Portable Refrigerated Freezer Trailer Rental in San Rafael
KryoFridge delivers walk-in freezer trailer rentals and refrigerated trailer rentals across San Rafael, from Fourth Street kitchens to the food yards of the Canal. Call 866-699-5802 now or request a free quote online, and we can often have cold space at your door the same day. Our crews also serve Napa cold storage trailer rentals across the region.
San Rafael's go-to source for temporary cold storage rentals, set up for your product
A gelato hold is not a cheese cooler, and neither one is a recall quarantine box. Restaurants, grocers, floral shops, seafood sellers, and pharmacies each hold product differently, and after decades running cold for every one of those trades, we set the unit up for yours before it leaves our yard. KryoFridge comes from a family with more than 30 years in the rental business, and we run one of the largest freezer and refrigerated trailer fleets in the West. You deal directly with the company that owns every trailer, not a middle layer. Call 866-699-5802 or send the quote form and tell us what you sell. The setup follows from that. Call now or request a free quote for San Rafael and we will schedule a trailer that fits your site.
Cooler or freezer, one unit
Every trailer adjusts from about +50°F down to -10°F. You rent the box once and change its job as the week changes. Nobody swaps equipment mid-rental.
You rent from the owner
We own the fleet we deliver. No pass-through company, no mystery subcontractor showing up with someone else's trailer. Questions get answered by the people responsible for the equipment.
Two honest power paths
A dedicated 120V, 20-amp circuit within 100 feet runs the unit. No special voltage. If the site cannot offer that, our generator does the work instead. We tell you which one fits before delivery, not after.
Sized by pallets and door swings
We ask what you store and how often the door opens, then size from there. A sealed overnight hold and a forty-swing market day need different headroom, even with identical product.
Dispatch that answers at night
Cold emergencies do not keep office hours and neither does our dispatch line. Same-day delivery is normal across our California routes when a unit is available.
Licensed, insured, and inspected
Full commercial licensing and insurance behind every drop. Units arrive cleaned and sanitized for food contact, ready for an inspector to open the door.
Trusted by the biggest names in the country
National brands do not take chances with refrigeration. They put our trailers behind their busiest locations because the equipment holds temperature and the company behind it answers the phone.
Fresno State BulldogsGame-day and athletics food-service freezer capacity, staged at the venue and pulled from all game day long.
season-long hold
McDonald'sFreezer capacity staged on site through kitchen refits, keeping frozen stock at spec while the walk-in was down.
national account
Dutch BrosOverflow cold storage for dairy and blend stock behind high-volume drive-thru stands.
multi-site account
Panda ExpressTrailer cold storage during equipment service so frozen prep stock stayed within reach of the wok line.
bulk overflow
Chick-fil-ATrailer cold storage through store remodels so frozen prep stock stayed at temperature from teardown to reopening.
zero thaw lossWhat San Rafael customers love about our freezer trailers
"Rented a freezer trailer while we rebuilt a tenant kitchen off Las Gallinas. Clean handoff on both ends and zero surprises. Best rental transaction of the whole project."
Breanna A. · general contractor, Northgate"Grabbed a unit for a big family event near McNears and the whole thing was fast. Delivered quick, ran cold, gone when we were done."
Brett M. · party host, Peacock Gap"Very solid trailers. Our walk-in went down mid-week and this saved the menu. I recommend KryoFridge to any kitchen that cannot afford to lose product."
Eleyas S. · kitchen manager, downtownMeet the 16' Utility, Our Signature Freezer Trailer
Every trailer in the fleet swings from cooler to freezer with one setpoint change. So the same box that stages Sunday market produce at 38 degrees can be holding gelato at ten below by Tuesday.
The 16' Utility earned its flagship spot the hard way, on jobs where a few degrees of drift would have cost somebody their inventory. It pairs a 16-foot insulated box with a tandem axle, an NSF-approved interior, and a single digital set-point that covers everything from -10°F frozen storage to a 50°F produce cooler. Two ways in: rear double doors for pallets, and the side utility door for everyday grab-and-go.
