, and ask the provider for its installation lead time in writing.
• Get the new floor plan and give every workstation, office and storage area a number.
• If the new location adds a long commute for some staff, get employment advice early. Ontario’s Employment Standards Act guide lists a significant negative change in work location among the changes that may amount to constructive dismissal.

Eight weeks before

• Book walkthroughs with two or three commercial movers, and get written plans and quotes.
• Ask both property managers for their move rules: elevator and dock bookings, permitted hours, security sign-in, floor protection and certificate of insurance requirements, including the exact names to list as additional insured.
• Start the purge: decide what moves, what is sold or donated, and what goes to disposal.
• Check records before anything is shredded. The CRA generally requires businesses to keep records for six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to, and destroying them earlier needs its written permission. The same page says records are to be kept at your place of business or residence in Canada unless the CRA gives written permission to keep them elsewhere, so ask your accountant before sending financial records to off-site storage.

Six weeks before

• Choose the mover and sign the contract.
• Book elevator and dock windows at both buildings for the move dates.
• Send each building’s insurance requirements to the mover so the certificates are issued well ahead.
• Set the schedule: one weekend, or phases by floor or department.
• Order labels and packing materials, and decide who packs what.

Four weeks before

• Brief staff on what they pack, what they leave, where they will sit and when they can get into the new space.
• Lock the IT schedule with your provider: shutdown time, the order equipment arrives in, and when the network will be live at the new address.
• Book disposal for furniture and equipment that is not coming, and storage for anything that cannot go straight in.
• Confirm both property managers have received the certificates of insurance.

Two weeks before

• Hand out labels keyed to the numbered floor plan. Every box, chair and monitor gets a destination number, not a room name.
• Pack archives, storage rooms and anything nobody will need before the move.
• Arrange mail forwarding and start the address changes listed in the next section.
• Seal and label confidential files so they can travel last.

Move week

• Run the purge and disposal first, so nobody pays to move what is being thrown out.
• Staff pack personal items by desk, one crate per person.
• Back up data and confirm the IT shutdown plan.
• Walk both routes with the crew lead if you can.

Moving weekend

• Keep the coordinator on site at both ends with the floor plan.
• Pack, load, move, place everything to the plan and rebuild the workstations.
• Check the old space is empty and clean before the handback walkthrough.

The first week in the new space

• Walk the floor on the first morning and list the small adjustments.
• Check furniture and equipment against the inventory, and report any damage in writing right away.
• Finish the address changes and confirm mail and deliveries are arriving.

Changing your business address

The physical move takes a weekend. The address change takes longer, and some of it has a legal deadline.

• Ontario corporations must file a Notice of Change for any change to the information they have on file, including the head or registered office address, within 15 days after the change under the Corporations Information Act. The filing goes through the Ontario Business Registry at no statutory fee.
• Tax and payroll accounts. The CRA notes that one Ontario.ca login can notify the Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement, the Ontario Ministry of Finance, the WSIB and the CRA of updated business information. With the CRA, the principal place of business and the mailing address on GST/HST, payroll and corporate income tax accounts can both be changed.
• Mail. Canada Post’s Mail Forwarding service runs for 4 or 12 months, and Canada Post recommends 12 so annual mailings such as tax documents are not missed. It does not forward parcels, including Priority, Xpresspost and Expedited Parcel, and it cannot forward mail for businesses that share a common postal address, so tell couriers and suppliers yourself.
• Everyone else: your bank, insurer, payroll provider, suppliers and clients, your website, invoices and letterhead, online listings and maps, and any licences or permits that carry your address.

Keeping downtime short: evenings, weekends and phases

When you relocate a business, the costly part is the hours when nobody can work, so the move gets planned around the business rather than the other way round.

Many office moves happen outside business hours. A common pattern is packing on Friday afternoon, moving Friday evening through Saturday and rebuilding on Sunday, so Monday starts as a normal working day. Larger moves can be phased by floor or by department, with client-facing teams and anyone who answers phones scheduled so some part of the business is always reachable.

• Book after-hours building time early. Evening and weekend elevator and dock slots can be limited, and you need them at both buildings.
• Get the network live first. Staff can sit down at a rebuilt desk on Monday only if the internet circuit and switches were working before they arrived.
• Purge before the move. Every desk that gets moved and then thrown away is time on the clock.
• Keep one decision-maker on site who can answer a crew’s question in seconds.

To plan a weekend move around your buildings’ windows, send a video walkthrough of both spaces through our quote request page with your workstation count, both addresses and your target date.

Moving IT equipment, records and confidential files

Treat the hardware and the network as two jobs. Monitors, docks, laptops and peripherals are packed by workstation so each person gets their own kit back, and server racks and network gear move as high-value single items. Before shutdown, have IT back up data, photograph the cable runs on anything complicated, and label every device with its destination number.

Files need a plan of their own. Records that must stay in order should be boxed in sequence and labelled by cabinet and drawer. Anything confidential, such as HR, payroll and client files, should be sealed, listed on the coordinator’s inventory and moved last, so it never sits unattended in a lobby or a staging area. Your record-keeping duties do not pause for a move either: check the CRA retention rules in the checklist before anything is shredded or sent to storage.

Moving to a new headquarters from several locations

Consolidating several sites into one headquarters is a sequence of moves rather than one big one. The services that matter most:

• A walkthrough of every site, including the ones you are closing, so the plan reflects each building’s elevators, docks and rules.
• Phasing. Each site moves on its own date, in an order that keeps customers served and does not fill the new space faster than it can be rebuilt.
• Storage as a buffer for furniture that arrives before its floor is ready.
• Decommissioning at every old site, so each lease can be handed back on time.
• Certificates of insurance for every building involved.
• One point of contact across the whole project, so the plan does not reset at each site.
• Long-distance capacity if any site is in another city.

