Race simulator rental in San Francisco

No. San Francisco is the strictest market we work in on this question, stricter than Dallas. IBEW holds all booth electrical labor including AV equipment connections, and the work explicitly cannot be performed by other unions, by installation houses, or by exhibitors.

Electrical is also exclusive to the show's general service contractor, so there is no competitive route around it, and the contractor adds a supervision surcharge of 30 percent on electrical labor rates.

The practical version: the moment a simulator is switched on here, an electrician has been bought, plus 30 percent. We put that in the quote rather than letting you find it on the floor. Chicago lets you plug in and interconnect your own equipment, which makes this the single biggest cost difference between the two cities.

One honest flag. At least one installation vendor's own San Francisco page describes a looser practice than the contractor documents do. We plan to the contractor document, because that is the one that governs on site.

No wheels of any kind. Hand-carry here is one person, one trip, using no equipment, and three separate sources agree on that wording.

The venue adds its own rule on top: carts and dollies are not allowed through lobby areas or on passenger elevators and escalators, and exhibitors may not operate forklifts in the building at all.

This is stricter than every other market on this site. Orlando allows a personal two-wheel cart, New York allows a personal dolly, Chicago allows your own non-motorized hand trucks and dollies. Here, anything you cannot carry yourself in a single trip goes through material handling as freight, priced by weight. It is the reason we weigh cases before quoting San Francisco.

No, because there is no square-footage allowance here. The test is a four-part trigger, and failing any one of the four puts the work with the installers' local. Union crews install anything that:

1. requires hand tools, or
2. requires more than one person, or
3. takes longer than 30 minutes including crating and uncrating, or
4. exceeds 10 feet in any direction.

One full-time company employee may supervise the union crew. A row of racing simulators fails at least three of those four tests before anyone opens a case, so we treat a San Francisco install as union work from the first line of the quote rather than arguing it at the dock.

One carve-out worth knowing: unpacking and placing merchandise is not covered, so your own staff can place product on the rigs. They cannot build them.

Supervise, commission, calibrate, and run the activation. That is the honest answer and it is a different job from the one we do in Houston.

The install belongs to the installers' local. The power belongs to IBEW. Freight belongs to the Teamsters. Our people are there to make sure the thing that gets built is the thing that was specified, that it is calibrated before a guest sits in it, that the content suits the crowd, and that a line of three hundred people moves without feeling like a queue.

A vendor who tells you their own crew will build a simulator row on a Moscone floor is describing work they are not permitted to do.

The city publishes it, which is unusual and useful, and it is a legal wage floor rather than a contractor's price list. Under San Francisco Labor and Employment Code Article 102.8, covering on-site installation, setup, assembly and dismantling of temporary exhibits, booths, signage and drapery:

Journeyperson Installer, effective 01/01/2026: $82.73 total straight time, $104.08 at time and a half, $128.90 at double time.

Because it is a determination rather than a negotiation, a bid that materially undercuts it is either misclassifying the work or is not going to hold. Two caveats we would rather state than hide. The underlying collective bargaining agreement runs to 06/30/2026, so a 2027 event will be priced against a new determination, and any quote we give you that far out carries a rate-escalation note. And while the determination covers work at City-owned facilities and Moscone is City-owned, we have not read the section body itself, so we treat the Moscone application as a strong inference and confirm it rather than asserting it flatly.

Five things, and the fifth is the one that ruins budgets. Double time applies to hours between 10:00 PM and 5:00 AM, Saturday hours after the first four, all Sunday hours, all holiday hours, and any shift longer than 12 hours.

Then the rest rule. After a double-time shift the worker must get an eight-hour break. If the break is shorter, double time applies to every hour until the eight hours are satisfied.

Worked example, because this is the line item that blows up San Francisco budgets. A show closes Friday at 4:00 PM and the client wants trucks loaded by Saturday noon. That is four hours of Saturday at straight time and then double time. If the same crew worked late Friday night, the rest rule can put the entire Saturday at double time. Plan the move-out before you sign the show contract, not after.

Nine: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents' Day, Cesar Chavez Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Cesar Chavez Day is the one that catches out-of-town vendors, because it is not on a federal holiday calendar. It falls in late March or early April, directly on the move-in corridor for the biggest shows in this city. A vendor pricing that day at straight time has mispriced it by double.

Because of how stagehand labor is called here. Stagehand work carries a minimum of eight hours for the head-of-department worker, five hours for each additional worker, and one hour per piece of equipment. Most other labor categories carry a one-hour minimum.

So if a leaderboard video wall or a truss tie-in gets classified as stagehand work rather than display work, a two-hour job bills as eight plus five plus five before any overtime. Cancelling with less than 24 hours notice still bills the full minimums.

We get the classification agreed in writing before the order goes in. It is the difference between a few hundred dollars and a few thousand for the same hour of work, and it is invisible until the invoice.

Ask, because there are three and they do not share a dock. North and South share a dock entrance on the west side of 3rd Street between Folsom and Howard. Moscone West has its own nine basement docks, entered from the north side of Howard Street between 4th and 5th.

Two pedestrian bridges span Howard Street, and the engineering record for them describes connections to Moscone South only, with no mention of a connection to Moscone West. So treat West as a physically separate building until someone shows you otherwise.

A truck sent to the wrong ramp gate misses a timed dock slot, and a missed slot waits for the next opening with the driver on the clock. We confirm the building and the dock street in writing on every delivery.

Probably, in the right car, and the published figures are better than most cities give you. Moscone publishes elevator car dimensions and capacities, with the largest being Moscone West Elevator 4 at 10 by 11 by 29 feet and 30,000 pounds. Several others run 20,000 pounds.

