Have you guys ever seen a 10’ long intermodal-type container? I just saw one on a flatbed trailer on the way back from lunch. It was a Mini Mobile storage container.
(Found some pictures here: http://www.swmobilestorage.com/residential.html)
Does anyone know if those containers are refirburshed from “retired” intermodal use or if they’re newly constructed to 10 foot standards?
When I saw it I did a double-take because I had never seen one so short before.
Erik
Are you sure it was “mobile storage” and not one of those new ~U-pak/we drive~ moving services? (which are a neat idea, btw)
The reason why I ask is that I have purchased a number of 20 and 40 footers, back when I was in the warehousing game, providing slack storage for tenants with short term needs, and the guy I used to buy them from bought used ones from K line, Evergreen, etc And the one time I asked him for a new container, he told me that the engineering necessary for the mobile conntainers to be considered ~safe~ made new ones relatively cost prohibitive for users with stationary needs, while used ones given a clean up were very affordabe.
The one logical exception I can rationalize would be if one of the new moving services were having them built for their special use.
fwiw
From looking at the site, I believe they are taking standard 20 and 40 foot containers and customizing them.
We are seeing surplused 20 foot “sea can” containers being heavilly modified with roll-up doors and new end doors here in Denver. Dead giveaway are the IBC connecting sockets in the corners.
The only thing smaller than the 20 foot sea can units seen here with slab side covering are surviving old 10 and 14 foot containers for the USPS mail service that ran on the old Santa Fe “Super-C” for its brief life. US Mail kept using the containers after the demise of the Super -C and some showed up on the railroad as carbody tool houses, etc. There are containers that fit in stakebody frame racks for TOFC/COFC service, but all I remember seeing were tank vessels, cages and racks - no solid sided containers…White Pass & Yukon had smaller sea-cans, have no idea what became of them. Believe most of the 40Ft and larger sea-cans we see today are built overseas by the shipping companies in places like Singapore and Hong Kong.
What’s on the website looks like a standard 20 ft. sea-can with modifications. 20 footers do not have much of a market anymore with the containership carriers.
-mudchicken
My parents used one of those moving companies when they recently moved from CA to OH and the company just brought a regular truck trailer to their house. They packed their stuff in the back of the trailer, then the company put up a partition between their stuff and whatever else they ended up putting in there and dropped it off in Ohio a week or so later after the other stuff was unloaded. No funny little containers involved…
–Nora
OK,…when I recently moved from Torrance CA to Indiana, I shopped one of these services, after seeing them drop a container at a neighbors, with the provision of " call us when its full, or we will be back in 10 days to get it, your choice" which seemed like a good idea, marketing wise. After all moving companies have t write big contingencies for steps, access limitations, packing damage etc. By shifting those headaches to the consumer, which the consumer can usually handle better anyway, it puts you in a position to only pay for the transportation. Seems smart to me
Bergie,
Goodyear Dear Park, Texas, receives two or three modified flatcars of these containers each day. They arrive on a flatcar that has a removable or hinged roof that splits down the middle length ways.
These containers are stacked one on top of the other, then length of the car.
When unloaded, they are picked up by a large mobil crane that straddles the car, and plucks them up one at a time.
Goodyear gets special products in them, I dont know what, yet.
Have never seen them on any other type of car, or in any other service.
They do appear to be 20 footers.
Stay Frosty,
Ed
20 foot containers are still very much in use by the steamship companies.In Pittsburgh,about 30% of international containers handled are 20 footers.Also,the manufacturers data plate states build locations such as Shanghai,China and Korea.
are pretty common.