The Little Tractor that Can Vs. The 5500 Pound Shipping Container

   / The Little Tractor that Can Vs. The 5500 Pound Shipping Container #1  

chaunclm

New member
Joined
Oct 7, 2012
Messages
16
Location
Livingston, TX, Conroe, TX, and Van Buren Co, Arka
Tractor
LS 3033HST
We were looking for some storage and a place to park the new tractor. The least expensive solution we could find were three used shipping containers. These containers are 20 feet by 8 feet. They are guaranteed to be water and wind tight. So for $6700.00 we were able to have delivered on the ground 480 square feet of weather proof storage. This is absolutely the lowest price per square foot of any enclosed storage even cheaper than buying just the material to build a building of the same size.

We first had to build an elevated 18 inch pad about 20 feet by 60 feet for the containers. We did this with soil we received from the county. They had a couple of years ago dug a drainage ditch that ran along our south property line and wanted to find a place for some of the dirt. My son said OK and they dumped it in a pile on the southwest corner of our acre. My son and grand son have been moving it to low spots with a wheel barrow for the last couple of years. Now they have our new LS 3033HST. They were able to move more dirt in a day than they had moved in the last two years.

The following are some videos of the the tractor manhandling the containers from the front where they were dumped by the shipping company to their permanent home on the shelf. One of the containers is the garage for the "Little Tractor That Can".

Now with a little sand blasting and some Rustoleum paint they will look a lot better too.

 
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   / The Little Tractor that Can Vs. The 5500 Pound Shipping Container #3  
Sounds like the price was right!
 
   / The Little Tractor that Can Vs. The 5500 Pound Shipping Container #4  
Sounds like the price was right!
 
   / The Little Tractor that Can Vs. The 5500 Pound Shipping Container #5  
Yeah I agree with the price being right. Great value and I assume no increased property taxes like a stick building would add.
 
   / The Little Tractor that Can Vs. The 5500 Pound Shipping Container #6  
Good job!
 
   / The Little Tractor that Can Vs. The 5500 Pound Shipping Container #7  
I guess demand is up on those containers. 10 years ago, you could get the 40 foot delivered in Houston area for $1500. That was $1000 for the container and 500 for delivery. There are so many of them in surplus World wide that they are becoming the scourge of the shipping industry, kinda like nuclear waste. It cost more to ship them back to a supply point than they are worth so they just stack up. Unless you have a two way shipping port where raw materials or one type material shipped out and another comes back on the same ship, then they just stack up. We had 5000 of them on my last job in Nigeria to dispose of and it required permit from Nigerian government to scrap them because they were listed as an asset to the oil company (partially owned by govt.) The job was in its 6th year of trying to obtain a permit to send them to a steel mill for scrap and had yet to get it so they just sat around taking up space and requiring premium rent on storage area to be paid. No body buys them and too costly to ship out and just like paying rent on a storage building to hold dirty rags, they cost to keep them.
That all being said, they do make good storage sheds. We (KBR Construction) used to use them for tool rooms and warehouses on the job site. We would place two or more in line about 30-40 feet apart and parallel to each other then build a wall about 4- 6 feet high on the edge of each container, put trusses across and roof it off. Then we had a shed with 12-14' clearance that was 30 wide by 40 long with two 8x40 storage area on the side. If you tilted them about 2" low on one side, the water drained off pretty well. Might require a bit more in heavy rain conditions. If you dont need more than 8.5" clearance just skip the elevated wall and set the roof trusses directly on the container. You would need to bolt a header board on top of the container and silicone in the holes so you have something to attach the trusses to. Still much cheaper than building a metal building with weather proof storage. Also those things can be made pretty weld theft proof with addition of a lock enclosure so they cant get bolt cutters to the locks just dont loose your key.
 
 
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