The riskiest minutes of a machine's trip are the ones at each end. Across the Denver metro we load and unload machinery, crated equipment, and containers with high-capacity forklifts and rigging gear — weight and center of gravity checked, forks positioned, and the load secured before anything leaves the ground.
Quick answer: Badass Logistics provides machinery loading & unloading in Denver, CO and the surrounding metro. We load and unload machines, crated equipment, and containers as rigging work — weight and center of gravity verified, forklifts sized to the real load, and a crew that can take it into the building. Our crews work across Denver and nearby Colorado metros, and moves between facilities run as project freight under the same plan — usually quoted the same day. Call (307) 284-1332.
Most loading damage happens in a few seconds: forks set under the wrong point, a top-heavy machine tipped on a slope, a forklift picking a load past its rated load center. In a metro built on energy & construction equipment, machines and crated equipment arrive and leave every day at buildings that were never laid out for them — no dock, a gravel lot, a container that has to be emptied from the doors inward.
Badass Logistics treats loading and unloading as rigging, not labor. We verify weight and center of gravity, size the forklift to the actual load and ground, and position and secure the load for the carrier — and when the machine has to go further than the tailgate, the crew skates it through the door and sets it in place. We don't rent forklifts; we provide the crew, the lift, and the gear as one job. Forklift vs crane for machine loading →
Served by BNSF and Union Pacific, each operating an intermodal yard in the metro — BNSF's 31st Street Yard and Union Pacific's North Yard. The receiving end is usually the Waterton Canyon aerospace campus in Jefferson County, the Centennial Airport aerospace corridor in Arapahoe County, the Commerce City refining and rail district north of downtown, and the Globeville and Elyria-Swansea industrial corridor along the South Platte River.
Denver, CO runs on energy & construction equipment, and almost none of it stays put. Same crews and the same machinery loading and unloading standards across the region:
Denver's industrial base — energy & construction equipment — runs on equipment that doesn't move like freight. Turnaround windows, site safety rules, and heavy concentrated loads on process pads set the schedule. Typical load and unload jobs for Denver customers include:
The dock is the variable. Denver buildings are a mix of century-old brick and heavy-timber industrial buildings in the Globeville and Elyria-Swansea corridor with rail spurs and narrow bays, and newer clear-span distribution buildings along the I-70 and I-76 corridors — so one delivery backs into a dock leveler and the next comes off a trailer at ground level onto a lot. What comes off those trucks is mostly satellite and spacecraft assembly tooling, brewing and fermentation vessels, refinery process equipment, and cold storage and food processing machinery, and every one of them gets a weight and center-of-gravity check before the forks go in.
Machines rigged out and loaded onto trucks, positioned and secured for transit across the Denver metro.
Crated and skidded equipment unloaded, inspected, and staged or moved in across the Denver metro.
Heavy machines and crates pulled from containers with rollers, jacks, and forklifts across the Denver metro.
Heavy freight unloaded at ground level where there is no loading dock across the Denver metro.
Plenty of Denver jobs start and finish on one floor. The rest have to travel — to a new building across the metro, a sister plant down I-25, I-70 and I-76, or a facility in another state. We don't hand that part off. It runs as project freight inside the same plan: machines crated or prepped on site, loads sequenced to the rig-out, transport through our licensed broker and carrier partners with dedicated capacity for bigger moves, and our crew waiting at the destination to set it.
Every machinery loading & unloading job in Denver, CO is quoted from the actual work, not a rate sheet. These are the things that move the number — send them with your request and you'll get a real quote back fast:
Photos of the equipment, its nameplate, and the path out of the building save a site visit on smaller Denver jobs. For bigger moves we walk both sites before we price anything.
The same Denver crews handle every kind of industrial rigging. If your job looks more like one of these, start here:
Running a trucking fleet out of Denver? See truck dispatch for fleets of 4+ trucks.
Working throughout Denver, CO and the surrounding metro — backed by a nationwide network of 88 locations when a move crosses state lines.
Machinery Loading & Unloading throughout Denver and the industrial suburbs around it — the towns below are where the plants, shops and distribution parks actually sit:
| Town | County | From downtown |
|---|---|---|
| Aurora | Adams County | 8 mi |
| Lakewood | Jefferson County | 6 mi |
| Commerce City | Adams County | 6 mi |
| Thornton | Adams County | 9 mi |
| Westminster | Adams County | 7 mi |
| Arvada | Jefferson County | 7 mi |
| Centennial | Arapahoe County | 13 mi |
| Brighton | Adams County | 19 mi |
| Golden | Jefferson County | 13 mi |
| Boulder | Boulder County | 24 mi |
| Greeley | Weld County | 50 mi |
| Highlands Ranch | Douglas County | 13 mi |
| Longmont | Boulder County | 30 mi |
| Loveland | Larimer County | 46 mi |
| Broomfield | Broomfield County | 14 mi |
| Castle Rock | Douglas County | 26 mi |
| Parker | Douglas County | 19 mi |
| Littleton | Arapahoe County | 9 mi |
| Northglenn | Adams County | 10 mi |
| Dakota Ridge | Jefferson County | 12 mi |
| Englewood | Arapahoe County | 6 mi |
| Ken Caryl | Jefferson County | 13 mi |
| Wheat Ridge | Jefferson County | 5 mi |
| Lafayette | Boulder County | 18 mi |
Moving across the metro or out of state? See all our Denver services or get a quote.
Most Denver jobs don't stop at one service. The crew that rigs a machine out is the crew that manages the move and sets it back down — so you're dealing with one company from the disconnect to the re-level, not three subcontractors pointing at each other.
Machine has to come off the floor, through the door, or onto a pad before it travels? That's the rigging side of the same Denver crew.
industrial rigging in Denver →Presses, compressors, generators, full production lines — disconnected, rigged, hauled, and re-leveled across Denver as one accountable job.
machinery moving in Denver →Machine tools are instruments, not freight. VMCs, lathes, and grinders moved on air-ride and squared back to the builder's spec in Denver.
CNC machine movers in Denver →Moving the whole floor instead of one machine? Phased teardown, sequenced loads, and reinstallation planning for Denver plants.
Denver plant & factory relocation →In Denver we also run riggers, machinery movers, CNC movers, and plant relocation, plus project freight for the jobs we rig — or see every service we offer in Denver.
The same Denver crew also handles millwright services, machinery removal, and crane and rigging services.
Tell us what's moving and where. We'll route the nearest crew and quote it fast.
Get a Denver Loading Quote