Chiller shipping and HVAC equipment transport

Cooling equipment is the awkward freight on a build

Transformers are heavy and racks are delicate, but cooling equipment is awkward. An air cooled chiller for a data center can be 40 feet long, more than eight feet wide and ten or eleven feet tall, with fans and coils on top that are easily bent and a weight of 30,000 to 50,000 pounds concentrated on a frame with only a few lifting points. Cooling towers ship as cells that are wide and light. Air handlers are large boxes of sheet metal that dent if a strap is pulled across them. And the newer liquid cooling plant for AI halls, dry coolers and coolant distribution units, is sensitive to shock and has to arrive with its piping connections capped and clean.

A load like that is over width or over height more often than not, so it is usually a step deck move with a permit, tarped or in a Conestoga, with edge protection under every strap and a route that avoids low structures.

How we move it

Chillers and large air handlers ride on step decks, lifted by crane at both ends and chained at the frame lifting points the manufacturer marks. Coils and fans are protected with corner boards and shrink wrap or a tarp, and nothing is strapped across a coil face. Cooling tower cells, which are light for their size, go on flatbeds or step decks and are the loads most likely to need a permit for width alone. Rooftop units and smaller air handlers go on flatbeds under tarps. Coolant distribution units and in row coolers, which are rack sized, travel upright in air ride vans the same way server racks do.

Every carrier that hauls one of these loads for us is vetted through Highway before dispatch, and we confirm the securement plan and the tarp arrangement with the driver before the truck leaves the pickup.

Roofs, pads and cranes

Where the unit lands decides half the plan. A chiller yard at grade needs a crane with reach over the fence and a trailer that can get within the crane radius. A rooftop unit needs a crane sized for the building height and a lift day booked with the building. A cooling tower goes up in cells and is assembled in place, so the cells arrive in sequence. We confirm the crane company, the lift date and the site access before dispatch, because a chiller that arrives on a day with no crane sits on the trailer with the clock running.

Routes and seasons

The western trips for cooling equipment are the same ones as for the rest of the build: Interstate 10 to the Phoenix area, Interstate 15 to Las Vegas and the Wasatch Front, Interstate 5 to the Bay Area, Sacramento, Portland and Seattle, and Interstate 80 to Reno. Two seasonal notes matter here. In the Phoenix summer, chillers and coolers are often needed on a hard date because the building cannot be commissioned without them, and the permit office's travel windows do not move for the heat. And in winter, a tarped unit over the Siskiyou Summit or Donner Pass needs a day of slack for chain controls.

What we need to quote

• Length, width and height of each unit, and the shipping weight
• Lifting points and whether the unit ships on a skid or on its own frame
• Whether the coils and fans are factory protected, and whether a tarp or a Conestoga is required
• Pickup: factory or distributor yard, with its crane and hours
• Delivery: pad or roof, crane arrangements, lift date and the site gate