I was reading a little news blurb about the Hanjin meltdown. Seems their idle containers are all over clogging up ports and such. I am in the market for one as a storage unit. I wonder where I ought to look and if I should wait for the market to get more supply. Anyone here use these?
Interesting question. I'd guess they're the cheapest they've ever been, but that don't mean they can't go cheaper. I'm involved in a purchase of a bunch of these and we're looking at right about $2k each delivered, 40'. Supposedly they're cheaper to make new in China than they cost to ship back to China. Being in the midwest, the shipping cost back to the coast is more than the pacific crossing, I'd guess? The local delivery is also substantial, being not close to a main city. It seems like everybody and his brother are suddenly agents selling containers in the last couple years around here. I'd contact some dealers and make them an offer for when they get one in your area to save a bit on the delivery. That would save us some, but it would be one at a time and unpredictable. You might look up the steel price cycle, or futures prices, that would be the biggest factor in cost.
I would imagine Long Beach would be kind of the West coast epicenter....
Yeah, but once they get back to Longbeach they're halfway home. More than halfway cost wise if they went all the way to Podunk County USA and back to Longbeach. The last thing the shipper wants to do is haul an empty container back to their biggest terminal and then sell it, one at a time. That's just the view from Podunk County USA, maybe it's different on the coast?
We bought a bunch of 20ft ISO tank containers a while back to use as lubricant/coolant storage. they were manufactured in China, shipped once with a one-way cargo (fruit juice IIRC) to the US and after having been cleaned that's we bought them and had them shipped to our job site. They were stainless tanks and cost us about $5000 ea, far cheaper than having specialised tanks manufactured & shipped.
The price of shipping containers varies considerably with distance from major ports. You can buy one in Seattle for about a third of what they cost in Missoula. I have bought 9 of them in my life so far and find them very useful and economical.
There's a tremendous number of containers carrying LCL (less than container load) freight, most of which get devanned near the port of entry and returned to the port, or the container owner's container yard. FCL (full container) loads typically get a ride on truck or rail (or both) to their final destination.
Savannah is the 2nd largest US container port east of the Rockies. Warehouses here devoted to stripping and stuffing containers are commonly in excess of a million sq.ft. We have Ikea, Walmart (several), Home Depot, Dollar Tree, etc., etc. Such warehouses are also in the hinterland, within 150 miles of Savannah. Logistics of container movement are both complex and simple. Demurrage charges occur after a certain time from the time the incoming container hits the dock. (Get it, unload it, and return it to the docks within a specific time, or incurr additional cost.) A container ship may carry as many as 5,000 40-foot containers, and hauling them back to China costs something, but do the math. I don't understand why prices to buy containers are high in the interior since dead-heading them back to a port is counter-productive. $2,000 sounds high to buy a container. And they have so very many alternative uses!!
they are around $2,000and up in my area. But I have always wondered if they are cheap somewhere because you see these ideas to build living spaces and projects for them and at my prices that wouldn't be economical.