Site Prep & Delivery: How to Receive a Shipping Container Without Wrecking Your Property

The Logistics of Heavy Delivery

Buying a container is the easy part. Getting a 9,000 pound steel box safely onto your property requires careful planning. We deliver using heavy duty tilt bed trailers. These trucks require a massive turning radius and significant overhead clearance (at least 14 to 16 feet) to avoid catching power lines or tree branches when the bed tilts up.

If your site is too tight for a tilt bed truck to maneuver, the container cannot simply be dropped. In these tight access scenarios, you will need a commercial heavy duty forklift or crane on site to lift and place the unit. We regularly coordinate heavy equipment logistics to ensure precision placement on difficult commercial sites.

Note: Our delivery fleet strictly adheres to the Louisiana DOTD Commercial Vehicle weight and routing regulations to ensure legal and safe transport to your site.

Fighting the Louisiana Clay

In St. Tammany Parish and across the Interstate 12 corridor, our biggest enemy is the high water table and soft clay. A container dropped directly onto wet Louisiana soil will sink.

When a container settles unevenly, the steel frame twists slightly, a process known as "racking." Because the doors weigh hundreds of pounds and have incredibly tight tolerances, even a quarter inch of twist in the frame will make the locking bars permanently jam.

How to Build a Proper Pad

You do not necessarily need a poured concrete slab, but you do need elevation and drainage. We recommend the following methods:

• Railroad Ties: Placing treated railroad ties under the front and rear corner castings (the strongest points of the container).
• Crushed Concrete/Limestone: A leveled, 6 inch compacted pad of crushed limestone provides excellent drainage and prevents the container from sinking.
• Concrete Piers: Pouring sonotube concrete piers at the four corners for a permanent, perfectly level foundation.