Getting a container onto your block — the access questions that decide everything

The four measurements

Every delivery, everywhere in the country, comes down to four things. If you can answer these before you ring anybody, you will get a better quote and a delivery that happens on the first attempt.

1. Run-in length. A tilt-tray places a container by tipping its bed and sliding the unit off backwards while the truck creeps forward. For a 20ft that wants roughly 20 metres of straight, reasonably level space behind the placement spot — the length of the truck plus the length of the container plus room to move. For a 10ft, about half that.
2. Width at the pinch point. Not the average width — the narrowest point anywhere between the road and the spot. A tilt-tray wants about 4.3 metres of clear width to work. Gate posts, a letterbox, a retaining wall and a parked car all count.
3. Headroom. Everything above the route and above the placement spot. Power and phone lines, tree limbs, carports, awnings, verandah eaves, shade sails. A tilt-tray's bed goes up at a steep angle before the container comes off, so the clearance needed mid-delivery is much greater than the height of the container.
4. Ground bearing. Whether the surface will carry a loaded truck without rutting, and whether the placement spot will carry the container's own weight through four corner castings. These are different questions and people routinely answer the first and forget the second.

Why the last one catches everyone

An empty 20ft weighs a little over two tonne. All of that lands on four corner castings, each about the size of a house brick. That is a very high pressure over a very small area, which is why a lawn, a sand pad, fresh fill or a driveway laid over soft ground will take the truck without complaint and then let the container sink unevenly over the following months.

The symptom is always the same and it is always blamed on the container: the doors stop closing properly. A container that is out of square by fifteen or twenty millimetres across the door end will not let the locking bars seat. Nine times out of ten the box is perfect and one corner has dropped.

The fix costs almost nothing. Four solid pads at the corner positions — concrete blocks, stacked pavers, short hardwood sleeper offcuts — roughly levelled before the truck arrives. Twenty minutes of work that determines whether the container still works properly in five years.

When it is a crane truck instead

A crane truck — a HIAB — carries the container on its tray and lifts it off with a hydraulic knuckle boom. It does not need a run-in. It needs somewhere to stand beside the site, room to put its stabiliser legs down on ground that will hold them, and clear air between the truck and the placement spot.

That makes it the answer for a very large number of sites: narrow streets with cars parked both sides, backyards behind a house with no vehicle access, steep driveways, courtyards, tight industrial sites and anywhere the container has to go over a fence rather than through a gate. It costs more per job than a tilt-tray and it puts containers where nothing else can. When we quote one, it is because the site needs it.

The limit on a crane truck is reach and weight together. The further out the boom has to work, the less it can lift. A 20ft empty is about 2.2 tonne and that is comfortably within range at moderate reach; a 40ft at 3.8 tonne over a long reach is a much bigger machine and a much bigger day.

The 40ft side loader, and the side that surprises people

A 40ft is normally placed by a side loader — a trailer with two hydraulic cranes that lifts the container off its own deck and sets it down beside the vehicle. It is an efficient, fast way to place a big container and it has one constraint that is worth knowing before you plan your site: on almost every side loader working in Australia, the container is lifted and placed off the right-hand side of the trailer — the driver's side.

That means the truck has to be able to approach so that the spot you want ends up on its right. On a straight driveway with the container going beside it, that is usually fine. On a site where the only clear ground is on the left of the approach, it is not — the vehicle has to be able to turn around, and a rig carrying a 40ft container needs a lot of room to do that.

You also need roughly 4 metres of clear working width on the placement side and around 30 metres of length, with ground firm enough for the stabiliser legs. It is the single most common reason a 40ft becomes two 20ft units — and two 20ft units are often the better answer anyway, because they can be placed independently and they arrive on a cheaper truck.

Empty and loaded are different deliveries

Everything above assumes an empty container. A loaded container — one being relocated with your gear in it — is a different job entirely. A 20ft loaded to a modest 8 tonne is four times the weight, which changes the truck, changes the ground requirement and often changes the vehicle from a tilt-tray to a side loader or a crane truck with a very different rating.

If you are moving a container that already has something in it, say so at the enquiry. It is not a variation on a delivery, it is a different quote.

The three photographs worth sending

You can settle almost all of this without anyone visiting your site, with three photographs taken on a phone:

• One from the street looking at the entry — gate, kerb, driveway.
• One standing at the entry looking down the approach towards the spot.
• One standing at the spot looking straight up.

That third one is the one nobody thinks of and it is the one that most often changes the answer. Send those three with your enquiry and you will get a quote with the right vehicle in it the first time.