As Sheldon Rushton prepared to move a 440,000-pound building earlier this month, he realized he was missing a crucial piece of equipment: soap.

Rushton’s construction company had been tasked with moving a nearly 200-year-old Canadian building a few feet to make space for a new apartment complex. Construction workers dug under the building and inserted more than a dozen steel beams for support. The company brought a tow truck and two excavators to move the structure.

But the building wouldn’t budge until it became slippery with soap, Rushton said.

To help complete the project, Rushton’s wife, Leanne, went to 15 stores to buy every bar she could find of Ivory soap, the brand Rushton said is the softest. It took four days and more than $970, but by last week, Rushton’s crew had 700 bars of soap to unpackage and place under the building.

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