Berkeley, California · the East Bay shoreline
Walk-In Mobile Refrigeration & Freezer Trailer Rentals in Berkeley
KryoFridge is the freezer trailer team Berkeley kitchens call first. We bring a walk-in sized unit to your lot, run it off a standard outlet or our own generator, and have it holding temperature the same day, so nothing on your racks is sitting at risk. Restaurants on Shattuck, caterers loading in at the Berkeley Marina, breweries on Gilman Street and grocers over on Heinz Avenue all use us the same way. Call us or get a walk in freezer rental quote and we will lock in your delivery window.
✓ NSF Approved✓ Licensed & Insured✓ ~45-Min Berkeley Delivery✓ Owner Operated, Never a Reseller
30+ Yearsfamily-run rental experience
Largest Fleetfreezer trailers in the region
Fully Insuredlicensed, insured and NSF ready
24/7dispatch and emergency swaps
Right now
Berkeley's most experienced freezer trailer rental team
We have been renting equipment out of a family business for more than 30 years, and cold storage is what we do all day. We own our fleet outright, one of the largest freezer and refrigerated trailer fleets in the region, so when you call you are talking to the company that owns the trailer and drives it to you, not a broker looking for one. Every unit is licensed, insured and NSF ready, and every unit runs as a cooler or a freezer on the same dial, anywhere from 50 degrees down to 10 below zero. Our dispatch desk is staffed around the clock, which is why we get so many Friday-night calls from kitchens between Solano Avenue and the Elmwood. We handle freezer trailer rentals across California and beyond, and Berkeley is a market our drivers know street by street.
Our freezer trailers wait nearby, fueled and pre-cooled
Our trailers sit staged around Berkeley, fueled, pre-cooled, and maintained in-house, parked and waiting for the call rather than being sourced after it. That is why an emergency call usually puts a unit on your lot and pulling temperature in about 45 minutes.
We own the rental freezer trailers and send the driver
The voice on the phone belongs to the same outfit that owns the trailer and sends the driver. No reseller in the middle quietly marking up somebody else's equipment while your inventory creeps past 40°F on the shelf.
The largest dual-purpose fleet of freezer trailers in the West
Every unit is ours to own, service, and deliver, and each one swings between deep-freeze and fresh-cold on a precise digital set-point. So we can size the answer to your Berkeley job and turn it around the same day rather than putting you on next week's list.
Who we deliver rental freezer trailers for, week after week
National chains do not gamble on refrigeration. A drifting set-point during dinner rush can cost a brand a day of sales and a health-code headache, so the chains that scale fast vet a cold-storage partner the same careful way they vet a protein supplier. KryoFridge has held temperature for names like McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, and Dutch Bros, and earned the repeat call.
The stories behind that trust are the kind every restaurant owner recognizes. One Friday at 6:30 in the evening, a Chick-fil-A called in with a dead walk-in and a drive-through line already wrapped around the building. We prepped a trailer, dispatched it, and had it on their pad pulling temperature 34 minutes after the phone rang. The manager's first words when the driver pulled in were, "I cannot believe you are already here." That is the bar we hold ourselves to. Another year, an overnight outage shorted a cooler on the morning of a holiday rush, and our team staged three freezer trailers to hold every pie, every protein, and every prep tray so the kitchen served the rush without missing a ticket. The reason we hear some version of that line so often is the same every time: the equipment was already nearby, already cold, and owned by the people who answered the phone. That same standard travels to every Berkeley job, from a one-cook taqueria to a distribution floor.
Three decades deep in the equipment-rental business, running the West Coast's biggest dual-purpose fleet of freezer and refrigeration trailers. Every unit ours, never a broker's.
Berkeley customers on renting a cold chain trailer from us
"Our walk-in died on a Friday night and I honestly thought we were closing for the weekend. They answered, prepped a trailer and had it in our back lot faster than our refrigeration guy called me back. We moved everything over and served Saturday like nothing happened."
Gordon M. · Restaurant owner, Gourmet Ghetto"We had a festival booth and a private event the same weekend and nowhere to hold the prep. One trailer at our shop covered both jobs. Set point was dead on every time I checked it, and the driver worked around our load-in instead of the other way around."