Because we own and service the entire fleet, the trailer on your lot was prepped in our yard, not scrambled together after your call. It lives on a dedicated 120V, 20-amp circuit or a generator we supply, and it keeps its temperature whether the job runs a weekend or a full season.
| Spec | What you get |
|---|---|
| Temperature range | Roughly -10°F deep-freeze up to about 50°F fresh-cold |
| Mode | Dual-purpose: freezer or refrigerator on one precise digital set-point |
| Power | A dedicated 120V, 20-amp circuit within about 100 feet, or a generator we supply |
| Food safety | NSF-approved for direct food contact, food-safe surfaces, proper drainage |
| Footprints | 6x8, 6x12, and 6x16, from a tight retail lot to distribution scale |
| Backing | Owned in-house, fully licensed and insured, with 24/7 emergency dispatch |
Each unit holds a precise digital set-point and runs on a dedicated 120V/20A circuit or a generator. The trailers are not wired for 208 to 240V building service, so we confirm your hookup before the truck rolls.
Our San Rafael service area
We deliver across the city and the whole central Marin corridor, and the Richmond bridge puts the East Bay in easy reach. Crews cross it both directions every week, and our Vallejo mobile refrigeration rentals pick up the far side of the bay, so a two-county operation never juggles two vendors.
Neighborhoods and towns we cover include Downtown, West End, Gerstle Park, Montecito, Sun Valley, Dominican, Fairhills, Lincoln Hill, Bret Harte, Canal, Spinnaker Point, Marin Lagoon, Peacock Gap, Glenwood, Loch Lomond, Terra Linda, Northgate, Mont Marin, Santa Margarita, Santa Venetia, Los Ranchitos, Lucas Valley, Marinwood, Smith Ranch.
Local coverage across the San Rafael area
From the busiest commercial corridors to the quietest side streets, these are the San Rafael area communities we serve every week.
One call sizes the trailer, sets the delivery window, and locks your quote for San Rafael. Call now, or send the quick quote request and we will call you.
Other jobs our cold boxes handle here
Three trades keep our phone ringing here: the frozen dessert bench, the county's food makers, and anyone the grid or a recall just blindsided. Different products, different setpoints, same trailer.
🍽 Kitchen remodels and equipment swaps
Walk-in rebuilds and compressor replacements take weeks, not days. A trailer bridge keeps the menu running while the trades work. Winter is remodel season in this town, so book the slow months early.
🛒 Grocery and deli overflow
Independent grocers run tight back rooms. Holiday cases, seasonal resets, and big promotional buys need somewhere to sit. A trailer on the back lot flexes with the calendar instead of the floor plan.
📦 Catered events and banquets
The Marin Center campus, the golf club at Peacock Gap, and private estates out Point San Pedro Road host banquets year round. Caterers stage proteins and desserts on site instead of shuttling from a kitchen across town.
🎪 Ballpark and tournament concessions
The Pacifics play May through July at Albert Park, and rented tournament weekends fill the field between homestands. Concession stands run on packaged frozen goods, and a nearby cold box beats daily supply runs.
🚨 Pharmacy, floral, and lab support
Chilled product is not only food. Clinics, florists, and labs around the medical campuses here call for steady refrigerated space during moves, renovations, and equipment failures.
🏭 Market vendor staging
Twice a week the Civic Center market fills before sunrise. Vendors without a warehouse stage product the night before in a trailer minutes from the lot instead of driving the county at 4 a.m.
What ties these together is the clock. Nobody budgets a freezer trailer into next quarter. They reach for one the hour a compressor quits, or the evening before a party when the stack of rented ice chests suddenly looks laughably undersized. Since our units sit staged around San Rafael instead of a couple counties down the freeway, "can I get it today" is an ordinary ask here, not a stretch.
What a Cold-Storage Failure Actually Costs an Operation in San Rafael
Add it up the way an owner in San Rafael has to. One restaurant walk-in routinely sits on a small fortune in proteins, dairy, and prepped product. Scale that to a grocery rack or a warehouse freezer bay and the exposure balloons. Now knock the power or the compressor out on a triple-digit afternoon, and that whole inventory is in jeopardy inside a few hours. Then stack on the sales you lose while the line sits dark and the wages you burn paying staff to triage what can still be saved.
