I have had a personal map collection in 2 completely full cabinets shifted overseas and back and the removalists just hefted the full cabinets onto/off their truck by sheer muscle power, and even up 1.5 flights of stairs to my apartment.
But I agree it's not ideal for the cabinet, and if your doors are not wide enough, the removalists will just flip the cabinet on edge...

On a professional note, the National Library of Australia will shortly begin replacing its 1000 cabinets (stacked 3 high on compactus bases) in 3 stages over 2 years, which means we have to move the old cabinets out in batches to a staging area, install new ones (on new compactus bases), then move the maps themselves back in.
Because our doorways are not wide enough to get the cabinets out flat, for each of the 10 drawers in each cabinet (10,000 drawers total) we will have to:

- place a piece of heavy card in the top of the drawer, 
- tape it in place (wide parcel tape crosswise around the cabinet), 
- stack the 10 drawers in order at 30 degrees  from vertical in a trolley.
- wheel trolley to other end of building.
- flip empty cabinet on end onto a trolley
- wheel cabinet to other end of building
- position cabinet correctly in staging area 
- untape drawers
- install drawers in correct order.

We have a professional stack-moving company that does all the National Library's stack moving (usually books), but at least initially, this move will be supervised by maps staff. 

The main trick with the staging area is that everything in it has to remain accessible for the 6 months it will sit there, so keeping all drawers and cabinets in order and correctly labelled is vital.


Brendan Whyte
National Library of Australia