Frequently Asked Questions

Containers arrive on a tilt-bed truck, which slides the container off the back. That means the truck needs a straight, level run at the drop point:

• 20ft container: about 70 feet of straight clearance from the drop point
• 40ft container: about 100 feet of straight clearance from the drop point

It also needs roughly 10 to 12 ft of width and clear air above. Low utility lines, tree limbs and roof overhangs stop a delivery more often than anything on the ground does. If you are unsure, describe the approach when you ask for a quote and we will tell you before anything is scheduled.

Watch a delivery: container delivery video.

Price moves with three things: the size, the grade, and how far your address sits from the depot holding the unit. That last one is why we do not publish a single statewide number. The starting prices on this site name the grade and the city they were captured in, so you can see the floor rather than a marketing figure. For your address, the quote form or a phone call gets you a real number, delivery included.

Warranty runs by grade: one-trip units carry a 10 year structural and no-leak warranty, cargo worthy and wind and water tight units carry 5 years, and economy units carry a 1 year no-roof-leak warranty. The warranty travels with the grade you buy, so if warranty length matters to you it is worth comparing grades before you compare prices.

Yes. We sell containers outright, and we work with financing partners who offer rent-to-own, which spreads the payments and leaves you owning the container at the end. We do not do short-term rentals. If you want the full comparison, our rent vs buy guide walks through when each path makes sense.

Washington pricing starts at $2,889 for a 20ft Wind and Water Tight container delivered in Seattle, captured from Container One on 6 August 2026. Tacoma matches Seattle exactly on every size and grade, and the same 20ft Wind and Water Tight unit is $3,790 delivered in Spokane. That gap is the haul and nothing else: the same box collected at the depot prices within a dollar of the same for both cities. Price moves with size, grade, what is in stock and how far the truck runs, so the number that matters is the one quoted to your ZIP code. Delivery is included in every figure above.

Washington splits this into two questions handled by two different desks, and the people who run into trouble usually answered one and skipped the other. The building code is adopted statewide by the State Building Code Council and enforced locally. Zoning, which decides whether a container is an allowed thing on your particular lot, is entirely local, and our three cities answer it three different ways. Seattle regulates the street: a container in the public right of way needs a Street Use permit from SDOT, while a container on private property is judged under the ordinary accessory structure rules that SDCI will interpret for your address. Tacoma is the most explicit, and its adopted code names containers directly, treating them as a temporary use with a clock or as something allowed on a site holding a valid conditional use permit. Spokane is the one where the answer has to come from the counter, and the neighbouring City of Spokane Valley prohibits containers as an accessory structure in residential zones outright. Find out which jurisdiction actually has your address, then make one call with the parcel address.

Level and firm, with water running away from it rather than under it. A container carries its entire weight through four corner castings, so it needs solid bearing at those four points rather than along a wall. Across the Puget lowland the ground is glacial: till, the dense material builders here call hardpan, is strong but nearly impermeable, so water perches on it and travels sideways, while outwash drains freely and bears well. Down in the river valleys, the deltas and the tideflats the ground is soft fill and peat, and it can be firm on top and soft underneath after a wet week. East of the crest you are on loess, flood deposits and basalt, which bears well and levels badly, so plan on shims or blocks rather than assuming the pad is flat. Blocks, timbers or a compacted gravel pad under the corners does the same job on all of it.

Typically 1 to 2 weeks for greater Seattle, the Eastside, the South Sound, the North Sound and southwest Washington, and 2 to 3 weeks for the Olympic Peninsula, the coast, island addresses and everything over the Cascade crest, including Yakima, Wenatchee, the Columbia Basin and Spokane. One depot in the Seattle area serves the whole state, which is why the eastern window is genuinely longer rather than padded: Spokane is 279 road miles away over Snoqualmie Pass. Island and peninsula addresses can involve a Washington State Ferries sailing, which is a planning step rather than an obstacle, and between November and April a chain requirement or a brief pass closure can move a date by a day or two. We give you a window when you book rather than a date we cannot hold, and we would rather tell you about the pass in advance than on the morning.

There are four grades and the warranty runs by grade. One-trip containers have made a single loaded voyage, look close to new, and carry a 10 year structural and no-leak warranty. Cargo worthy units are certified fit for ocean shipping and carry 5 years. Wind and water tight units are dry and serviceable and carry 5 years, and they are the workhorse grade for storage. Economy is the budget grade and carries a 1 year no-roof-leak warranty. Refrigerated units are sold inspected and tested, with any service history we hold, and carry no separate refrigeration warranty. In a climate with a long wet season, ask specifically about the roof and the door gaskets, because that is where a container earns or loses its keep here.

