Book Carts, Purge Bins, Moving Crates & More

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How to Know What’s Needed, What’s Not, and Where to Rent It

Plastic Moving Crates / ‘E-Crates’ In use by Midwest Installation Group at a School Relocation Project

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What Moving Equipment Rentals Does Your Business Need?

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Every year, U.S. employers record millions of workplace injuries and illnesses. In 2023 alone, private-industry employers reported some 2.6 million nonfatal incidents, and many of these arose from contact with objects or equipment. Among occupational groups, “transportation and material moving” (the same kind of work involved in office relocation) suffered the highest number of fatal work injuries in 2022.

At the same time, corporate relocations are more common than many businesses realize. Recent data show that roughly 9 percent of publicly traded U.S. companies moved headquarters in a single year, the highest share in recent history. That doesn’t count the thousands of smaller office reconfigurations, downsizing, expansions, or hybrid-workspace shifts happening across companies of all sizes.

Put together, those facts create a simple, but often ignored truth: whenever a business moves desks, cabinets, files, furniture, or equipment, there is a tangible risk to people and property. Without the right equipment (crates, dollies, carts, lifts), the odds of injury, damage, or costly insurance claims go up fast.

That is why businesses that plan ahead using professional-grade moving gear and experienced partners don’t just save time, they protect their people, their equipment, and their bottom line.

So … How Do You Know What’s Needed, What’s Not, and Where to Rent It?

That’s the question we’re tackling in this article.

Because every office is different - some relocating entire floors, others just shifting desks or moving storage rooms - there’s no universal checklist. What works for one company could be overkill for another. Over the next sections, we’ll walk you through how to assess your workspace, decide which types of equipment truly make sense, and explain why renting from a trusted provider is often smarter than buying.

If you skip this step, you could end up with too few crates, too many bulky boxes, or staff lifting things the wrong way. That’s the kind of mistake that leads not just to back pain, but to delays, damage, and unexpected costs.

Let’s get into it.

What’s Needed: The Equipment That Actually Makes a Move Work

Most office moves start out optimistic and then go sideways the moment people begin packing. Cardboard boxes sag under the weight of paperwork, random piles start forming in every corner, and someone inevitably tries to carry something they shouldn’t. You can tell when the wrong equipment is being used because the entire office feels cluttered, progress slows down, and everyone looks a little irritated. What fixes nearly all of this isn’t more hands or a bigger truck; it’s having the proper tools from the beginning. Businesses that rely on commercial-grade equipment don’t just finish faster, they avoid the avoidable - injuries, damaged furniture, and the kind of confusion that sets a move back days instead of hours.

A good example of this is the plastic moving crates (we call them e-crates) pictured above - the stackable kind that sit on small rolling dollies. They calm the whole process down because they remove half the fuss that comes with cardboard. No taping, no rebuilding collapsed boxes, no strange configurations of “heavy stuff on top of lighter stuff” that never ends well. Employees fill a crate, close the lid, stack it, and roll an entire tower across the office without blocking hallways. The difference in speed is noticeable, and the office stays far cleaner during the transition.

Book carts aren’t just for books! This school utilized them for binders, papers, board games, and more.

Another piece of equipment people underestimate is the standard book cart. Any office with shelves full of binders, manuals, or archived paperwork knows how tedious it is to box that material. A book cart avoids all of that by letting you move an entire shelf’s worth in one trip. It cuts out repetitive packing, reduces lifting, and prevents staff from lugging around heavy stacks they aren’t really equipped to carry safely. It’s the one tool that consistently saves time in places like law firms, accounting departments, engineering teams, medical offices, or any busy department that still relies on physical files.

Then there’s the pre-packing cleanup, which tends to be the part nobody talks about until it becomes a bottleneck. Every office has items that should have been thrown away a year ago, drawers full of cables no one can identify, and storage rooms that quietly turned into junk closets. Purge bins solve this by giving everyone one place to toss the things that don’t deserve space on the truck. A clean office packs faster, and purge bins make cleanliness practical instead of aspirational.

During a commercial move, trash piles up quicker than you’d think! Our Purge Bins are a great solution.

Finally, there are the stray items that don’t belong in a crate: loose supplies, oddly shaped equipment, office décor, chair mats, and all the miscellaneous pieces that appear the moment people start emptying desks. Bulk bins (or Speed Packs as we call them) handle that mess in a single container and keep the workspace organized instead of slowly filling with small piles of things nobody can categorize. These bins prevent the “junk drift” that bogs down moves and helps crews stay focused.

In a school or university relocation, bulk bins are great for handling small chairs or classroom toys.

When you add up these tools - crates, dollies, book carts, purge bins, bulk bins - the move takes on a very different feeling. People stay productive, the office stays safer, and the entire operation stops relying on improvisation. Instead of scrambling to figure out how to move something, the right equipment lets everyone keep the move rolling without losing momentum.