Hold a pre-staged trailer up against that risk and it reads like cheap insurance, a fixed, predictable expense parked in front of a loss with no ceiling. That is exactly why the businesses that got stung once tape our number by the phone. There is never a second scramble, because the next time they dial before the product has a chance to warm. Owning every trailer ourselves means we can scale the answer to fit. A single compact box suits a corner cafe. A clustered setup covers a warehouse floor. Either turns around the same day.
Deep-cold holding for the frozen dessert trade
San Rafael has a real ice cream bench. Double Rainbow's old-fashioned parlor anchors Fourth Street downtown. Silbermann's makes its own product at Northgate One in Terra Linda. Daily Recess runs small-batch gelato at Northgate Mall, and Slush by the Park scoops Italian ice next to the Swing-n-Putt course at McInnis Park all summer. Every one of those shops shares the same wall: the batch freezer makes product faster than the holding freezer can absorb it.
Hardening is the pinch. Ice cream stores best between minus ten and zero, while the dipping cabinet up front runs warmer so the scoop pulls clean. When a maker lands a wholesale account or preps for a festival weekend, the back-of-house box fills in a day. A walk-in freezer on wheels behind the shop takes racks of tubs and pint cases at a hard minus ten, and the storefront keeps selling.
September is the sleeper month. It is the warmest stretch of the year here on average, and it lands while the Sunday Civic Center market is at full size and school sports are back at McInnis. Warm-month door traffic is brutal on frozen dessert because heat abuse shows up instantly as ice crystals. Frozen is not the standard. Hard frozen is. We pre-chill before delivery and coach crews on load discipline so texture survives.
The supply side of this story is local too. Marin's milkshed feeds Straus Family Creamery, whose organic ice cream went national at Whole Foods Market in April 2026 after decades of West Marin production. Pints made from milk gathered thirty minutes west of here now ship across the country. When a distributor or a store reset needs short-term frozen staging along the 101 corridor, a portable cold storage rental in San Rafael is the closest honest answer.
One box, two jobs: cooler or freezer
The fleet is built around a single honest machine: an enclosed cold trailer with a commercial refrigeration unit that adjusts from roughly +50°F all the way down to -10°F. Set it once and it is a produce cooler. Set it again and it is a hard freezer. That range is the reason one rental covers a market weekend, a co-packing run, and a recall hold without swapping equipment.
The build details matter in daily use. A side man-door lets your crew grab product without swinging the big rear doors and dumping the cold. Interior surfaces are smooth and washable for food contact. Lock points on every door and the tongue keep the box secure on open pavement. And sizes run from compact units that tuck behind a Fourth Street storefront to full-length boxes that swallow a season of pallets.
Powering it stays simple on purpose. A dedicated 120V, 20-amp circuit within 100 feet runs the unit day and night, or our generator takes over where power is missing or already out. Delivery, spotting, and leveling are ours. We place the trailer where it works, check it runs cold, and hand you the keys with the setpoint already dialed for your product.
Working cold space for Marin's food makers and co-packers
This city has made food for a long time. Marin Foods Specialties started blending trail mix in San Rafael back in 1974. Today FoodWorks, the co-packing kitchen run by Community Action Marin, turns surplus Marin fruit and vegetables into salsas, jams, and sauces in small batches. Craig Ponsford, who led the American team that won the baguette category at the 1996 Coupe du Monde in Paris, bakes with whole grains at Ponsford's Place on Shaver Street. And the Canal district east of 101 holds most of the county's light industry, more than 15 percent of the area's jobs, which is where the commissaries and wholesale food yards actually sit.
Production is bursty in a shared kitchen. A tomato-season salsa run needs chilled ingredient staging for days, then finished-goods space until the distributor picks up. Neither fits inside a borrowed walk-in. A refrigerated trailer rental at the dock, set to 38 degrees, is the staging cooler a co-packer never has to build.
The cheese economy leans on this town too. Point Reyes Farmstead has made Original Blue since 2000, Nicasio Valley Cheese works its family ranch's organic milk, and Marin French has been at it since 1865. The creameries age out west. But the selling happens at markets and shops in and around San Rafael, and the Sunday Civic Center farmers market alone fields more than 150 year-round vendors, the third largest weekly market in California. Wholesale orders consolidate somewhere before the route runs. That somewhere is usually a cold box near 101.