Containers are built from Corten steel, which forms a stable surface layer that slows corrosion, and they spend their working lives crossing oceans in salt spray. What actually causes trouble here is condensation on the inside, not rust on the outside. On a clear night the roof radiates heat to the sky and can drop several degrees below the outside air temperature, and when that steel falls below the dew point of the air touching it, water condenses on the inside of your ceiling. Cross ventilation high and low at opposite ends, setting the box up off the ground, and keeping it level so the roof sheds water handle most of it. On saltwater frontage, add a look at the roof and the door gaskets on arrival and touch up the paint anywhere the finish is thin.

Yes, and across much of Washington that is easier than a Seattle alley. Wheat ground on the Palouse, section roads in the Columbia Basin and open acreage in Stevens, Pend Oreille and Lincoln counties usually have room to work. What decides it is the last quarter mile and the drop spot, because a tilt bed truck needs a firm, reasonably level path and a long straight run to slide the box off. The usual reasons a placement has to move are soft sand on a Basin section road, a loess grade that is a great deal steeper than it photographs, a spring thaw weight limit posted by the county road department, and orchard geometry: row spacing, low trellis wire, overhead frost fans and irrigation laterals all sit exactly where a truck wants to swing. Tell us which end of the block the container is going on and send photos of the approach, and we will tell you honestly whether it will work.

Yes, rent-to-own is available in Washington, and it is worth understanding how it differs from renting. With rent-to-own the monthly payment builds toward ownership, so at the end of the term the container is yours. With a straight rental the payments end and so does your claim on the box. Which one costs less depends entirely on how many months you actually need it, so ask for the delivered purchase price, the monthly rental and the rent-to-own terms on the same call, and the arithmetic makes the decision for you.

A container is exceptionally strong in compression at the corner posts, which is why they stack nine high on a ship, and it is comparatively light for its surface area, which means uplift and overturning are the conditions worth planning for rather than crushing. For ordinary storage, setting it level on firm bearing and keeping the doors closed handles normal Washington weather. Snow is the load most often underestimated here, because a container roof is a thin steel panel designed to carry another container's corner castings rather than a uniformly distributed snow load, and Spokane County publishes a ground snow load of 39 pounds per square foot against Seattle's 20. If you are anchoring the container, or building with it, that is engineering work rather than a rule of thumb: Seattle sits in Seismic Design Category D2 and Spokane County in Category C with portions in B. Ask your building department for their filled in design criteria and have the connection between container and foundation designed by a Washington licensed engineer.

Two questions decide it, and neither is about how much you own. The first is what the truck can do at your site: a 40ft needs a longer straight run to set down than a 20ft, so a Seattle lot with an alley approach or a hillside driveway often takes two 20ft boxes where one 40ft will never place. The second is the shape of your load: a 40ft is one long room, while two 20ft units give you two doors, two locations, and the option to move one of them later without moving both. There is a third question specific to Washington. A 20ft container is about 160 square feet of footprint and a 40ft is about 320, and several jurisdictions here draw a building permit exemption line at 200 square feet, so the two sizes can land on opposite sides of it. Ask the office that would issue your permit, and tell us where the box has to land so we can tell you which one your ground can actually take.

• One-trip: made one loaded ocean crossing. Clean floors, intact paint, close to new.
• Cargo worthy: certified fit to carry cargo at sea. Structurally sound, cosmetically used.
• Wind and water tight (WWT): inspected to confirm the doors seal, there are no holes, and the interior stays dry. Surface rust, paint wear and minor dents are normal.
• Economy: the lowest grade we sell. Weathered, and priced accordingly.

For a grade-by-grade walkthrough with photographs, see the container condition guide.

It depends on what the container is for. If it is going to be seen, lived in, or converted, the clean interior and intact paint save real work later and the 10 year structural and no-leak warranty is the longest we carry. If it is going behind a shed to hold equipment, a wind and water tight unit does the same job for less.

We offer 20ft standard, 40ft standard and 40ft high cube containers, plus modified containers and refrigerated units in 20ft and 40ft.