Two things to know. Door dimensions are not published for any Moscone elevator, and the door is what actually decides whether a crated rig goes in, so that comes off a site visit rather than a spec sheet. And two of the cars are only 5,000 pounds at roughly seven feet wide, which will not take a crated motion platform alongside a pallet jack. We name the car we need rather than assuming.

Within a published limit that we have not seen anywhere else. On Moscone South Levels 2 and 3 the wheeled-equipment limit is 6,000 pounds total weight, a maximum 3,000 pound point load at any single wheel, a minimum 15 inch wheel spacing on an axle, and no significant additional load within a 10 by 10 foot zone centered on the equipment.

That is the governing specification for taking a motion platform upstairs here, and it is the kind of number that decides a job rather than decorating a page. Those floors are rated 100 pounds per square foot, against 125 in the exhibit halls and 250 on the docks.

Three separate clocks, and the longest is 60 days.

60 days: exhibit floor plans to the Fire Marshal.
30 days: rigging plans for anything 1,000 pounds or more, to Theatrical Services and Event Management.
30 days: indoor vehicle display requests, to facility management for Fire Marshal approval, before the first move-in day.

The consequence is blunt. A booth sold 45 days out cannot have a newly approved floor plan, a hung sign over 1,000 pounds, or a car in it. Tell us early and this is routine.

Yes, with 30 days notice and a stricter rule set than most markets. Fuel must not exceed a quarter tank or five gallons, whichever is less. Fuel tank openings must be locked and sealed against vapor escape. Batteries must be disconnected in an approved manner. No fueling or defueling inside the building.

Then the carpet rules, which surprise nearly everyone. In permanently carpeted areas a vehicle must be pushed into position and may not be started or moved under its own power for any reason while on carpet, with a drop cloth covering the entire undercarriage during display. Electric vehicles may not be parked for charging on carpeted surfaces. And liquid-fueled, gas-fueled and hybrid vehicles may not be displayed in any lobby or corridor in any Moscone building.

A dealership activation planning an EV in a carpeted lobby has three separate problems before it starts.

Two things that out-of-town vendors routinely leave out and then absorb.

Carpet. The exhibit halls are bare concrete and carpet is mandatory, and laying it is union work. It is a real line in every Moscone quote.

Parking, which does not exist. Moscone has no on-site parking at all and curb parking at the venue is prohibited. A vehicle without commercial plates gets three minutes in a yellow commercial loading zone, only for active loading, with the driver staying with the vehicle, or it can be cited and towed. Six-wheel truck zones are for six-wheel trucks only.

So there is no place to keep a van full of spares during a show. We plan a two-person drop with the driver in the vehicle, every time.

Not your own circuit. Internet and telecommunications at Moscone are exclusive to the venue's facility services group, so there is no competitive provider and no bringing your own line.

Whether an exhibitor may run a personal hotspot or access point is not addressed anywhere the venue publishes, and we are not going to guess at it on your behalf. For any connected leaderboard build at Moscone we resolve that with the venue before quoting, because it is the difference between a working leaderboard and a very expensive static screen.

No. San Francisco restricts specific street segments by weight under its Transportation Code. A 6,000 pound gross weight limit applies to a list of segments including parts of the Great Highway, Masonic Avenue and Telegraph Hill Boulevard, and 6,000 pounds gross excludes essentially any box truck. A separate 18,000 pound unladen limit covers other segments.

There is an exemption for commercial vehicles making deliveries, and it carries a condition that matters: the vehicle must come from an unrestricted street by a direct route. You cannot use a restricted segment as a through route even if you have a delivery elsewhere on it, and a navigation app will happily do exactly that.

At the venue itself, trailers cannot exceed 53 feet in length or 13 feet 6 inches in height.

The second week of January, and it is not a trade show. The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference runs 01/11/2027 to 01/14/2027 at a hotel, not at Moscone, and it is the single worst week of the year to book this city.

The reason is counterintuitive and worth understanding. Roughly 9,500 attendees sell out a city with about 30,000 hotel rooms, because the attendees are deal-makers who book suites and meeting rooms rather than single rooms. During the 2026 edition the Westin St. Francis reported 100 percent occupancy, the Hotel Council described most rooms citywide as totally sold out for several days running, and rates around Union Square ran past $1,000 a night.

After that: Dreamforce week, whenever it falls, is the largest citywide by footprint. RSAC, 04/05/2027 to 04/08/2027, takes all three Moscone buildings and sits near Cesar Chavez Day on the labor calendar. March 2027 carries two citywides in one month, with GDC and then AAD on 03/19 to 03/23. Photonics West runs 01/30 to 02/04/2027 across all three buildings, three weeks after JPM.

Sonoma Raceway is genuinely good and we will give you its real numbers rather than talk you out of it. A corporate group program starts at $7,500 for up to 20 participants, with karting, pace-car hot laps on the 2.52 mile road course, autocross and drifting modules. Hot Laps and Happy Hour at Turn 11 runs from $15,000 for up to 25 people.

Now the constraints, all published by the raceway: programs run Wednesday through Saturday only, with 8:00 AM or 12:00 PM start times, the facility is about 35 minutes north of the city, and dates typically need reserving six to twelve months ahead.

So if your group is twenty people, the date is flexible, and you have most of a day, go. If your group is two hundred, the date is fixed by the show, and the people are already in a building downtown, that program cannot serve them and ours can. Those are different jobs.

One more honest note: there is no karting venue inside San Francisco city limits. The nearest is in South San Francisco, and it only takes reservations for groups of eight or more.