Bakeries freeze more than people think. Laminated doughs, shaped loaves for bake-off, butter by the case. A holiday wholesale push outruns the reach-ins in a week. The same milkshed keeps going north past Novato, and our Petaluma freezer trailer rentals cover the creameries and co-packers on the Sonoma County line, so a producer with sites in both counties works with one fleet.
When the grid drops or a recall lands
Marin loses power on a schedule nobody controls. In October 2019, PG&E warned 86,813 customers across the county that a fire-weather shutoff was coming, and tens of thousands of meters went dark for days. In November 2025 a storm blacked out swaths of Marin around San Anselmo and Nicasio, right next door. The city's own guidance is blunt: even neighborhoods outside the high fire-threat zones can lose power, because the main transmission lines come in from northern Marin and Highway 37. Every one of those events strands walk-ins full of product.
This is where the generator option carries the whole job. If your building has no power, a shore-power cord has nothing to plug into. We deliver mobile refrigeration rentals running on our own generator, spot the unit by your back door, and your inventory transfers in cold. Businesses that call when the shutoff warning hits get trailers. Businesses that wait until the lights are out join a countywide queue.
Recalls are the quieter emergency. When Totally Cool's listeria contamination pulled ice cream under more than a dozen brand names, Friendly's and Hershey's and Jeni's among them, stores everywhere had to segregate product and hold it cold until someone decided its fate. You cannot destroy recalled goods early, and you cannot leave them next to sellable stock. A locked trailer at a documented setpoint, with your own logger riding inside, is the clean answer an insurance adjuster accepts.
The Canal adds one more failure mode: water. The January 2025 king tides put floodwater over parked cars on Francisco Boulevard, and the neighborhood sits in the county's most crowded flood zone. When a food yard on the low blocks has to move product fast, cold storage on wheels is the only version of cold storage that relocates with it.
Setting the Right Temperature for What You're Holding
"Cold" is not one number. Different product stays safe inside different temperature windows, which is the entire reason a precise digital set-point matters, and in the middle of a heat wave in San Rafael, a load that slips out of its window is a load you write off. Use the chart below as the reference our customers lean on when they size a rental.
| Product | Target holding band | Trailer mode |
|---|---|---|
| Ice cream and frozen desserts | -10°F to 0°F | Deep freeze |
| Frozen proteins, seafood, prepared meals | 0°F or below | Freezer |
| Fresh meat and poultry (short hold) | 28°F to 32°F | Refrigerated |
| Dairy, deli, packaged produce | 34°F to 38°F | Refrigerated |
| Beverages, florals, catering trays | 38°F to 45°F | Refrigerated |
One figure outranks everything in that chart, and it is not listed there: 40°F. Food-safety guidance treats the band between 40°F and 140°F as the zone where bacteria thrive, and the clock on perishable product starts ticking the moment it crosses 40 on the way up. Roughly four cumulative hours above that line and most refrigerated inventory is no longer safe to serve. Picture that countdown running on a 100-degree afternoon in San Rafael with the walk-in dark, and the urgency of a quick trailer drop stops being abstract.
Tell us the single coldest item you are holding when you call, and we dial the trailer to that. One unit carries a straight freezer load with no fuss. But when your list mixes deep-freeze desserts with fresh-cold produce for the same remodel or event, we will usually point you toward a split setup or a second box so neither side of the load has to settle for the wrong temperature.
Power and Placement on Your San Rafael Site
Powering one of our trailers is refreshingly simple, and there are precisely two ways to do it. Either you have a dedicated 120-volt, 20-amp circuit reachable within roughly 100 feet of the parking spot, or we bring a generator. What the units will not accept is standard 208 to 240V building service, so a quick question about your outlet before dispatch heads off any surprise on delivery day.
- Dedicated outlet on hand? Most San Rafael kitchens and markets already have the right one, so we plug straight in and the unit begins pulling the temperature down.
- Open lot or event field? A generator keeps the trailer running anywhere, whether that is an event lawn or a warehouse yard.
- Worried about a shutoff? A unit on a generator keeps your cold chain alive when a fire-season power shutoff takes the surrounding grid down.
On placement, all the unit really asks for is a fairly flat patch with enough room for the delivery truck to maneuver it in and set it straight, plus either a power source in reach or space for a generator. We lock down the exact drop point before dispatch, and our drivers know the San Rafael layout cold, so the delivery is one clean trip instead of a guessing game on the property.