Breanna A. · Catering director, West Berkeley"Straightforward company. They told me exactly what circuit the unit needed before delivery, and when our panel could not do it they brought the generator instead. Three weeks on site, zero problems."
Daniel H. · Bakery manager, Fourth StreetAt a glance
A closer look at the cold chain trailer we send out most
Our signature unit is the largest of the three sizes we run, and it is the one Berkeley grocers, school kitchens and multi-vendor events usually want because a pallet jack can work it without a fuss. If your set is a tight Downtown alley or a hills address off Cragmont, we bring one of the shorter units instead, and you can compare freezer trailer sizes and specs before you decide.
16' insulated boxRear double doors + side utility third door-10°F to +50°F range120V/20A or generatorTandem axle
The 16' Utility earned its flagship spot the hard way, on jobs where a few degrees of drift would have cost somebody their inventory. The box is 16 feet long and fully insulated, riding on a tandem axle. The interior is NSF approved. One digital set point covers everything from -10°F frozen storage to a 50°F produce cooler. There are 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.
Berkeley neighborhoods and nearby cities we deliver to
We deliver walk-in freezer trailer rentals across every part of Berkeley, from the Marina lots to the hills, plus Oakland, Albany, Emeryville and Richmond on the same runs. Our fleet works the whole state, so a Berkeley account can move a unit to Fresno freezer trailer rentals for a second site or set up San Diego cold storage trailer rentals for a southern job without changing companies. Tell dispatch the address and the dates and we will confirm what fits. The same trucks run walk-in freezer rental in Richmond, portable refrigeration in Vallejo and Antioch portable freezer trailer rental.
Neighborhoods and towns we cover include Downtown Berkeley, West Berkeley, Gilman District, Fourth Street, Gourmet Ghetto, North Berkeley, Northbrae, Westbrae, Thousand Oaks, Solano Avenue, Berkeley Marina, Ocean View, Poet's Corner, Southside, Telegraph Avenue, Elmwood, Lorin District, LeConte, Claremont, Cragmont, Panoramic Hill, Aquatic Park, Albany, Emeryville.
Where our trailers go around Berkeley
Each community around Berkeley has its own venues, its own events, and its own cold storage headaches. We work all of them.
One call sizes the trailer, sets the delivery window, and locks your quote for Berkeley. Call now, or send the quick quote request and we will call you.
Other jobs we run refrigerated trailer rentals for around Berkeley
The three jobs below cover most of what we deliver inside the city limits. Each one has its own placement problem, its own temperature target and its own clock, and we set the unit up for the work rather than dropping a box and driving away.
🍽 Planned outages and storm season
PG&E has run Public Safety Power Shutoffs that reach the Berkeley hills, and the city has advised hills residents to move to lower elevations before high winds arrive. A shutoff comes with notice, so a trailer staged on generator power before the lights go out holds your whole inventory through the event instead of after it.
🛒 Grocery and market refrigeration work
Case swaps, compressor replacements and rack rebuilds all mean product has to live somewhere while the crew works. We park a unit in the receiving lot and your team keeps stocking off it, which is how Berkeley grocers get through a refrigeration project without pulling shelves.
📦 School and campus dining
Berkeley Unified runs a central kitchen that turns out roughly 3,000 hot lunches and 8,000 total daily meals for 16 school sites, so its cold storage is a single point of failure. Summer retrofits, satellite meal service and campus dining projects are all jobs we hold capacity for.
🎪 Laboratory and life science holds
West Berkeley carries a real research cluster, from the Bayer biotechnology campus overlooking Aquatic Park to the Aquatic Park Research Campus buildings around it. We supply the cold space and the set point control on the unit. Your own monitoring program stays yours, because we do not sell a monitoring or logging service.
🚨 Florists and funeral homes
Both trades want the cooler end of the range rather than the freezer end, and both spike on a predictable calendar. Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and commencement week at the Greek Theatre fill every florist cooler in town, and a trailer set to 34 degrees takes the overflow without any change of equipment.
🏭 Bulk buys and overstock
Container loads bought on a good price, protein pre-bought ahead of a market move, co-packing runs that finish early. These are the quiet long-duration rentals, and West Berkeley's food manufacturing base generates plenty of them.
