Used Shipping Containers

What you are buying

Most people should be buying at this grade. A cargo-worthy twenty does the same storage job as a new one, keeps the weather off just as well, and leaves a substantial sum in your pocket. The trade-off is cosmetic: expect faded livery, square patches where a shipping line painted over its own logo, dents through the side walls, and a floor that has obviously carried things.

Two things decide whether a used container is any good, and they are the floor and the doors. A floor that has carried something wet for years goes soft between the cross-members and you can feel it underfoot before you can see it. Gaskets perish, and once one has taken a set it will not pull up against the frame however hard the bars are cranked. Both get checked before a unit is released and both get photographed.

As-is deserves saying plainly. It has finished its working life at sea, it is priced on its faults, it is not sold watertight, and a given unit may carry a patched repair, a soft section of floor, or a seal that no longer seats. For a lock-up under an existing roof, a site shell or the base of a build it is often exactly the right buy. For anything that has to stay dry, it is not.

Grade matters more than anything else in a container quote. Grade is what decides whether the box keeps water out. Anything sold as cargo-worthy is inspected wind and watertight before release — for storage use, which is separate from the CSC certification an export job needs — and new single-trip units, one loaded voyage with rubbers that have barely weathered, are sealed as well. As-is is the cheap end and carries no watertight claim at all: expect a previous repair, a floor section that has gone soft, or a gasket that no longer pulls up hard against the frame. We list those faults and photograph them on request, before delivery, so nothing turns up as a surprise when the truck does. If what goes inside has to stay dry, start at cargo-worthy.