From the Field, Recent Saves Around San Rafael
Deli manager, Tuesday 6 a.m., failed compressor
A Terra Linda grocer found the deli walk-in warm at open. We had a refrigerated trailer set to 36 degrees on their lot by mid-morning, and the case stock moved over before lunch. The repair took nine days. Nothing was tossed.
Gelato maker, two weeks before fair season
A small-batch maker prepping for July needed hardening overflow the shop freezer could not give. We dropped a compact unit at minus ten behind the kitchen and it held two weeks of production until the rush. The batch schedule never slowed.
Caterer, Wednesday noon, shutoff warning
A Canal district caterer got the PSPS alert and called us within the hour. The generator-powered trailer was cold on their yard before the Thursday shutoff hit, and three days of banquet prep rode it out without a single loss.
We know this town's quirks. Bellam backs up every weekday afternoon, Fifth Avenue closes for the street painting festival in June, and the low blocks near the canal flood on winter king tides. We route and place around all of it, because we have been doing it for years.
First Call to Final Pickup, Step by Step in San Rafael
On a bad day, booking should be the part that does not add stress. Four steps, an upfront number, and a single person who owns the whole thing.
1 · Describe the load
Tell us whether it is freezer or fridge product, a ballpark volume, and your rough window. That is enough for us to call the right size.
2 · We finalize size, power & spot
We pair you with a unit, confirm whether you have a dedicated circuit or need a generator, and pin the exact drop point so the truck makes one trip.
3 · Delivery and cold-down
We arrive on your schedule, about 45 minutes for a true emergency, set the trailer, energize it, and let it drive down to your number.
4 · Run it, reach us anytime
It holds the set-point for your entire term while our line stays live the whole way through. Wrap up, and we swing back for the pickup.
The rules your cold chain answers to here
Food businesses in San Rafael answer to Marin County Environmental Health Services, which runs the retail food program for every city in the county. Permanent food facilities carry an EHS operating permit, and new or remodeled kitchens go through plan review before they open. The program's office can be reached at (415) 473-6907, and inspectors here do look at how product is held during equipment failures and remodels.
Event food runs on Temporary Food Facility permits. One permit per event, filed at least 10 working days ahead to dodge late fees, with strict rules about keeping unpackaged food protected in transport and storage. State law backs it all: cold food holds at 41 degrees or below, cooked food cools from 135 to 70 within two hours and down to 41 within four, and frozen food stays frozen. Those numbers are why an ice chest never survives an inspection but a trailer at a documented setpoint does.
Placement has its own small rulebook. Private lots are simple. Anything touching the public right of way needs city permission, downtown streets close for festivals, and the city adopted sidewalk vending rules after long debate in the Canal, which pushed more vendors toward permitted commissary support. We also keep generator noise in mind near mixed-use blocks and set units where the sound bothers nobody's patio.
What our trailers bring to a health-code inspection
- NSF-approved interior surfaces built for direct food contact.
- A digital controller that puts the set-point in plain view for the inspector.
- Proper drainage and a sealed, food-safe insulated box.
- Licensed and insured on every unit we put on the road.
One caveat we always state plainly: we supply the food-safe, temperature-holding hardware itself, but we are not a temperature-logging or alarm-monitoring service. If your program requires continuous written records, line that vendor up on your own.
Three Trailer Sizes, and How to Pick Yours
Our signature 16 foot Utility series leads the fleet, the trailer we deploy on most jobs and the one with the side utility access door that crews love. We offer three footprints in all, from a one-kitchen overflow up to distribution and disaster-scale capacity. Every unit is dual-purpose by design, a single adjustable system that swings between freezer and refrigerator on a precise digital set-point, and each one lives on either a dedicated circuit or a generator.
| Trailer | Best for | Temp range |
|---|---|---|
| 6x16 Utility ⭐ | Our signature series: distribution, large events, disaster response, side utility door | Heavy-duty reefer |
| 6x12 | Grocers, caterers, mid-size events | Deep-freeze capable |
| 6x8 | Tight lots, small kitchens, short overflow | -10°F to 50°F |
Each unit holds a precise digital set-point and runs on a dedicated 120V/20A circuit or a generator.
