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Family Owned & Operated Since 1990
Bekins Van Lines Agent
USDOT 70719 | CAL T 188960
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Furniture out, IT torn down, signage off, recyclables sorted, donations routed, broom-clean handoff. End-of-lease, downsizing, M&A, restaurant and retail closures, post-construction cleanouts. 36 years in San Jose, scoped to your lease — not a generic checklist.
What this is
When a company leaves a commercial space, the lease usually doesn't just say "take your stuff." It says some version of: return the space in the condition you received it, less normal wear and tear. That means furniture out, IT and AV gear pulled, abandoned cabling removed, signage off the walls, often the tenant improvements undone, and the floor swept.
That's decommissioning — and it's the difference between getting your security deposit and going back to your CFO with a holdover charge. Most operating teams don't have time to run it themselves. That's where we come in.
We're the moving company that already knows your building, your dock, and your freight elevator. We've been doing commercial moves and storage in the Bay Area since 1990. The same crews that pack your office for a relocation can run the decommissioning when you're leaving instead.
Scope
We scope to the lease language and the building's actual restoration requirements — not a one-size template.
Workstations, private office furniture, conference and break-room fixtures, lobby and reception pieces, signage. Disassembled, padded, loaded, and routed to resale, donation, recycling, or disposal — whichever the item warrants.
Server racks, monitors, phones, AV gear, cable trays, and the spaghetti behind every desk. We pull and pad equipment for resale or e-waste recycling, and remove abandoned cabling per landlord restoration requirements when in scope.
Items still in good shape head to local nonprofits and resale channels. Metals, electronics, cardboard, and clean wood get separated for recycling. Only what truly can't be diverted hits the landfill — we work to keep that pile small.
Empty space, swept floors, debris removed, ready for the landlord walk-through. We document the final state with photos and provide a haul manifest so you have a clean record for your lease close-out file.
When companies hire us
Vacating an office, lab, or retail space. Lease usually requires furniture out, cabling pulled, broom-clean, and sometimes restoration of tenant improvements. We scope to the lease language, not a generic checklist.
Hybrid work means most companies need less square footage. Excess workstations, conference furniture, and break-room equipment have to go somewhere — donation, resale, recycling, or our warehouse if you might want them back.
Company is consolidating or shutting a location. Speed matters and the operating team is busy with the actual deal — we run the cleanout end to end so the building can be released on time.
FF&E, fixtures, kitchen equipment, signage, leasehold improvements. Most of it has resale value if it's pulled carefully — we route what we can to operators and liquidators rather than the dumpster.
Construction debris, leftover materials, demo waste, packaging, scaffolding. Telehandlers, flatbeds, and box trucks for the heavy stuff; crews for the manual sort and load.
Schools, campuses, municipal yards, light-industrial sites with years of accumulated equipment, materials, and odds and ends that need to be sorted, hauled, and disposed of properly.
The process
Five steps. Each one priced and scoped explicitly so you know what you're paying for and what we're responsible for.
We walk the space with you, look at the lease language if relevant, photograph what's there, and identify anything that needs special handling — IT gear, hazmat, refrigerants, anything sensitive.
Crew size, days, equipment (forklift, telehandler, flatbeds, box trucks), and dump/recycle/donation routing all priced explicitly. No surprises later.
Crews work zone by zone — disassemble, pad, stage, load. Items get tagged for resale, donation, recycling, or disposal as they come out. IT equipment is staged separately for either secure transport to your new site or e-waste handling.
Resale and donation items go to local nonprofits and operators. Metals, electronics, cardboard, and clean wood go to recyclers. Disposal happens last, only for what couldn't be diverted.
Final sweep, floor protection pulled, photos sent. You get a haul manifest and any required disposal documentation for your lease close-out file or audit trail.
Recent project
Years of accumulated material in the district's facilities yard, sorted, loaded, and hauled out in a single day.
Photos and project details from a Silicon Valley Moving & Storage cleanout job for Oak Grove School District.
Why SVM
Honest framing. Different cleanout models exist for different reasons — here's where we fit and where we don't.
1-800-Got-Junk / national haulers
How SVM compares
They're built for residential and small-load junk. We're built for commercial scope: FF&E, IT, multi-day projects, lease restoration. Our trucks and crews are sized for it.
National 3PL / facilities firm
How SVM compares
National firms bring scale and uniform process across many cities. We bring 36 years of Bay Area building knowledge — your dock, your freight elevator, your COI requirements, your municipal disposal rules. Better fit for single-site or regional projects.
DIY with general contractor
How SVM compares
GCs are great at construction. Cleanout coordination — sort, donation routing, e-waste paperwork, certified diversion — usually isn't their core. We handle the cleanout side so the GC can focus on restoration work.
