The basics

Industrial bay sizes, and what actually fits in them

Micro, small, mid and large bays — the size classes used in multi-tenant industrial, what each one holds, and how to size the space you need.

Industrial bays are sold by the square foot, but they are used by the pallet, the vehicle and the workbench. The size classes below are the conventional bands used in Western Canadian multi-tenant industrial. They are market vocabulary, not a published standard, and every building draws its own lines.

Class	Typical range	What it usually holds
Micro bay	Under 1,000 sq ft	Trades storage, a service van, e-commerce picking, a workshop. Often one door, one washroom, no office.
Small bay	1,000 – 2,499 sq ft	The default starter unit. A van or small truck inside, a few racking runs, a small front office.
Mid bay	2,500 – 4,999 sq ft	Forklift aisle plus racking, a team of five to fifteen, usually a second door.
Large bay	5,000 – 9,999 sq ft	Light manufacturing, distribution with real inventory, a built-out office and lunchroom.
Flex block	10,000 – 24,999 sq ft	Several bays taken together. The tenant starts to control its own yard and loading.
Single-tenant	25,000 sq ft and up	No longer a bay — a whole building, leased and managed on different terms.

Sizing from what you store

The most reliable way to size a bay is to count pallets and work backwards, because storage is what usually runs out first.

Count the pallet positions you need at your seasonal peak, not your average.
Decide how high you can stack. Racking to three levels is common in a 20-foot clear bay; four or more needs more height and usually a sprinkler review.
Divide positions by levels to get floor positions.
Allow roughly 12 to 14 square feet of gross floor area for each floor position once aisles, staging and cross-traffic are included.
Add your office, washroom, lunchroom and any shipping desk on top.
Add a working margin — most tenants outgrow a bay on storage before they outgrow it on people.

The bay size calculator runs that arithmetic, using your own numbers. It carries no market rates and makes no assumptions about your operation.

Sizing from vehicles

If vehicles come inside, they set the minimum before storage does. A cube van needs a door around 12 feet high and a clear run of about 30 feet. A tandem truck or a tractor needs considerably more, and if a 53-foot trailer has to come inside — rare, but it happens in transloading — the bay has to be designed around it from the start.

Sizing from people

Office area inside a bay is where costs rise fastest, because it is the part that is finished, heated, cooled, lit to office standards and required to be barrier-free. Most small-bay tenants need less office than they first ask for, and the ones who need a lot of it are often better served by a flex unit with a proper second-floor office than by building one into warehouse space.

A note on how the area was measured

Two bays advertised at 3,000 square feet can differ by several hundred feet of usable space depending on where the measurement was taken and whether a mezzanine is included. Read how a bay is measured before you compare two spaces on area alone.

Questions

Frequently asked

What is the smallest practical industrial bay?

Around 600 to 800 square feet is the smallest that works as a genuine industrial unit with an overhead door, a washroom and a service. Below that the fixed costs of the door, the heater and the washroom take up too much of the space to be efficient.

How many pallets fit in a 2,000 square foot bay?

It depends entirely on racking height and aisle width. As a rough planning figure, 2,000 square feet of gross bay area supports somewhere around 100 to 150 floor positions once aisles and staging are allowed for — and three times that in stored pallets if you can rack three levels high. Confirm any stacking plan against the building's sprinkler design.

Should I lease bigger than I need today?

Usually a little, yes. Moving an industrial operation is disruptive and the fit-out rarely transfers. But taking space you will not use for years means paying additional rent and operating costs on it the whole time. A right of first refusal on the neighbouring bay is often a better answer than extra square feet.

The basics

Other guides

Clear height: what it means and why it decides everything Loading: dock doors, grade doors and the choice between them Floors, columns and structure inside a bay Power in an industrial bay Heating, ventilation and make-up air Sprinklers, fire protection and what you are allowed to store

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