Types of Shipping Containers

We built the ShippingContainer.World Marketplace so that you can buy a shipping container at the lowest possible price along with easy delivery. You will find no high pressure salesmen here and you won’t have to wait for silly high-markup quotes either! At ShippingContainer.World you can actually see direct pricing and our shopping cart will instantly calculate your delivery price. We actually built this shopping experience with our customers in mind, including 7 great payment choices. And your purchase is fully insured by our iron clad satisfaction guarantee. So now it’s time to stop haggling with local vendors and high-markup national sellers. Welcome to the game changing ShippingContainer.World Marketplace, where you’re going to love buying a container!

To start, please keep reading our buyer’s guide below, then later take a look at our shipping containers for sale or our rent to own shipping containers.

Shipping containers are made from corrugated weathering steel to be strong and weather resistant. They are easily transported, by ship, rail, road or helicopter. They can withstand everything mother nature can throw at them, including earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes. Standing alone, they can withstand winds of 110mph or more. With anchoring, they can easily withstand winds of 175mph or more.

Shipping containers are available in many different sizes and types. The most common type is a dry freight container that has a set of cargo doors on one end. These dry storage containers, or “dry vans” represent the majority, with millions in circulation around the globe. The most common of these are the 20′ and 40′ containers. Rounding out the rest are insulated, refrigerated, tanktainers (for liquids) and modified containers.

Once you’ve decided on why you need a storage container, you’ll need to give some thought to what size container will be right for your needs. In thinking about size, there are two considerations; the internal volume (in square feet or meters), and the internal max payload weight (in pounds or kilograms). It’s also important that just because the container can fit a certain size payload, it doesn’t mean that that the container can support the weight. So, we’ve taken the time to give some examples — using common shipping container “uses” — to give you a better idea of what size container is right for your needs using the 4 most common sizes for our examples.. And as a general rule, it’s better to purchase a container that might be too big rather than too small. Also keep in mind that these are not weights for shipping, but rather static use. And just to give you an idea of how big a container is, the contents of a typical 3-bedroom house can fit into a 20′ container. Easily!

Like cars, guns, boats, electronics and other important items, shipping containers have a serial number. The ISO 6346 Code (also known as the BIC-Code) is basically a unique serial number for every shipping container. It consists of four characters long ending in either U, J or Z, followed by six numbers and a check digit. It is the standard that’s used when a container is used for containerized intermodal freight transport and guarantees that the container is unique. It identifies the owner or principal operator of the container and once entered into the BIC international database permits the tracking of dimensions, type, year of putting into operation, date of control, maintenance records, etc.

The modern, standardized steel container known today as a Shipping Container is actually a recent invention, in historical terms. The military was experimenting with prototypes during World War 2. But it wasn’t until the mid 50’s that the Shipping Container as we know it began to make it’s stamp on the world’s economy. And what a stamp indeed! Malcolm McLean, An ambitious truck-company owner with little experience when it came to shipping, was looking for a way to move goods up and down the East Coast’s traffic-choked highways faster and more cheaply. He had the idea to ship his trucks directly up the Eastern Seaboard on ships, rather than driving them up. He went through different permutations before finally settling on a container design custom-built for his company, Pan-Atlantic. It proved to be an extremely efficient way to transport goods.

Our goal has always been to build a transparent marketplace that streamlines and improves the entire shipping container industry. Before ShippingContainer.World arrived, the container industry was antiquated, inefficient and down-right cumbersome for consumers! To do price comparison shopping, buyers had to manually request quotes from as many sellers as they could find. Quotes were painstakingly sent via email, fax and/or phone calls. Buyers ended up spending hours, even days just to figure what the “market price” was for containers. In addition to all the wasted time, buyers had to deal with sellers they had never done business with, potentially exposing themselves to fraud. In short, the industry had big problems along with no safety net, no way to guarantee a successful transaction. So on that note we started creating something great, a totally new and completely different buying experience. We now present to you, the ShippingContainer.World Marketplace, where buying a container is faster, easier, more secure and less expensive than ever before. Thanks for making ShippingContainer.World, the #1 marketplace for buying shipping containers worldwide. We sincerely hope that you love your experience here!