How you place a shipping container on site is important for easy, long lasting use and, of course, maximum lifespan. Always make sure your community, county, or state allows you to have a shipping container on your property, and if they do see if you need any permit to do so. Once you have the permit then you can go ahead and purchase the unit and have it delivered to you. But first make sure you have everything ready before delivery happens.

Before delivery we recommend checking and preparing the ground for your shipping container. You want a leveled area at least as big as your shipping container and accessible for our delivery truck. You want this area to be free from debris and you want to make sure the ground isn’t very soft. You don’t want the container sinking once its been put into place. Shipping containers don’t necessarily need a concrete base to sit on but this is a great option if available.

Double check if there are no overhead obstructions such as tree branches, frowns, phone or power cables that might obstruct the lifting process. This is not only above the area your container will sit but also above the area the truck will sit and any area in between. If you are in any doubt over the access we recommend sending us some photos or perhaps even a video walkthrough of the site, prom the main entrance to your property, maybe road entrance as well, so we can best understand the challenges we might face and we can usually advise on ways around any issues.

Spend some time initially thinking about where you want to site the container before preparing the site for your shipping container. Which way the doors are going to face? Check you have enough space and room to open the doors to get in and out, if you need to put in a car or you use a forklift to place goods inside. Sometimes we suggest physically marking out the space with cones so you can understand how the space is taken up and how you will have to work around it, making sure you avoid blocking any fire exits for nearby buildings and that you allow good access to and around the shipping container.

We recommend that the shipping container is raised up slightly from the ground to ensure its not sat in any wet puddles or mud, and to allow an airflow underneath which will dry out the underside of the container between wet spells. All this will prolong the life of the underside of the container.

To prepare a site for a shipping container ideally you want a set of supports at each of the 4 bottom corners of the shipping container. These containers are designed to be lifted from these 4 corner castings when loaded with 20+ tonnes of cargo, so unless you’re loading very heavy weights inside you won’t need to worry about additional supports along the base of the container – just in the 4 corners. If you do store heavy goods, we advise to support the middle part of the unit as well.

These shipping containers need to be kept level. If they aren’t level you may find the doors become very stiff or unworkable, or you may find that the hasp on a lock box doesn’t correctly align with the hole in the lock box on the other door (meaning you can’t close the door correctly). Shipping containers themselves are designed to flex slightly whilst a container boat may pitch in the sea, and this means if you place a shipping container on uneven ground the container itself might flex to one side, but your container doors are still a square shape and won’t fit into the frame.

Make sure your supports will be able to take the weight of the container plus the weight of your cargo without any risk of moving or settling.

• Pairs of bricks, cinder blocks
• heavy duty paving slabs or cement blocks
• 4×4, 8×8, railroad ties are common supports used.
• gravel pad – is recommended and allows drainage and airflow underneath the unit
• cement or tarmac pad – also recommended and can be combined with first tree options as well

Any support that’s larger than the corner castings, 7 inch square, and that can take the weight will be enough. If you use a support that crumbles away with a few tonnes of pressure then this can then lead to the racking issues described above. The same goes if you’re are placing the container on soft ground – the ground may be level to begin with but will one corner sink away over time and potentially cause issues down the line.

This may sound silly but we often come across this problem: If you have 4 equal slabs to use as your corner supports and put them on uneven ground, then the container will still be uneven and you may still get racking problems. We recommend having handy additional smaller or thinner supports in such an instance that can help keep the container level when placed on uneven ground.

Hope this information helps and next time when we deliver, you will be prepared and ready to receive your shipping container.