Moving Co. also has an enterprise logistics partner program for businesses that move often or across several sites. You get a dedicated account manager for the whole project, and business accounts can be invoiced on Net 30 terms. Long-distance and cross-Canada moves run from our Toronto base. For a site in another city, our long-distance movers page explains how those moves are quoted.

Decommissioning, junk removal and storage

Many commercial leases set out the condition the space must be handed back in, and emptying it tends to land in the last week. Plan it with the move, not after it.

Moving Co. handles the clear-out and the storage as well as the move. Furniture you are not taking, old equipment and general junk go out through our junk removal service, so the old space can be handed back empty. Furniture the new space is not ready for can wait in our short- and long-term storage, which is climate controlled, monitored and inventoried; you pay for the space and time you use, and nothing goes to a third-party warehouse. Workstations that are coming with you are dismantled and rebuilt to the new floor plan, and our furniture assembly and disassembly service can also put together the flat-pack furniture ordered for the new office.

If you want the move, the disposal and the storage on one quote, ask for it before you sign, and get the billing terms in writing.

What a commercial move costs

Office moves at Moving Co. are billed by the hour: $149 an hour for two movers and a truck, with a one-hour minimum, then 15-minute increments. That rate applies to select non-peak dates, and peak-period pricing may vary. Office moves usually need bigger crews, and a third or fourth mover is quoted on the call.

The rate includes the truck, blankets, dollies, straps and standard insurance. You will not see a separate truck fee, in-city fuel surcharge, equipment fee or trip fee, or a charge for stairs or elevators. The add-ons are published: packing materials at cost, about $3 to $5 a box; full packing at $50 an hour per packer; complex disassembly at $25 (simple disassembly is included); and for a move more than 30 minutes away one way, fuel at $1.50 per km after the first 50 km. The full rate card is on our pricing page.

Time is what moves the total, and a handful of things drive it: the number of workstations and how they are built, the access at both buildings, the distance between them, the length of your elevator windows, and how much of the purge is finished before the crew arrives.

Planning an office or commercial move in Toronto? Call (905) 752-7787. The line is open 24 hours.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a commercial moving company do?

A commercial moving company runs the physical part of moving a business from one address to another. That usually means walking both sites, writing a plan with a schedule, crew size and cost, issuing certificates of insurance for each building, packing, dismantling and rebuilding workstations, moving IT hardware and files, clearing out what is not coming, and storing what is not ready to go in. Network reconnection, the lease and address changes stay with the business.

How far in advance should a business book an office move?

A practical rule of thumb for an office of more than about thirty workstations is six to eight weeks, mainly because certificates of insurance and elevator and dock bookings at both buildings take time to arrange. Smaller offices can often be moved on one to two weeks’ notice. Start the lease review, the internet order and the floor plan earlier than that, ideally twelve weeks or more before the move.

What are the best moving services for a business moving to a new headquarters with multiple locations?

Look for a mover that will walk every site, plan the move in phases, hold furniture in storage as a buffer, decommission each old location so its lease can be handed back, issue certificates of insurance for every building, and give you a single contact for the entire project. If any site is in another city, it also needs long-distance capacity with its own crews rather than a broker handing the job to subcontractors. At Moving Co., that single contact is a dedicated account manager who stays with the project from the first site to the last.

Can one company handle the office move, junk removal and storage?

Some movers can, and it saves coordinating three schedules. Moving Co. handles office moves and also junk removal for the furniture and equipment you are not keeping, so one company can quote the move, the disposal and any storage together. Ask for all three on one quote and confirm the billing terms before you book.

Can movers relocate an office after hours or on weekends?

Yes, and many offices choose to. A common pattern is packing on a Friday afternoon, moving that evening and through Saturday, then rebuilding workstations on Sunday so the office opens normally on Monday. Your buildings decide the available windows, so book after-hours elevator and dock time early at both addresses and confirm the crew’s hours in the written quote.

Do commercial movers set up computers and networks?

Movers handle the hardware: monitors, docks, laptops, printers, network gear and server racks, packed and labelled by workstation. Disconnecting and reconnecting the network is normally work for your IT team or provider. Schedule the move around their shutdown and setup times so the network can be running before staff arrive.

How much does a commercial moving company cost in Toronto?

Moving Co. bills commercial moves by time: $149 an hour for a two-mover crew with a truck, with a one-hour minimum and 15-minute billing after that. The $149 rate is for select non-peak dates, and peak-period pricing may vary. Most office moves need extra movers, which are quoted on the call. The total depends on workstation count, access at both buildings and distance, and a video walkthrough gets you a real estimate.

Does Ontario’s 10% estimate rule apply to a business move?

Usually not by default. Ontario’s mover rules come from the Consumer Protection Act, and that Act protects individuals buying for personal, family or household purposes; someone acting for business purposes falls outside its definition of a consumer. A company should write its own protections into the contract: the estimate, how overruns are handled, the scope, the dates, the payment terms, the insurance and the claims process. If in doubt, ask your lawyer.

What insurance does a mover need for an office building move?

Commercial buildings commonly ask for a certificate of insurance before a crew can use the dock or freight elevator, often with the owner and property manager named as additional insured. That certificate covers the mover’s liability to the building; your contents need separate cover. For furniture and equipment, Moving Co. jobs include standard coverage of $0.60 per pound per article, with a full replacement-value upgrade available.