Self-service dumpster + your team
How SVM compares
A roll-off and a few interns works for small loads. For a real office decommission, the time and back-strain cost of doing it in-house almost always exceeds hiring a crew that does this every week.
| Alternative | How SVM compares |
|---|---|
| 1-800-Got-Junk / national haulers | They're built for residential and small-load junk. We're built for commercial scope: FF&E, IT, multi-day projects, lease restoration. Our trucks and crews are sized for it. |
| National 3PL / facilities firm | National firms bring scale and uniform process across many cities. We bring 36 years of Bay Area building knowledge — your dock, your freight elevator, your COI requirements, your municipal disposal rules. Better fit for single-site or regional projects. |
| DIY with general contractor | GCs are great at construction. Cleanout coordination — sort, donation routing, e-waste paperwork, certified diversion — usually isn't their core. We handle the cleanout side so the GC can focus on restoration work. |
| Self-service dumpster + your team | A roll-off and a few interns works for small loads. For a real office decommission, the time and back-strain cost of doing it in-house almost always exceeds hiring a crew that does this every week. |
National multi-state portfolio cleanouts typically go to enterprise facilities firms with bench-level coverage in every market. Certified records destruction with chain-of-custody requirements goes to NAID-AAA shred vendors. Heavy industrial hazmat goes to licensed waste handlers. We'll tell you up front when one of those is the better fit and, in many cases, coordinate the partner ourselves.
Pricing
Decommissioning costs depend on square footage, FF&E volume, IT scope, lease restoration requirements, and how much we can divert to resale and donation versus disposal. After a walkthrough we send a written quote with crew size, days, equipment, and routing all itemized so you can compare it line-by-line against other proposals.
Licensed & Verified
USDOT 70719 · CAL T 188960 · Bekins Interstate Agent · 36+ years serving the Bay Area · CMSA · BBB
FAQ
It's the umbrella term for restoring a commercial space to landlord-handover condition when you leave. Standard scope: FF&E removal, IT and AV teardown, cabling removal (if your lease requires it), signage removal, sometimes demolition of tenant improvements, sort/donate/recycle/dispose, and a broom-clean final handoff. Exact scope depends on what your lease says — we read the lease before quoting.
We don't hold NAID AAA certification for records destruction, so for any project that requires certified shred chain-of-custody we partner with a NAID-certified vendor and coordinate transport. We're upfront about that — for general office paper recycling we handle it directly; for legally-required destruction we bring in the right partner.
Refrigerant evacuation from cooling equipment, ballasted lighting, batteries, and chemical waste have specific federal and state disposal requirements. We don't pretend to be the hazmat specialist — for those streams we coordinate with licensed disposal partners and document the paperwork in your final manifest.
Project-based, not per pound or per item. The variables are crew size, number of days, equipment required (forklift, telehandler, flatbed, box truck), and the disposal/donation/recycle routing. After a walkthrough we provide a written quote with all of that itemized so you can compare apples to apples against other proposals.
For end-of-lease projects with a hard exit date, we can usually start within a week — sometimes sooner if it's urgent and we have crew availability. Larger multi-week projects (whole-floor or multi-floor) we book 2-4 weeks out so we can size the right crews and equipment to your timeline.
Yes — and we prefer to. Office furniture, kitchen equipment, supplies, and anything still in working condition typically routes to local nonprofits, schools, or smaller business operators rather than the dumpster. We don't promise certified zero-waste, but we genuinely work to keep the disposal pile small. Diversion rate depends on what's there and how usable it is.
Yes. After every project we provide a haul manifest documenting what was removed, where it went (resale, donation, recycle, disposal), and final-state photos of the space. For projects requiring specific waste-disposal documentation, we provide weight tickets and disposal receipts.
Yes. Our service area covers the full Bay Area — San Francisco, Peninsula, East Bay, South Bay, North Bay — and we'll travel further for the right project. Larger commercial decommissions in Sacramento, the Central Valley, or Southern California are something we've done; ask us.
Corporate moving
Office relocation
Move-in counterpart to decommissioning. New space prep, crew, IT, FF&E install.
Business storage
Hold what you're keeping
For furniture and equipment you want to keep but don't need installed yet — climate-controlled warehouse hold.
Hospitality
Restaurant & hotel closures
Specialty handling for FF&E, kitchen equipment, and signage in restaurant or hotel decommissions.
Junk hauling
Residential cleanouts
Smaller residential cleanouts — garages, estates, post-renovation debris — without the commercial scope.
Walk us through the space, the lease, and the timeline. We'll send a written project quote with all of it scoped explicitly.