Personnel doors, roll-up doors, windows, vents, skylights, electrical wiring and a panel, LED lighting, insulation, spray foam, HVAC, shelving, workbenches and exterior paint. Which of those matter depends on the climate the box will sit in: Washington is heating led on both sides of the Cascade crest, and it does something no other state on this network does: it holds the whole state to one row. The Washington State Energy Code assigns counties west of the crest to Marine 4C and counties east of it to 5B, and its prescriptive residential table then carries a single row labeled Climate Zone 5 and Marine 4, so Seattle and Spokane are held to the same insulation numbers. What changes across the crest is not the R-value, it is the moisture story. West of the crest the failure mode is slow, quiet, persistent wetting through a season with almost no drying potential. East of the crest the air is drier but the temperature difference across the steel in January is far larger, and the vapor drive pushes interior moisture hard toward a very cold surface. R-value matters, but on a steel box the decisive question on both sides is where moist air is allowed to meet cold steel, and how fast the assembly can dry afterward..

A reefer has a refrigeration unit built into one end. It runs on a 460V 3-phase supply, or a compatible generator where 3-phase power is not available, and holds anywhere from -25 degrees F to +70 degrees F. The walls are insulated as part of the original build, not retrofitted.

Start with the ground you actually have. In Washington, Glacial ground across the Puget lowland, laid down by repeated glacial advances, the most recent around 15,000 years ago. The two materials at or near the surface behave very differently under a load. Till, the dense material builders here call hardpan, is strong but close to impermeable, so water perches on top of it and travels sideways. Outwash drains freely and generally bears well. Down in the Duwamish, the Kent Valley and the Puyallup and Nisqually deltas the ground turns to soft fill, delta silt and peat instead. That matters more for a container than for a house, because a container puts essentially its entire weight through four corner castings rather than spreading it along a continuous footing. Four point loads on ground that softens through a Puget Sound winter is how a box ends up out of level, with doors that no longer close and a roof that ponds water.

For temporary placement: Set the container on solid bearing at the four corner castings rather than straight onto turf. Pressure treated timbers, concrete blocks or a compacted gravel pad under each corner keeps the box level, keeps the doors square and keeps the wood floor out of standing water. Grade so surface water runs away from the corners rather than under them, and in the wet months lay plywood or timbers along the wheel path, because a loaded truck finds the soft spot in a lawn or a bark bed every time.

For permanent placement or a conversion: Piers or footings under each corner casting, sized for those point loads and bearing on material a geotechnical engineer has identified, with drainage that carries water away from them. Section 3115.5 as printed in the 2021 Seattle Building Code requires ventilation of the space between the bottom of the floor joists and the earth, which is the plainest statement in the code that setting a container flat on soil is not a foundation. Anchorage and the connection between container and foundation is engineering work for a Washington licensed engineer, and on Puget lowland till, on valley fill and on eastern Washington loess a soil test is cheap next to remediating a settled corner.

Frost depth: There is no single Washington figure to look up, because IRC Table R301.2 is filled in locally. Seattle publishes 12 inches and Spokane County publishes 24. Elevation moves it again. Ask your building department for their number rather than designing to a neighboring county's. Anything meant to be permanent needs its bearing points below that line, or the whole assembly moves with the first hard freeze.

West of the crest, crawl space and slab on grade are both ordinary, and drainage governs rather than frost. Water is the whole question here: where it goes, how fast the ground sheds it, and whether the material under the corners stays firm through six months of rain. Critical area designations for steep slope, landslide, liquefaction, wetland, shoreline or floodplain change the permit path and the foundation before anything else does, which is why that question belongs in your first phone call rather than your third.

At a minimum, make the placement area level and firm, and clear debris, rocks and brush out of the way. Confirm the straight run above, and look up for lines and limbs. Soft ground is the single most common cause of a delayed delivery: a loaded flatbed will sink, so a driver will wait for the ground to dry rather than tear up your property. Send photos of the site with your quote request and we will tell you if anything needs doing first.

The box itself is 14-gauge Corten steel and is very hard to cut. The lock is the weak point, so use a hidden shackle lock, sometimes called a puck lock, inside a lockbox welded over the handle. Many of our units already have a lockbox fitted.

The recurring signs are a price far under the market, a seller who will not let the container be seen or photographed, payment demanded by wire transfer or crypto, no physical business address, and pressure to decide today. A real dealer will give you a phone number, answer questions before payment, and put the quote in writing.