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 Berkeley instead of a couple counties down the freeway, "can I get it today" is an ordinary ask here, not a stretch.
Weighing a walk-in freezer rental against the loss
Nothing fancy
Add it up the way an owner in Berkeley 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.
Why September and October are the hard months for Berkeley refrigeration
Berkeley sits under the marine layer for most of the year, and that is exactly why the failures here surprise people. Monthly average high temperatures peak around 76.6 degrees in September, which makes September the warmest month, unusual timing for the country and driven by the late-season offshore flow that shuts the fog off. January lows sit near 44 degrees. For nine or ten months of the year, kitchen refrigeration in this city is barely working against the outside air.
Then a handful of days arrive each September and October with no fog, an offshore wind, and readings 25 to 35 degrees above normal. Every marginal compressor in the city finds out it is marginal on the same afternoon. The September 2022 event is the reference point: it was the most severe September heat wave ever recorded in the West, it ran more than a week, and the regional record during that stretch hit 116 degrees at Fairfield and Livermore. Statewide, that September averaged 73.5 degrees, the second warmest in 128 years of record.
That pattern is the argument for having a number in your phone before you need it. A walk-in that has got by through a mild Berkeley summer is the one most likely to quit on the first hot Tuesday in October, and the same heat has half the East Bay calling for equipment at once. Our dispatch desk is staffed 24/7 for exactly that week. Call ahead of the forecast and we will have a unit reserved for your address.
Walk-in down in a Berkeley kitchen, cold storage on site the same day
The walk-in cooler is the whole back of house. Proteins, produce, dairy, dressings, prepped mise en place, the entire line depends on that one room staying cold. Berkeley is full of independent kitchens in old buildings that have exactly one walk-in and no sister location a mile away with spare rack space, so when the compressor quits there is nowhere for the product to go.
That is the call we take most often. The Gourmet Ghetto stretch of Shattuck and Walnut, the Fourth Street restaurants, Telegraph Avenue near the south edge of campus, the Elmwood along College Avenue: all of it is dense with kitchens that cannot absorb a lost day. We prep a unit, dispatch it, and get it parked and pulling temperature while the kitchen is still figuring out who to call about the compressor.
Placement is the part most companies get wrong here. Fourth Street and West Berkeley lots take a trailer easily. Downtown, Southside and the Elmwood usually mean a back lot or a coned curb space arranged with the property manager first. Our drivers already know which alleys behind Shattuck will take a long unit and which ones will not, and that knowledge is the difference between a 40 minute set and a two hour argument.
Power is simple and there are only two ways to do it. Either a dedicated 120 volt, 20 amp circuit within 100 feet of the trailer, or a generator that we supply. Most kitchens have a suitable circuit somewhere near the back door. If yours does not, or if the building is dark, we bring the generator and nothing changes. Call the dispatch desk and we will tell you which one your site needs before the truck rolls.
Mobile refrigeration rentals for Berkeley festivals, load-ins and long event weekends
The street festival calendar here is heavy for a city this size, and every event puts food vendors on a curb for hours. The Solano Avenue Stroll fills close to two miles of Solano Avenue on the second Sunday of September and draws between 250,000 and 300,000 people in a single day, which makes it the oldest and largest street festival in the Bay Area. The 2026 Stroll runs September 13 from 10am to 5pm.
The rest of the calendar keeps caterers busy the same way. The Berkeley Kite Festival takes over Cesar E. Chavez Park at the Berkeley Marina on the last weekend in July. The Juneteenth Festival fills the five-block Alcatraz and Adeline corridor in South Berkeley and has been running longer than any other Juneteenth event in the region. The Bay Area Book Festival takes two days Downtown, and the Himalayan Fair has been filling Live Oak Park every year since 1983.
Cold holding is the piece the permit paperwork assumes a vendor already has. Held food has to stay at or below 41 degrees for the entire operating window under the California Retail Food Code, and for a two-day event that is either a mountain of ice and coolers or one trailer parked behind the booth row. Event coordinators running a full midway usually put a single larger unit at the back of the site and let every vendor pull from it.