What’s NOT Needed (and what businesses usually buy unnecessarily)

One of the easiest ways for an office move to get more expensive than it needs to be is by bringing in equipment that looks helpful on paper but creates more hassle than value once the move starts. The biggest culprit is cardboard, mostly because people assume it’s cheaper and “good enough.” In practice, businesses almost always buy too many boxes, underestimate how quickly they break down, and forget that every cardboard box you pack has to be taped, stacked, carried, and later broken down again. Cardboard isn’t dangerous by itself, but the strain it adds to the process leads to slower packing, cluttered hallways, and a lot more bending and lifting than employees should be doing. Most of the injuries that happen during DIY office moves start with someone handling a box that should have been replaced with a crate on wheels.

Another thing companies overestimate is how useful their existing office carts or utility wagons will be. Most offices have a couple of mail carts or a beat-up rolling table somewhere in the copy room, and when a move is approaching, those pieces get drafted into service whether they’re suited for the job or not. The problem is that they’re usually too small, too narrow, or too unstable to be safe under a full load. A cart designed for envelopes doesn’t behave well when you pile fifty pounds of electronics on top of it. A wobbly table with wheels becomes a tipping hazard. These improvised tools cost more in delays than they save in convenience.

Then there’s the temptation to overpack personal vehicles with office items. It may seem harmless for employees to toss monitors, desk accessories, or boxes of supplies into the back seat to “help move things along,” but this creates its own set of problems. Items go missing, tech equipment gets damaged in transit, and IT teams lose track of what should have been logged or labeled before leaving the building. Personal vehicles often become the source of accidental losses that nobody can properly document after the fact.

Finally, some companies assume that renting a truck alone is enough, as if the right vehicle will somehow compensate for the wrong tools. A truck is just the container that gets everything to the new address. The efficiency of the move is determined inside the building, not in the parking lot. Without the proper equipment to pack, roll, lift, or consolidate, a truck is simply a large space waiting for the slowest parts of the process to catch up.

A good move isn’t about having everything imaginable on hand. It’s about having the few pieces of equipment that actually make the work safer and faster - and avoiding the tools that look useful but stall the whole effort once people start using them.

Where to Rent Commercial Moving Crates and Carts

Once a business knows which tools will make the move smoother, the next step is figuring out where to get equipment that actually holds up. The gear sold in office-supply stores or online marketplaces isn’t built for the kind of repeated loading, stacking, and rolling that a commercial move demands. You want equipment designed for the real world crates that lock when you stack them, carts that don’t fight you around corners, and bins that hold up when people inevitably overfill them.

When you rent through Midwest Installation Group, you’re getting the same equipment our installation crews use every day. That includes our orange eCrates, which measure 24.25 inches long, 15.25 inches wide, and 12.75 inches deep. They’re compact enough to move easily through tight hallways but large enough to hold a full drawer’s worth of items. Each crate stacks securely onto its matching rolling dolly, so teams can move several crates at once without carrying anything by hand.

For paper-heavy offices, we supply the tall green book carts you see in the photos. Each cart holds about 12 linear feet of shelving, which translates to roughly 50 to 60 standard binders without bending the shelves or stressing the frame. Instead of boxing dozens of files, you roll an entire section of shelving out in one straightforward trip.

The purge bins in our rental lineup (the large yellow ones shown in your image) are built to swallow the mountains of old supplies, outdated documents, and forgotten office clutter that tend to surface right before a move. They’re roomy, heavy-duty, and easy to steer even when they’re full. They take on the early cleanup work so the rest of the move isn’t slowed by clutter you never intended to bring along.

We also offer speed packs, bulk bins, and other rolling containers sized for awkward items, loose supplies, and those strange pieces that always appear once people start emptying drawers. Every piece of equipment is matched to the size of your office and the amount of material you’re moving, so you’re not left guessing how many crates or carts you need.

Renting through us is simple. Tell us what kind of space you’re moving and how much needs to be packed, and we’ll pull together the right mix of crates, carts, bins, and dollies. We deliver everything directly to your location. You use it for as long as you need. When the move is complete, we pick it all up. No leftover boxes, no storage issues, no risk of buying the wrong equipment.

A move becomes a lot less stressful when you have the right tools. If you call Midwest Installation Group, we’ll make sure you start with equipment sized correctly and built to handle the real demands of a commercial relocation - which is exactly the difference between a move that drags on and a move that stays on schedule.

Contact Midwest Installation Group Today

If you’re staring at a floor full of desks, files, loose equipment, and the hundred little things that accumulate in an office over time, you don’t need to overthink it. Tell us the size of your space, when you’re moving, and how much you need to pack. We’ll put together the right mix of crates, carts, bins, and dollies so you’re not stuck wrestling with cardboard or trying to haul things by hand. The right tools make a move predictable. And predictable is exactly what an office relocation should feel like.

When you’re ready to make your move easier (and a whole lot safer) give us a call. We’ll make sure you have everything you need to get from Point A to Point B without losing time, equipment, or your sanity.