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The moving protections you have read about do not cover your office move
An independent guide to commercial, office and specialist relocation in the United States. How to verify a carrier, which federal protections apply to a business move and which do not, what an office move costs, and how lab, IT and machinery moves differ.
Almost every moving guide you will find is about household goods
Search for how to choose a moving company and you will be told to get a written estimate based on an in-person survey, to check the mover is registered, and to read your Rights and Responsibilities booklet. Those are real federal protections, and they exist under 49 CFR Part 375, the consumer protection rules for interstate household goods moves.
That regulation states its own scope plainly. A carrier is subject to it only when transporting household goods for individual shippers in interstate commerce. An office relocation is not that. Your business is not an individual shipper and your server racks and workstations are not household goods, so the booklet, the survey requirement and the household goods estimate rules are not protections you can rely on.
What still applies is registration. Any carrier operating commercial vehicles in interstate commerce needs a USDOT number, and both carriers and brokers must be registered with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. That is checkable in a public database, and it is the floor rather than the ceiling. Everything above that floor, liability limits, insurance for high-value equipment, downtime penalties, has to be negotiated into your contract because no rule puts it there for you.
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The commercial move verification matrix
Federal moving protections are written for households, not businesses. We read the regulation, checked which federal registrations still apply to a commercial carrier, and turned it into a checklist of what you can verify, where, and what you have to negotiate for yourself because no rule gives it to you.