Off-premise catering works the same way. Commencement season at the Hearst Greek Theatre and Zellerbach Hall, opening nights at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, weddings out at the Marina: none of those venues hand a caterer a spare walk-in. We stage the unit on level ground with tow access the day before load-in, set it to your holding temperature, and leave it running through strike. Ask us for a quote with your load-in and load-out times and we will build the delivery around them.
Cold storage trailer rentals for West Berkeley brewers, makers and grocers
West Berkeley is a genuine production district, not a marketing label. Fieldwork Brewing Company was founded in 2014 and still runs its original taproom at 1160 6th Street with more than 20 beers on tap, and the company now operates nine locations across the Bay Area. Gilman Brewing Company has run its production brewery and taproom on Gilman Street since 2015. Takara Sake USA has been making sake in the same neighborhood for decades, and urban wineries and artisan food producers fill in the rest of the strip.
Beverage cold storage is its own problem. Cold conditioning and cold crashing want a steady hold in the mid 30s that does not drift. Finished keg and can inventory wants floor space and a door wide enough for a pallet jack. Then packaging weeks and festival season arrive and a brewery that normally keeps 40 kegs cold suddenly needs room for three times that for one weekend. Renting that peak beats building a cold room you use six weeks a year.
Grocery and specialty food work sits right next door. Berkeley Bowl West opened at 920 Heinz Avenue in June 2009 across from the old Heinz ketchup factory, Monterey Market up in the Westbrae supplies restaurants all over the Bay with specialty produce, and Acme Bread has been baking in West Berkeley since 1983. Refrigeration case swaps, holiday overflow, recall and quarantine holds and co-packing runs all need product held at temperature somewhere other than the sales floor.
The same trailer covers all of it because the set point is a dial, not a different rental. Set it to 34 degrees and it is a cold room for finished beer or cut flowers. Set it below zero and it is a hard freeze for hop pellets, fruit puree or prepped protein. Tell us what you are holding and how you move it, and we will match the size and the temperature to the job before the unit leaves our yard.
What we hold portable refrigeration at, load by load
"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 Berkeley, 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 Berkeley 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 for a refrigerated trailer in Berkeley
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 Berkeley 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 Berkeley layout cold, so the delivery is one clean trip instead of a guessing game on the property.
How Berkeley commissaries put our temporary refrigeration to work
Where we go
Gourmet Ghetto restaurant, walk-in cooler down mid service
A Shattuck Avenue kitchen lost its walk-in cooler on a Friday during dinner service with a full book and no second cold room. Our dispatcher took the call, prepped a unit and put it in the back lot on our generator because the building's only free circuit was on the wrong side. The kitchen moved product across in one pass and finished the night. The trailer stayed nine days while the compressor was rebuilt and the restaurant never closed a service.
Berkeley caterer working a two-day festival weekend
A caterer had booth service on Solano Avenue on Sunday and a private event at the Marina the same weekend, with prepped product for both sitting in a kitchen that could not hold it. We staged one of the larger units at their West Berkeley base on Friday, set it to 36 degrees, and they pulled from it for both jobs. No ice runs, nothing held above temperature, and one delivery instead of three.
West Berkeley brewery, packaging week and a festival at once
A Gilman Street brewery had a canning run landing the same week as a beer festival, and their cold room was already full of finished kegs. We dropped a unit against their roll-up door so a pallet jack could work straight in and out, held it at 34 degrees for three weeks, and they moved the whole packaging run through it without renting warehouse space or turning down the festival.
We know Berkeley is its own health jurisdiction. Most cold storage companies quoting an East Bay job assume Alameda County handles the permit. Inside Berkeley it does not. The City of Berkeley Environmental Health Division permits and inspects every restaurant, market, mobile vendor and temporary event booth in the city under the California Retail Food Code and Berkeley Municipal Code Title 11, and it works out of 2180 Milvia Street. A caterer working Berkeley on Saturday and Emeryville on Sunday is dealing with two different bodies. We plan deliveries around that instead of finding out at load-in.
The process for getting a mobile cold storage on your Berkeley site
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.
Start here · Walk us through the product
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.
Step two: We size the unit and check the plug
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.
Step three: 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.