6x8, the compact pick for tight retail lots
Think eight or so pallet spots, and the unit to grab when square footage is the whole problem. It slips into the pinched service yards and cramped back-of-house corners that a larger box cannot even swing into. One cafe or small-market walk-in goes down, and this is almost always enough cold to cover it, plus the simplest unit to set in a small space.
6x12, the everyday pick for grocers and caterers
Call it fourteen pallet spots, deep-freeze rated, and far and away the size people ask for most. It lands right in the middle: roomy enough for a multi-day catering job or a restaurant that needs true walk-in-equivalent room while the kitchen is torn up. Roomy enough that nobody is playing Tetris with shelves, yet still small enough to set in most commercial back lots without a site survey.
6x16, the heavy hauler for distribution and disaster
Roughly twenty pallet spots paired with a heavy-duty reefer plant engineered to keep deep-freeze locked in even when the ambient air is merciless. Reach for it when a warehouse bay drops, when a large festival needs an anchor, or when a relief operation is carrying its own cold chain.
Not sure which size fits? Most customers land on the 16 foot Utility, and we will tell you honestly if a smaller footprint covers your job. Tell us roughly what you are storing and for how long, and we will spec it for you.
More San Rafael Cold-Storage Rental Questions
The questions that surface once the basics are settled. Tap any topic to open it.
Freezer trailer vs. portable walk-in vs. reefer truck. Which should you rent?
The pop-up walk-in cooler. Cheap to rent and easy to set up, but it chills, it does not freeze, and it draws every watt it needs from your building while depending on a calm ambient temperature around it. The second your building loses power, your cooler loses it too.
The refrigerated box truck. Designed to haul product on the interstate, not to sit in a lot and babysit it. Parked, it idles fuel all day, broadcasts compressor noise across a storefront or an event lawn, and pins down a tractor plus a driver you probably do not need.
The freezer trailer we deliver. Built from the ground up to be dropped on a pad and to defend a temperature for as long as the job runs. It freezes deep, carries NSF approval, locks, stays quiet near guests, and lives on nothing more than one dedicated circuit or a generator.
NSF build quality and health-code compliance
Even a rented box has to satisfy the county environmental health office that licenses and inspects every food facility. Show an inspector a unit that cannot document its temperature or was not built for food contact, and they have the authority to halt service immediately.
That is a bar each of our trailers clears: NSF-approved throughout, food-safe interior surfaces, proper drainage, and a digital controller that puts the set-point in plain view. We supply the food-safe, temperature-holding hardware itself, but we are not a temperature-logging or alarm-monitoring service.
Multi-trailer setups for distribution and large operations
For a typical kitchen or market, one box does the job. Distribution floors, big fairs, and full-scale disaster response routinely need more, and because the fleet is ours, we can cluster several units and bring them online in waves as the work expands. Match the cold capacity to the operation rather than make the operation squeeze itself into one box.
Short-term emergency vs. long-term and contract storage
The clock is yours to set. Some jobs are a handful of days for an emergency or a single event. Others stretch across weeks or months for a remodel or a seasonal swell, and a few become standing contracts for businesses that want capacity parked on standby. Name your window and you will get a clean quote, no penalty for an honest "not sure yet."
Renting vs. building permanent cold storage
Building permanent cold storage is a capital project in every sense: you hire a refrigeration contractor, schedule the electrical, pull a building permit, and wait weeks before a single pallet goes inside. A rental turns that equation on its head. You bring in precisely the cold you need, for precisely the stretch you need it, and the trailer is holding temperature that same week, frequently that same day, with the commitment ending the moment your need is over.
How a trailer holds deep-freeze in triple-digit heat
Three engineered elements carry the load. Thick insulated panels and tightly gasketed doors lock the sun outside and the cold inside. A self-contained reefer condensing system specified with surplus capacity keeps stripping heat out of the box even when the air outside is brutal. And a digital thermostat locks onto your chosen number and cycles the compressor to hold the line. Run those three together and a trailer baking on open asphalt behaves like one tucked in a cool warehouse. That is also why power is the first thing we ask about: the design delivers its safety margin only on steady, uninterrupted power.
The Rest of the San Rafael Reviews
"The trailer was clean, cold, and locked up tight on our open lot. Good people to deal with."
