Deanna said:
In designing our business continuity plan, the question came up....if we
had to move all of the boxes in our records center quickly to another
location, how many trucks would that require?  So my question for the
list is this:  has anyone ever figured out approximately how many
standard records boxes would fit in a semi/tractor trailer-sized moving
truck? 


The answer is.....it all depends.

We just moved all of our offsite records from one vendor to another.  The 
records were all put onto skids and shrink wrapped.  The boxes were all 
criss crossed so top boxes would solidify the position of the bottom 
boxes.  On a standard skid there were 8 boxes on a layer.  In many cases 
the vendor had piled the boxes 7 or 8 rows high.  As far as I was 
concerned, this was too much.  When we went through the boxes and repiled 
them, we went no more than 5 high.  At 7 or 8 high, some of the bottom 
boxes were crushed and had to be reboxed.  If you were shrink wrapping 
them, you could get away with 6 high. 

I suggest you do an analysis based upon 40 or 48 boxes per skid.  You will 
need to know the length of the truck.  As part of your plan, you should 
talk to the trucking company, use the figures above and determine space 
requirements.  Of course if the records are wet, your numbers will be way 
out of wack.

Good luck with your assessment 

John Annunziello
Records Information Specialist
Toronto and Region Conservation Authority
5 Shoreham Drive
Downsview, Ontario M3N 1S4
(416) 661-6600 ext. 5272
fax:  (416) 661-6898
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