A chiller in a Portland 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 Portland metro, from the first opening to the last anchor bolt.
Quick answer: Badass Logistics provides chiller, boiler & HVAC rigging in Portland, OR 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 Portland and nearby Oregon 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 Portland, 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 Portland is concentrated in campuses that run around the clock. The metro's hospitals — Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), Providence St. Vincent Medical Center, and Legacy Emanuel Medical Center — replace chillers and boilers without ever closing a wing. OHSU and Portland State University run central plants of their own, often in basements reached by one freight elevator or a single knockout wall.
Portland, OR runs on semiconductor & port manufacturing, and almost none of it stays put. Same crews and the same chiller and HVAC rigging standards across the region:
Downtown and Lloyd District towers, OHSU's Marquam Hill campus, Intel's Hillsboro fabs, and PDX airport carry large HVAC plant. The equipment we rig for them includes:
On the industrial side, Portland's plants are older brick rail-served factory buildings in the Northwest Industrial District along the Willamette alongside newer distribution and manufacturing buildings on Swan Island, a former WWII shipyard now run by the Port of Portland, and process cooling there means chillers, towers, and air handlers set on mezzanines and roofs. That work concentrates in the Rivergate Industrial District at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, the Swan Island Industrial Park close to downtown, the Columbia Corridor running 18 miles along the Columbia River to the Troutdale Industrial District, and the Silicon Forest technology corridor around Hillsboro.
Centrifugal, screw, and absorption chillers rigged out of and into plant rooms across the Portland metro.
Fire-tube and water-tube boilers removed and set, sectioned where the opening demands it across the Portland metro.
RTUs, cooling towers, and condensers lifted onto and off roofs across the Portland metro.
AHUs and fan sections moved through buildings and set on curbs and pads across the Portland metro.
Plenty of Portland jobs start and finish on one floor. The rest have to travel — to a new building across the metro, a sister plant down I-5 and I-84, 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 Portland. Hillsboro data center submarket and QTS Hillsboro campus 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 Portland, OR 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 Portland jobs. For bigger moves we walk both sites before we price anything.
The same Portland crews handle every kind of industrial rigging. If your job looks more like one of these, start here:
Running a trucking fleet out of Portland? See truck dispatch for fleets of 4+ trucks.
Working throughout Portland, OR and the surrounding metro — backed by a nationwide network of 88 locations when a move crosses state lines.
Chiller, Boiler & HVAC Rigging throughout Portland and the industrial suburbs around it — the towns below are where the plants, shops and distribution parks actually sit:
| Town | County | From downtown |
|---|---|---|
| Gresham | Multnomah County | 12 mi |
| Hillsboro | Washington County | 15 mi |
| Beaverton | Washington County | 7 mi |
| Tigard | Washington County | 8 mi |
| Vancouver, WA | Clark County | 8 mi |
| Clackamas | Clackamas County | 10 mi |
| Wilsonville | Clackamas County | 16 mi |
| Tualatin | Washington County | 11 mi |
| Troutdale | Multnomah County | 14 mi |
| Salem | Marion County | 44 mi |
| Aloha | Washington County | 10 mi |
| Lake Oswego | Clackamas County | 7 mi |
| Keizer | Marion County | 41 mi |
| Longview, WA | Cowlitz County | 44 mi |
| Oregon City | Clackamas County | 12 mi |
| McMinnville | Yamhill County | 33 mi |
| West Linn | Clackamas County | 11 mi |
| Woodburn | Marion County | 28 mi |
| Forest Grove | Washington County | 21 mi |
| Newberg | Yamhill County | 21 mi |
| Camas, WA | Clark County | 14 mi |
| Milwaukie | Clackamas County | 6 mi |
| Bethany | Washington County | 10 mi |
| Hayesville | Marion County | 40 mi |
Moving across the metro or out of state? See all our Portland services or get a quote.
Most Portland 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 Portland crew.
Portland industrial rigging →Presses, compressors, generators, full production lines — disconnected, rigged, hauled, and re-leveled across Portland as one accountable job.
Portland machinery movers →Machine tools are instruments, not freight. VMCs, lathes, and grinders moved on air-ride and squared back to the builder's spec in Portland.
Portland CNC machine moving →Moving the whole floor instead of one machine? Phased teardown, sequenced loads, and reinstallation planning for Portland plants.
factory relocation in Portland →In Portland 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 Portland.
The same Portland crew also handles millwright services, machinery removal, crane and rigging services, and machinery loading and unloading.
Specialty rigging in Portland: heavy lift rigging, transformer and generator rigging, MRI and medical equipment rigging, lab equipment moving, and data center rigging.
Tell us what's moving and where. We'll route the nearest crew and quote it fast.
Get a Portland Chiller Rigging Quote