From then on · Run it, and service stays ours
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 temperature and safety rules behind a Berkeley cold storage rental
What the code requires
The core requirement comes from the California Retail Food Code. Health and Safety Code section 113996 requires potentially hazardous food to be held at or below 41 degrees Fahrenheit or at or above 135 degrees, with narrow carve-outs. Food held for dispensing on serving lines and salad bars may sit above 41 but not above 45 degrees for a period not to exceed 12 hours in any 24-hour period, with unused portions discarded at or before the end of that period, and raw shell eggs, unshucked live molluscan shellfish and pasteurized milk products in original sealed containers are also allowed at or below 45 degrees. Everything else is 41 or colder, full stop, and that is the number our units are set to beat.
Inside Berkeley the enforcement is local. The City of Berkeley Environmental Health Division permits and inspects school kitchens, retail and non-retail food establishments, mobile food vendors and temporary event booths under both the Retail Food Code and Berkeley Municipal Code Title 11, and it runs routine inspections, follow-ups when a facility falls short, and complaint investigations. Food booths at special events need a permit, and event organizers coordinate approvals across Environmental Health, Public Works, Parks and the Berkeley Police Department. Anything outside the city line, in Oakland, Albany or Emeryville, goes through Alameda County Environmental Health instead.
There is a worker-safety layer as well, and it works in your favor. Cal/OSHA's indoor heat standard, Title 8 section 3396, applies to indoor work areas at or above 82 degrees Fahrenheit, with full high-heat requirements once the temperature or heat index reaches 87 degrees, or at 82 degrees where employees work in high radiant heat or wear clothing that restricts heat removal. Employers have to control with engineering measures first, provide cool-down areas below 82 degrees, supply water, and train their crews. At the federal level, OSHA's Heat Injury and Illness Prevention rule is still proposed rather than final. The proposal published in the Federal Register on August 30, 2024, the informal hearing ran from June 16 to July 2, 2025, and the post-hearing comment period closed on October 30, 2025. It would set an initial heat trigger and a high heat trigger, and experienced kitchen and event crews already work to that structure. A cold room that holds without a fight helps on both counts.
What our refrigerated trailers bring to a food-safety audit
- 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.
Sizing the unit to the product
Our signature 16 foot Utility series leads the fleet. It is the trailer we send on most jobs, and crews like it for the side utility access door. We build three footprints in all, so a single kitchen holding overflow stock has a fit and so does a distribution floor in a disaster. Every unit is dual purpose by design: one adjustable system swings between freezer and refrigerator on a digital set point. Each trailer runs on a dedicated circuit or on 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.
The 6x8, the short trailer for small kitchens
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.
The everyday 6x12, the middle box for steady volume
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.
Our 6x16: the full-size choice for high volume
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.
What Berkeley grocers ask once the basics are settled
The questions that surface once the basics are settled. Tap any topic to open it.
Cold storage trailer or portable walk-in for a restaurant: which one fits
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 what it means for the health code
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.
Clustering cold storage trailers for a full reset
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.
Renting for a build-out: emergency drop or contract term
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 against building permanent cold storage for a second site
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.
Holding temperature through a heat wave
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.
Further review notes from Berkeley distributors
"We needed cold space for a canning run and a festival in the same week. They backed the unit right up to our roll-up so the pallet jack could work it. Held 34 degrees the entire time. We have rented from them twice since."
Jeffrey W. · Brewery operations, Gilman District"We were swapping refrigeration cases and could not shut down. The trailer sat in receiving for a month and the crew kept stocking straight off it. Clean unit, clean paperwork, no surprises when it came time to schedule pickup."
richard k. · Grocery store manager, South Berkeley"I run a multi-vendor event and cold holding used to be the thing that kept me up. One larger trailer behind the booth row solved it for everybody. They set it the day before so vendors could load in early, which made the whole morning easier."
Karen M. · Event coordinator, Downtown Berkeley"Tight alley, short notice, and they still made it fit. The driver walked the space with me first and picked the size that would actually work instead of just sending whatever was in the yard. That is why I called them back the next time."
Sydni B. · Kitchen manager, Telegraph Avenue"Mother's Day week is more product than my cooler can hold and it is the same every year. Now I book a trailer at 34 degrees a week ahead and stop worrying about it. Everything comes out of it looking as good as it went in."
