Dock-Level and Drive-In Doors

How do you deliver milk?  What about large furniture or large windows and doors?  And what if you want to store a large excavator in the building or a dump truck?

I never realized before how important dock-level doors and drive-in doors were.  At my family's building in Muskoka, we had seven dock level doors and eight drive in doors when it was purchased.  That sounded like a lot to me when I was first involved with the building, but amazingly we needed to add a ninth drive-in door this past spring and need to add a tenth drive-in door this coming spring to accommodate all of the deliveries and pick ups to and from the building.

We have a milk producer who uses our property as a transfer station, bringing its large truck from the north, docking it, then shuttling the milk products into the smaller truck that is responsible for local deliveries to Muskoka.  We have a delivery company that needs two dock doors for six months of the spring and summer to handle the overload volume of deliveries to Muskoka that occur in the summer.  We store large boats, dump trucks, trailers and cars, all of whom drive into the building for the winter.  All of our locker tenants drive into the building when they are moving in so they can facilitate easy loading and unloading in any weather.  We have two doors that can accommodate a transport truck actually driving into the building.  We have a courier company that needs two docks to facilitate their deliveries.  A food delivery company needs its vans to drop off and pick up frozen meat.  A magazine publisher uses a drive in door to load and unload their vans and a dock level door for delivery of the magazines to our building.  A car rental company uses a drive in door to wash their cars.  Our trailer rental company drives the trailers in to the  building for enhancement or repair.  Our food truck stores his truck in the property.  And as we fill the building, more and more tenants want to use the doors.

The building doors are where the activity occurs.  The interior of the building is quiet.  Once things come into the building, there is little noise or activity.  The action is in the bringing in and taking out of items from the building.

I now understand and appreciate the value of many dock-level and drive-in doors in a building.