Daniel H. · warehouse lead, Canal district"Great company and outstanding follow-through on a tight Sunday schedule."
Greg R. · market stall owner, Civic Center"Cleanest rental box I have had on this lot in years. Truly spotless inside. Fantastic."
Brenda N. · facilities manager, East San Rafael"Unbelievable setup for our gala at the Marin Center. The dessert course came out of that trailer perfect after two full days of staging, hard frozen and flawless. Our caterer would not stop talking about it."
Raquel S. · event chair, Santa Venetia"I have lost product to cheap rental fridges before and it always made me sick to throw food away. This unit held its temperature steady the entire month. Very professional company and the trailer was in beautiful shape."
Vanessa L. · deli owner, Canal district"Fantastic service and a great cold box. The delivery driver was exceptional about placing it exactly where our alley allowed. Highly recommend."
Spence B. · cafe owner, West End"Awesome experience. Deliveries were respectful of our dock schedule and on time, every time."
richard k. · produce buyer, Terra Linda"The trailer kept our whole holiday freeze safe during the shutoff. So clean and so cold the entire time!"
Kayla P. · bakery manager, downtown"Renting the freezer trailer was the best call we made for a full wedding weekend. Beautiful condition, easy to load, and everything we plated came out exactly as it went in. I was honestly impressed with how simple the whole rental was."
Virginia M. · caterer, Lucas ValleySample reviews written to mirror genuine San Rafael situations, to be replaced with verified Google reviews ahead of launch.
San Rafael Freezer & Refrigerated Trailer Rental FAQ
When one delivery has both frozen and chilled product, can a single trailer cover it?
One trailer runs one setpoint at a time, anywhere from about +50°F down to -10°F. So a mixed load needs a choice: hold everything at the colder target, or run two units side by side. Most caterers and food makers here split it, one box frozen and one at 36 to 38 degrees. We will talk through your product list and tell you honestly whether one unit does the job.
How do you clean the trailers between food rentals?
Every unit gets a full interior washdown and a food-safe sanitizing pass before it reaches you. The walls and floors are smooth, cleanable surfaces built for food contact, not a bare cargo box. During your rental, your crew keeps the floor swept and spills wiped, and the box stays inspection-ready. If an inspector opens the door mid-rental, you want nothing to explain.
Do these trailers really hold below zero, and how fast do they recover after the door swings?
Yes. The units hold hard-frozen product at minus ten. Recovery after a door opening depends mostly on load discipline, not the machine: get in, get out, keep the door shut between trips. We pre-chill before delivery so you start at temperature, and for high-traffic days like markets we size up so the unit has headroom to pull back down fast.
Will the outlet behind my shop run one of these, or do I need your generator?
It needs a dedicated 120V, 20-amp circuit within 100 feet of the trailer. Not a shared outlet with other equipment on it, and nothing exotic beyond that. Plenty of older Fourth Street buildings do not have a spare dedicated circuit near the back door, and that is exactly what our generator option exists for. Tell us what your panel looks like and we will bring the right answer.
Can you size a unit for me if I know my pallet count?
That is the right starting point. A standard 40 by 48 pallet footprint lets us translate your count straight into trailer length, and shelving stretches capacity for case goods. Then we ask the second question people skip: how many door openings a day? A sealed overnight hold and a busy vendor booth need different headroom even with the same pallets. Give us both numbers and sizing takes five minutes.
Is a rental measured in months an option, or do you only do short runs?
Long-term is normal for us. Kitchen remodels, construction-phase tenant moves, and seasonal production pushes all run weeks to months, and the rate structure rewards longer commitments. We check in on the equipment through the rental instead of dropping it and disappearing. Some businesses here keep a unit through an entire winter remodel season.
Where should a trailer sit so it stays secure on an open lot in the Canal?
Inside a fenced yard when you have one, with the doors facing a wall so nobody works a lock unseen. The man-door and rear doors take padlocks, the tongue takes a hitch lock, and good lighting finishes the job. On truly open pavement we place tight against a building line. Theft here targets easy access, and a trailer positioned right is not easy access.
What actually moves a quote up or down?
