10ft Shipping Containers
Side access is pinched, the setback leaves nothing to manoeuvre in, or all that is needed is a lockable spot for the mower, an air compressor and a wall of hand tools.
Adelaide, SA
Shipping containers Adelaide
Adelaide sits on some of the most reactive ground in the country, and that is the one thing worth getting right here. The clay across the plains and the older inner suburbs takes up water through a wet winter and gives it back over a dry summer, and it shifts a long way doing it. A container dropped straight onto that follows it down, one corner at a time, and a racked box is a box whose doors fight you every morning. Everything else — Hills roads, Stobie poles, narrow bluestone frontages — is solvable with a phone call. The ground needs planning.
- Delivered from
- container depots around Outer Harbor and the Wingfield–Gillman industrial area, topped up from the eastern seaboard when a grade or a size runs short
- Typical lead time
- Usually 3–6 business days from order to on the ground
- Usual truck
- Tilt-tray for 10ft and 20ft; crane truck for 40ft, for Hills blocks and for any inner-suburban lift over a fence
Every enquiry answered within one business day.You hear back from a person, not an autoresponder. Enquiries that land on a weekend are answered the next business day.
The version we would give you on the phone.
The work they do around here
Around Adelaide we deliver containers for trade and plant storage across the Wingfield, Regency Park, Edinburgh Parks and Lonsdale industrial estates, vintage gear and barrel storage for growers through McLaren Vale, the Barossa and the Hills, packing shed overflow for the orchards at Lenswood and Forest Range and the market gardens on the Virginia sand plains, site stores on the Mount Barker, Seaford and Angle Vale estate builds, household storage while a bluestone villa at Prospect or Norwood is gutted and reroofed, and secure gear storage on the rural blocks out through Kersbrook and Williamstown.
How the drop usually goes
Adelaide splits into three delivery problems and they barely overlap. The plains — Wingfield, Gillman, Regency Park, Edinburgh, Direk, Lonsdale — are about as straightforward as anywhere in the country. Hardstand, wide entries, room to swing a rigid truck, often a forklift already on site. Gillman and parts of the Dry Creek fringe are reclaimed ground with a firm crust over something softer, which is worth flagging if you are on a newer lot down there, but otherwise those jobs get booked and done. The inner suburbs are the second problem. Norwood, Prospect, Unley, Thebarton and the streets threaded between them were set out long before anybody imagined a twelve-metre rigid. Frontages are narrow, the cottages sit hard against one boundary with a side gate barely a metre wide, cars park both kerbs, and there is a Stobie pole standing in the verge exactly where a crane truck wants to plant an outrigger. The rear laneways look like the answer and usually are not — most are one vehicle wide, have no turning space and run a line of bins down the middle. A good number of those blocks are over-fence lifts rather than tilt-tray drops, and that is far better established at the quote than at the kerb. The third is the Hills, which needs its own conversation. Underneath all of it sits the clay. From the inner east out through the northern plains the soil is strongly reactive and it does not move evenly — more at the edges of a block than the middle, more under a big gum than away from one. Sand matters too. The LeFevre Peninsula, Semaphore and the western beach suburbs are sand over a shallow water table, which carries a loaded truck poorly and lets a corner casting bed itself in within a season. Tell us the ground, the frontage and where the poles sit, and the right truck turns up first time.
Grade moves the price more than size does, and it is what decides whether a unit is sold watertight — the full rundown is on the grades page.
The range
Containers we deliver to Adelaide
Priced with delivery to your address - one call, one number.
20ft Shipping Containers
There is about seven metres of straight, reasonably level ground for it to sit on, and you would rather not discover in half a year that the bigger box was the answer.
40ft Shipping Containers
You have the space, the approach is genuinely open, and the aim is the largest amount of storage per dollar spent that anybody sells.
Adelaide
Ground that moves with the season
Adelaide builders classify sites for reactivity for a reason, and the same physics applies to a six-metre steel box sitting on the back lawn. Reactive clay swells as it takes up winter rain and shrinks back through a long dry summer, and the movement is not uniform. The middle of a block behaves differently to the edge. Ground near a mature eucalypt dries harder and drops further than ground ten metres away from it. Put a container straight onto soil and it will track all of that, corner by corner, and it does not come back up. The frame carries its entire load through four corner castings; the moment those four points stop sitting at the same height the box starts working against itself, the door end distorts first, and what was a good store becomes a two-person job to open.
The fix costs very little and has to happen on day one. Concrete pads or hardwood sleepers under each corner casting, bedded onto ground that has been cleared of topsoil, checked level along both sides and both diagonals. Keep the underside open so air moves and water gets away rather than ponding against the bottom rail. Where a block has any fall, put the door end on the high side so the doors swing with gravity instead of against it. Keep root zones in mind — siting a long-term container inside the drip line of a big gum is asking the clay to do its worst directly underneath you. Mention the soil at the quote and we will bring the timber on the truck and level it as part of the delivery.
