Commercial Catering Equipment Transport Across the UK

Commercial kitchen equipment is heavy, square-edged, and usually has to go somewhere a pallet truck cannot reach - down a cellar, along a corridor, through a doorway built before the equipment existed. Add a fixed opening date and the job becomes time-critical as well as awkward.

T&C Logistics moves catering equipment for dealers, kitchen design and fit-out firms, caterers, pubs, schools and care homes - single replacements, full kitchen fit-outs, and clearances when a site closes. We have run specialist transport since 2020, completing over 2,400 deliveries with more than 3,000 vetted driver-partners nationwide. Goods-in-transit cover is £50,000 per consignment on our own vehicles and £1,000,000 through partners. Quotes start from £50 (ex VAT), quoted in full upfront before you book.

What catering equipment does T&C Logistics transport?

Cooking equipment, warewashing, refrigeration, preparation and extraction: combi ovens, ranges, fryers, griddles, salamanders, dishwashers, prep counters, stainless tabling, extraction canopies and coldrooms. Effectively the whole content of a commercial kitchen.

Weight distribution is the recurring problem. A six-burner range concentrates most of its 150-250 kg in the oven base, so it wants to tip backwards on a sack truck. A combi oven is top-heavy on its stand. An extraction canopy weighs very little for its size but is 2-3 m long and easily distorted. Each needs a different approach in the vehicle and on the route.

Vehicle selection typically starts at our Luton van with tail lift and moves to a 7.5-tonne truck for a full fit-out load.

Who disconnects and reconnects gas equipment?

A Gas Safe registered engineer holding commercial catering appliance qualifications. Not us, and not a domestic Gas Safe engineer either - commercial catering is a separate competence category on the register.

This is a legal boundary, not a preference. Work on commercial gas appliances must be carried out by an engineer registered with Gas Safe Register for that appliance class, and the categories that cover commercial catering equipment are distinct from domestic ones. A caterer who books transport expecting the driver to disconnect a range has a problem on the day, so we state it at quote stage.

The practical sequence that works is: your gas engineer isolates and disconnects, we collect and transport, your engineer reconnects and tests at the destination. Electrical equipment follows the same pattern with a competent electrician. Where equipment is being scrapped rather than reinstalled, disconnection still has to happen before we collect. See our food industry hub for related work.

What has to happen before we collect?

Equipment must be disconnected, drained, emptied and clean. A fryer with oil in it, a dishwasher with water in the sump or a fridge with food inside is not ready to move.

The specifics matter more here than in most equipment transport. Fryers must be fully drained and cooled - hot or residual oil in a moving vehicle is both a spill risk and a fire risk. Dishwashers and combi ovens hold water in sumps and boilers that will run out across the vehicle floor and into whatever is next to them. Refrigerated units must be emptied, defrosted and dried, or the meltwater does the same thing.

Where equipment is coming out of a closed site and nobody has prepared it, tell us in advance rather than on the day. We can schedule the collection for after your engineer has attended, but we cannot drain a fryer on your behalf. Anything with a castor base must have the castors immobilised before the vehicle moves.

How do you handle a kitchen fit-out with a fixed opening date?

By sequencing deliveries to the fit-out programme rather than delivering everything at once. Large items go in before the ones that block the route, and nothing arrives before the space can take it.

A commercial kitchen fit-out has a physical dependency order: extraction and services first, then heavy cooking line, then refrigeration, then tabling and light equipment. Delivering a full kitchen on day one into a room that is still being tiled means the equipment gets moved three times and damaged once. It also means the site has to store it, which most cannot.

We work to the fitter's programme, including evening and weekend deliveries where a venue is trading around the works. Vehicles are ULEZ-compliant for London sites, GPS-tracked throughout, and drivers hold Driver CPC. For time-critical replacement of a failed appliance mid-service, see our same-day courier service.

Can you move equipment into a cellar or an upper floor?

Often yes, but it needs surveying at quote stage rather than discovering on arrival. Stair moves need stair skates, extra crew and a realistic assessment of whether the item physically fits.

Pub and restaurant cellars are the classic problem: narrow stone stairs, a tight turn at the bottom, and a doorway sized for barrels rather than a 10-grid combi oven. Upper-floor kitchens in offices, schools and hotels usually have a goods lift, in which case we need its capacity in kilograms and its internal dimensions, because a 250 kg range plus two handlers exceeds the rating of some older lifts.

Give us the narrowest point on the route, the number and type of steps, and any turn tighter than a right angle. Photographs of the access route are more useful than descriptions and take two minutes to send. Our two-man delivery vehicle is the standard configuration for this work.

What happens to equipment from a site closure?

Resale stock goes to the dealer or auction; scrap becomes waste on collection and must be carried by a registered carrier. T&C Logistics holds Environment Agency upper tier registration CBDU654368 as a waste carrier, broker and dealer.

Catering equipment closures usually produce both at once. Combi ovens and refrigeration hold resale value and go to a dealer or an auction house; damaged tabling, old fryers and worn-out warewashers do not. Electrical catering equipment falls under the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations 2013, and refrigerated units add the Fluorinated Greenhouse Gases Regulations 2015, requiring refrigerant recovery by a qualified engineer before treatment.

We carry to a partner-operated permitted treatment facility and do not treat or recycle equipment ourselves; documentation comes from the processor. For resale routing see our auction house collections and for disposal our WEEE collection service.

Can you replace a failed appliance during service?

Same-day where a replacement exists within reach and a crew is available. A failed combi oven or dishwasher in a trading kitchen stops covers going out, which makes it one of the few genuinely urgent equipment moves.

The practical sequence is tighter than most people expect. The failed unit has to be disconnected by your engineer, the replacement collected from a dealer or depot, both moved through the same access route, and the new unit connected and tested - all inside a service window or between services. The transport leg is often the shortest part of it.

Where this is a recurring risk, dealers and multi-site operators normally hold swap stock regionally. Telling us in advance where that stock sits, and which of your sites have difficult access, turns a same-day request from an improvised job into a planned one. Our same-day courier service and time-critical delivery service cover dedicated urgent running where the vehicle is allocated to your job alone.

Does equipment need cleaning before it is moved?

Yes, and it is a practical requirement rather than a formality. Equipment that has been in food use carries residue, and residue in a vehicle contaminates whatever travels next in it.

The specifics matter for resale as much as for transport. A combi oven collected with baked-on residue arrives at a dealer worth less than one collected clean, and refrigerated units left unclean and sealed for a journey develop odour and mould that can be difficult to remove. Food waste in any quantity is also a waste-carriage question in its own right, separate from the equipment.

What we ask is straightforward: equipment emptied, drained, defrosted where refrigerated, and cleaned to the standard your own kitchen would expect. Where a site has closed and nobody is available to do it, tell us in advance so the job can be scheduled and priced honestly rather than discovered on the day.

How is catering equipment transport priced?

One fixed price per dedicated job, quoted upfront, with fuel and goods-in-transit insurance included. Kitchen equipment is not consolidated onto a shared parcel network.

From £50 (ex VAT). Final price depends on distance, vehicle, urgency and time - quoted in full upfront before you book. Related: commercial refrigeration transport and commercial laundry equipment transport. Call 0121 720 3841 or use our contact page.