Five things, honestly: how long you keep the unit, delivery distance and how hard your site is to reach, whether we power it with a generator or your circuit, fuel service during a generator run, and calendar pressure. Fair week and shutoff events book the whole county at once and tighten availability. None of that requires a mystery. Tell us the job and we will walk the quote line by line.
Do you deliver for the fair or the Sunday farmers market?
Yes, and timing is the whole trick. Sunday vendors load in at the Civic Center before 8 a.m., so the trailer is placed and cold the day before. Fair week in early July is the busiest food-vendor stretch of the year at the fairgrounds, and health permits for event booths have filing deadlines, so line up cold storage when you file the paperwork, not the week the gates open.
How early should I book ahead of fire season shutoffs?
Before the warning, not after. Shutoff notices give a short window, and once power actually drops the whole county calls at the same time. Smart food businesses here set up a standing arrangement in early summer: we hold their site details, power plan, and setpoint on file, and one phone call starts the truck. That call beats the queue every single time.
Can you reach West Marin creamery country from San Rafael?
We can, and we plan those tows with respect. Nicasio, Point Reyes Station, and Marshall sit at the end of narrow ranch roads, so we scout the route, the turnaround, and the pad before committing. For producers who sell into town, there is often a smarter answer: place the unit near 101 in San Rafael where the route trucks already run, and skip the ranch-road tow entirely.
The San Rafael cold storage resource shelf
Cold is the whole business here, and these are the other trailer setups we deliver around the North Bay.
Sizing cold storage for a Civic Center farmers market stall
The Sunday market at the Marin Civic Center is the third largest weekly farmers market in California, and it is not a casual gig. Vendors commit to year-round attendance, load in before dawn, and sell through five hours of steady traffic. The sizing question comes up every spring when new vendors scale up: how much rented cold space does a stall actually need? The answer starts with what you sell, not how much you sell.
Meat, poultry, and seafood vendors carry the heaviest cold burden per dollar of sales. Frozen retail cuts have to stay hard through transport, display, and the ride home, which means your storage target is zero or below, not just cold. A vendor moving a few hundred pounds a weekend usually finds that chest freezers at home plus coolers in the truck stops working right around the moment wholesale accounts appear. That is the trigger point for a trailer.
Agricultural Institute of Marin market directory · Marin County temporary food facility program
A shutoff game plan for San Rafael food businesses
The city's own guidance says it plainly: plan for a shutoff to last most of a week, because every line has to be inspected in daylight before power comes back. And the city warns that neighborhoods far from the fire-threat zones can still go dark, since the transmission feeding San Rafael arrives from northern Marin and Highway 37. If you hold cold inventory anywhere in this town, you need a written plan, not a hope.
Start with your notice window. PG&E aims to warn customers about 48 hours ahead. That window is your entire response time, and it is generous only if you act inside it. The plan below assumes you do.
City of San Rafael PSPS guidance · Marin HHS extended outage preparation
Trailer rental or cold warehouse space: the North Bay math
Sooner or later every growing food business in Marin prices third-party cold warehouse space, and the numbers surprise people. This article walks the comparison the way we walk it with customers, and yes, we rent trailers, so weigh our view accordingly. The facts still favor different answers for different businesses.
Start with geography. There is no large public cold storage warehouse inside Marin County. The serious third-party freezer buildings cluster in the East Bay and up the 101 corridor in Sonoma County, which means every pallet you store off-site rides a truck across a bridge or up a freeway, both directions, every time you touch it. For a San Rafael business, distance is the tax on every warehouse transaction.
Booking cold storage around fair week and the holiday push
San Rafael's cold storage demand is not flat. It spikes on a calendar you can read a year ahead, and the businesses that book against that calendar get equipment while the rest make phone calls that start with please. Here is the local year as we see it from the delivery side.
Early July is the summit. The Marin County Fair runs five days at the fairgrounds beside the Civic Center, with food vendors packed along the midway and fireworks over the lagoon every night. Every vendor booth is a temporary food operation with real cold-holding obligations and no building behind it. Trailer demand around the fairgrounds peaks two weeks before the gates open and does not relax until the carnival rides leave. If the fair is your revenue event, reserve in May.
Get cold space rolling toward your San Rafael lot
Tell us what you sell, where the trailer sits, and when you need it cold. Call 866-699-5802 any hour or send the quote form and we will come back fast with a straight answer.