On the ground
Up the face of the Hills
Anything above the freeway is a different job. The climbs to Stirling, Aldgate, Crafers, Bridgewater and out through Lobethal and Woodside are narrow, heavily cambered and lined with mature exotics and stringybark that hang low over the carriageway. Norton Summit Road, Greenhill Road and the older tracks off Gorge Road have hairpins a long rigid truck cannot straighten out, and there are stretches with a cutting on one side and very little on the other. A 20ft on a tilt-tray manages those climbs comfortably and covers most of what people up there actually need. A 40ft is a genuine question rather than a formality, and on some approaches the honest answer is two 20ft placed end to end, which usually gives more usable space anyway.
The driveways are the second half of it. Hills blocks tend to be steep, long and unsealed, often decomposed granite or rubble with a crown and table drains, and they hold up well in the dry and go slick within an hour of a front coming through. Turning space at the top has to be real, because reversing several hundred metres downhill on a one-lane drive with a drop on one side is not a plan. Fire season adds its own layer: through summer the access tracks and the cleared areas matter to you for reasons that have nothing to do with us, and a container parked across a turnaround or an escape route is worth thinking about before it lands rather than after.
Worth knowing
Where an Adelaide container comes from, and whether to buy it
Boxes destined for Adelaide addresses come out of the depots clustered around Outer Harbor and the Wingfield–Gillman industrial area. Adelaide is a smaller container market than the eastern capitals, which has one practical consequence worth knowing: the common sizes and grades are usually sitting there, and something unusual — a particular door configuration, a specific high cube, a run of matched units — may need to come across from the east before it can go on a truck to you. That is not a problem, it is a scheduling question, and it is the difference between a realistic date and an optimistic one. Ask early if the requirement is specific and we will tell you straight whether it is a this-week job or a next-week job.
On buying against hiring, the deciding factor is almost always whether the need has an end date attached. A renovation with a program, a harvest, a lease with two years left, a site store for a build — hire keeps the capital free and takes the problem of disposal off your hands. A permanent store on a yard you own, a workshop on a Hills block, a lock-up that will still be there in a decade — buy it, because a well-kept 20ft holds value and there is a real second-hand market here. Grade is the other half of the decision. Cargo-worthy units are graded wind and watertight, which is what you want for anything living outdoors with contents you would be upset to lose. The grades page sets out the differences properly; tell us what is going inside and we will point you at the right one rather than the dearest one.
What delivery to Adelaide costs
There is no flat delivery rate here worth publishing. What the truck has to do at your end changes it too much, so we quote it per job.
Start with the address and what the container has to do. Everything else follows from those two answers.
We deliver around here too
We also deliver to Gawler, Mount Barker, Port Adelaide, Murray Bridge, Victor Harbor and the surrounding district. If your town is not on the list, ring — it almost certainly still works.
Common questions
Buying a container in Adelaide
Will a container move on Adelaide's reactive clay?
It will if it is placed straight onto soil. The clay across the plains and the inner suburbs swells through winter and shrinks back over summer, and it does it unevenly across a block, so a container follows the movement one corner at a time and racks out of square. Concrete pads or hardwood sleepers under the four corner castings, bedded on cleared ground and levelled both ways and on both diagonals, prevent it permanently. Keep it out from under the drip line of big gums, which dry the ground hardest. Tell us the soil at the quote and we will level it on delivery.
Can you deliver a container to Stirling, Aldgate or Lobethal?
Yes, and we do it regularly, but the roads set the size rather than the block does. The climbs off the freeway and the older routes over Norton Summit and Gorge Road are narrow, tightly cambered and low on canopy clearance, with hairpins a long rigid cannot straighten out. A 20ft on a tilt-tray is the reliable option up top. Where the length genuinely matters, two 20ft end to end beats fighting a 40ft up the hill. Send the address, a photo from the road looking at your gate and one down the driveway, and we will give you a firm answer before anything is booked.
How long does delivery take in Adelaide?
Three to six business days is the normal window from order to on the ground for a standard unit going to an address with workable access. What stretches it is a crane booking, a grade or size that has to come across from the eastern states first, or wet weather on a Hills driveway where waiting two days beats cutting ruts through your property. If you have a fixed date — a settlement, a site start, a vintage, a removalist already booked — say so at the enquiry and the run gets built around it.
Can I see the container before it is delivered to my Adelaide address?
Our walk-in yard is at 51–55 Bromley Street, Cornubia in Queensland, which is not a practical trip from South Australia. So for Adelaide deliveries we do it with photographs: ask and we will send images of the actual unit on request before delivery — the corners, the door end, the roof and the internal floor — rather than a stock photo of something similar. If anything in those photos is not what you expected, we sort it out before a truck is booked, not after it has landed on your block.
Get a price
Ask about stock for your area
We deliver to Adelaide and the surrounding district. Tell us what is going in it and what the access is like, and you will get a price with the cartage worked out. Every enquiry answered within one business day.
Or skip the form and ring us — 1300 467 776, Mon-Fri 7:30am-5pm, Sat 8am-12pm