A chiller in a Chicago building was usually set before the walls closed around it. Getting the old one out and the new one in means a route through a mechanical room, a basement, or a roof — and often a crane on a city street. We plan and rig HVAC equipment across the Chicago metro, from the first opening to the last anchor bolt.
Quick answer: Badass Logistics provides chiller, boiler & HVAC rigging in Chicago, IL and the surrounding metro. We rig chillers, boilers, cooling towers, air handlers, and rooftop units into and out of mechanical rooms, basements, penthouses, and roofs — sectioned where the opening demands it and set ready for the mechanical contractor. Our crews work across Chicago and nearby Illinois metros, and moves between facilities run as project freight under the same plan — usually quoted the same day. Call (307) 284-1332.
The machine is rarely the hard part of an HVAC replacement. The route is. A centrifugal chiller headed for a basement plant room, a boiler that only fits through a wall, a cooling tower that has to go up past occupied floors — the plan is set by doors, corridors, slab capacity, and crane reach long before it is set by the unit. In Chicago, much of that work is in buildings that cannot shut down while it happens.
Badass Logistics walks both routes — the old unit's way out and the new unit's way in — and rigs them as one job. Refrigerant recovery, electrical disconnects, and piping stay with your licensed mechanical contractor; we sequence around them. Units are skated, jacked, or sectioned at factory joints where the builder allows it, and roof work runs as a planned crane lift. How to move a boiler or chiller →
Large HVAC plant in Chicago is concentrated in campuses that run around the clock. The metro's hospitals — Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Rush University Medical Center, and UChicago Medicine — replace chillers and boilers without ever closing a wing. University of Chicago and Northwestern University run central plants of their own, often in basements reached by one freight elevator or a single knockout wall.
Chicago, IL runs on heavy manufacturing & the nation's rail hub, and almost none of it stays put. Same crews and the same chiller and HVAC rigging standards across the region:
Loop and Streeterville high-rises, the Illinois Medical District and university campuses, and O'Hare and Midway airports carry some of the largest central plants in the country. The equipment we rig for them includes:
On the industrial side, Chicago's plants are a mix of older multi-storey brick loft buildings in corridors like Kinzie and Little Village with tight column spacing and small freight elevators, alongside larger single-storey clear-span plants further from the core, and process cooling there means chillers, towers, and air handlers set on mezzanines and roofs. That work concentrates in the Kinzie Industrial Corridor near the Near West Side, the Pullman industrial district on the far South Side, the Little Village industrial corridor along the Sanitary and Ship Canal, and the Calumet industrial area along Lake Calumet.
Centrifugal, screw, and absorption chillers rigged out of and into plant rooms across the Chicago metro.
Fire-tube and water-tube boilers removed and set, sectioned where the opening demands it across the Chicago metro.
RTUs, cooling towers, and condensers lifted onto and off roofs across the Chicago metro.
AHUs and fan sections moved through buildings and set on curbs and pads across the Chicago metro.
Plenty of Chicago jobs start and finish on one floor. The rest have to travel — to a new building across the metro, a sister plant down I-55, I-80, I-90 and I-94, 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.
Data centers are the other big buyer of cooling plant in Chicago. 350 East Cermak (Digital Realty) and Elk Grove Village data center submarket run chillers, CRAH units, and condensers that are replaced and added on the facility's schedule, not the weather's.
Every chiller, boiler & HVAC rigging job in Chicago, IL 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 Chicago jobs. For bigger moves we walk both sites before we price anything.
The same Chicago crews handle every kind of industrial rigging. If your job looks more like one of these, start here:
Running a trucking fleet out of Chicago? See truck dispatch for fleets of 4+ trucks.
Working throughout Chicago, IL and the surrounding metro — backed by a nationwide network of 88 locations when a move crosses state lines.
Chiller, Boiler & HVAC Rigging throughout Chicago and the industrial suburbs around it — the towns below are where the plants, shops and distribution parks actually sit:
| Town | County | From downtown |
|---|---|---|
| Joliet | Will County | 32 mi |
| Aurora | Kane County | 35 mi |
| Naperville | DuPage County | 26 mi |
| Elgin | Kane County | 35 mi |
| Cicero | Cook County | 5 mi |
| Gary, IN | Lake County | 24 mi |
| Hammond, IN | Lake County | 20 mi |
| Bolingbrook | Will County | 24 mi |
| Bedford Park | Cook County | 10 mi |
| Romeoville | Will County | 27 mi |
| Elk Grove Village | Cook County | 20 mi |
| Waukegan | Lake County | 37 mi |
| Arlington Heights | Cook County | 24 mi |
| Evanston | Cook County | 13 mi |
| Schaumburg | Cook County | 26 mi |
| Palatine | Cook County | 27 mi |
| Skokie | Cook County | 13 mi |
| Des Plaines | Cook County | 17 mi |
| Orland Park | Cook County | 19 mi |
| Tinley Park | Cook County | 20 mi |
| Oak Lawn | Cook County | 11 mi |
| Berwyn | Cook County | 7 mi |
| Mount Prospect | Cook County | 21 mi |
| Wheaton | DuPage County | 24 mi |
Moving across the metro or out of state? See all our Chicago services or get a quote.
Most Chicago 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 Chicago crew.
Chicago riggers →Presses, compressors, generators, full production lines — disconnected, rigged, hauled, and re-leveled across Chicago as one accountable job.
Chicago machinery moving company →Machine tools are instruments, not freight. VMCs, lathes, and grinders moved on air-ride and squared back to the builder's spec in Chicago.
Chicago CNC movers →Moving the whole floor instead of one machine? Phased teardown, sequenced loads, and reinstallation planning for Chicago plants.
plant relocation in Chicago →In Chicago 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 Chicago.
The same Chicago crew also handles millwright services, machinery removal, crane and rigging services, and machinery loading and unloading.
Specialty rigging in Chicago: heavy lift rigging, transformer and generator rigging, MRI and medical equipment rigging, lab equipment moving, printing press moving, and data center rigging.
Tell us what's moving and where. We'll route the nearest crew and quote it fast.
Get a Chicago Chiller Rigging Quote