Amy F. · Florist, Solano Avenue"We had a summer refrigeration project and meals still had to go out. They worked to our schedule, delivered before the crew started, and picked up the day after we were back online. Easy to work with and easy to reach."
Michael B. · School nutrition services, Berkeley"Marina events mean wind, distance from any kitchen, and a long day. Having a trailer staged the night before changed how we work these jobs. Delivery crew found the spot, leveled it, and had it cold before we even arrived."
Lisanne M. · Caterer, Berkeley MarinaSample reviews written to mirror genuine Berkeley situations, to be replaced with verified Google reviews ahead of launch.
Everything Berkeley event crews want to know about temporary refrigeration rentals
How fast can you get a freezer trailer to a Berkeley restaurant when the walk-in fails?
Fast enough that most kitchens finish the service they were in the middle of. Our dispatch desk is staffed around the clock, and when a unit is ready in the yard we prep and roll immediately. We once had a trailer on site for a Chick-fil-A within 34 minutes of the phone call. Berkeley delivery time depends mostly on where you are, since a West Berkeley lot is a faster set than a hills address off Cragmont. Call the dispatch line and we will give you a real window, not a guess.
Does one trailer work as both a cooler and a freezer?
Yes, and that is one of the main reasons customers pick us. Every unit in our fleet runs on an adjustable set point from 50 degrees Fahrenheit down to 10 below zero, so the same trailer is a cold room at 34 degrees and a hard freeze below zero. You are not renting two different pieces of equipment. Tell us what you are holding and we will set it before delivery, and you can change it on site if the job changes.
What power does the trailer need at a Berkeley site?
There are exactly two ways to power it. Either a dedicated 120 volt, 20 amp circuit within 100 feet of the trailer, or a generator that we supply. Nothing else is required and nothing heavier is needed. Most West Berkeley industrial sites and grocery back lots already have a suitable circuit. Downtown alleys, Southside back lots and hills addresses during a power shutoff often do not, which is why the generator option carries a lot of our emergency work in this city.
Where can the trailer park in Downtown Berkeley or on Telegraph Avenue?
Usually a back lot, a private loading zone, or a curb space coned off with permission from the property manager or the venue. Those blocks are tight and busy, so we scout placement before the truck leaves rather than showing up and hoping. Our drivers already know which alleys behind Shattuck and which campus service roads will take a longer unit. Give us the address when you call and we will tell you which size fits and what needs to be arranged.
Does Berkeley Environmental Health need to approve a rented cold storage trailer?
The City of Berkeley Environmental Health Division regulates your food facility and any temporary event booth you operate, and held food has to meet the California Retail Food Code wherever it sits. Our trailers are NSF ready and built to hold at or below the 41 degree requirement, which is what an inspector cares about. If you are running a booth at a Berkeley event you will still need your own booth permit, and the Division at 2180 Milvia Street issues those. We are happy to give you the unit details your application asks for.
Can I rent for a single weekend event, or for several months?
Both, and we do plenty of each. Weekend rentals are common for festivals, the Solano Avenue Stroll, Marina weddings and campus events, where the unit lands the day before load-in and leaves after strike. Long rentals run through kitchen remodels, refrigeration projects, seasonal overflow and bulk holds that stretch for months. Longer terms are simpler to schedule, so tell us the whole window up front and we will build the delivery and pickup around it.
Will a rented freezer trailer keep running during a PG&E power shutoff?
Yes, when it is set up on a generator. Public Safety Power Shutoffs come with advance notice, and Berkeley has advised hills residents to prepare before high winds arrive, so there is time to plan. That is the whole advantage: a unit staged and running before the power goes out holds your entire inventory through the event. Storm outages are less predictable, which is why our dispatch desk runs 24/7 through the winter. Call ahead of a forecast shutoff and we will reserve a unit for your address.
How much does a trailer hold, and how do I pick a size?
We run three sizes and the largest is our signature unit. The way to choose is by how product moves rather than by cubic feet. If you are replacing one restaurant walk-in and hand-carrying pans, a smaller unit is usually right. If pallets need to come in and out on a jack, as they do for grocers, brewers, school kitchens and multi-vendor events, take the signature unit. Describe your product and your access and we will match it, or look through the trailer specs and compare.
Are the trailers cleaned between rentals, and are they NSF ready?
Every unit is cleaned and checked before it goes back out, and our trailers are NSF ready, licensed and insured. We own the fleet directly rather than sourcing from a broker, so the same company that maintains the unit delivers it and answers when you call. If something is not right on arrival you are talking to the owner of the equipment.
What happens if the unit has a problem on a Sunday night?
You call the same number and someone picks up. Our dispatch and emergency swap service runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays, because refrigeration does not fail on a schedule. If a unit cannot be brought back quickly, we swap it. That is why so many restaurant groups keep our number on the wall next to the refrigeration contractor's.
Berkeley cold storage resource library
Deeper reading for local businesses, from the failure-hour playbook to compliance and seasonal planning. Tap any guide to open it.
What Berkeley's food code actually requires when your walk-in goes down
Every conversation about temporary cold storage in Berkeley eventually lands on one number: 41 degrees Fahrenheit. That figure comes from the California Retail Food Code, specifically Health and Safety Code section 113996, which requires potentially hazardous food to be held at or below 41 degrees or at or above 135 degrees. It applies to your walk-in, your reach-ins, your prep tables and to any rented reefer trailer sitting in your back lot. Once product climbs past that line and stays there, you have a compliance problem on top of a repair problem.
The code does allow a few narrow exceptions, and it is worth knowing them precisely rather than vaguely. Food held for dispensing on serving lines and salad bars may sit above 41 degrees but not above 45, for a period not to exceed 12 hours in any 24-hour period, and any unused portion has to be discarded at or before the end of that period. Raw shell eggs, unshucked live molluscan shellfish, and pasteurized milk and milk products in original sealed containers may also be held at or below 45 degrees. That is the complete list. Everything else in your kitchen is 41 or colder.
Planning cold storage around a PG&E shutoff in the Berkeley hills
There are two very different kinds of power loss in Berkeley, and the difference matters more than most businesses realize. One comes with notice. The other does not. Planning for the first one is cheap and easy. Reacting to the second one is expensive.
The Public Safety Power Shutoff is the planned kind. PG&E de-energizes lines ahead of high wind and fire weather, and Berkeley's hills neighborhoods sit in the affected footprint. During a July 2024 event the utility projected a shutoff reaching roughly 140,000 Bay Area customers from a Sunday afternoon through at least Monday night, and the City of Berkeley advised residents in hills neighborhoods to consider relocating to lower elevations before high winds began at 4pm Sunday. Notice like that is an opportunity, not just a warning.
Sizing cold storage for Berkeley street festivals and farmers markets
Few cities this size close as many streets for as many food events, and every one of them puts vendors on a curb holding product cold for hours without a kitchen behind them. Getting the cold storage right is the difference between a profitable weekend and a stressful one.
Start with the scale. The Solano Avenue Stroll fills close to two miles of Solano Avenue on the second Sunday of September and draws between 250,000 and 300,000 people in a single day, which makes it the oldest and largest street festival in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2026 it runs September 13 from 10am to 5pm. That is seven hours of continuous service with a resupply problem, not a lunch rush.
Keeping a Berkeley kitchen open through a remodel or a seismic retrofit
Berkeley's building stock is old, its ground is active, and its institutions renovate constantly. Somewhere in the city right now a hood is being replaced or a refrigeration rack is being rebuilt. Somewhere else a school kitchen is being modernized or a building is being braced against the fault. All of that work has the same side effect: the cold storage is in the way.
The seismic context here is not hypothetical. The Hayward Fault runs under the University of California campus, and California Memorial Stadium straddles it directly. When construction began in December 1922 the University already knew this, so the stadium was built in two halves with expansion joints where the sides meet so they can move independently in an earthquake. A later retrofit added large shock absorbers and concrete seismic blocks so the structure can partly float over the fault. The Hearst Greek Theatre, also next to the fault, went through work that moved its seismic rating from very poor to good.
Cal/OSHA Title 8 section 3396, indoor heat illness prevention
One call sends a refrigeration trailer toward Berkeley
Grab a quick, no-runaround quote, or ring our round-the-clock line for emergency cold storage anywhere across Berkeley and the surrounding area.