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.
Broome, WA
Shipping containers Broome
Ask about Broome in July and ask about Broome in January and you will get two different answers. Through the dry, a container run up from the south is long but predictable. Through the wet, the Great Northern Highway goes under at Willare and at the Fitzroy crossing, sometimes for days at a stretch, and a truck that left on Monday can still be waiting on Friday for the water to drop. We would rather say that at the enquiry than promise a date we have no business promising and then explain it away later.
- Delivered from
- our Fremantle depot up the coast, or our Darwin depot west along the Victoria and Great Northern Highways, whichever has a truck running
- Typical lead time
- Usually 3-5 weeks from order to on the ground in the dry, and the wet season can push it out further
- Usual truck
- Side loader or crane truck for 40ft and for the industrial addresses; tilt-tray for 10ft and 20ft into town blocks with a firm approach
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 practical read on this town.
The jobs they end up doing here
Around Broome we deliver containers for gear and equipment storage for the pearling operations working Roebuck Bay and up the coast toward Cygnet Bay, dry lock-up for tour operators putting boats, trailers, swags and camping kit away over the wet, staging and store rooms for freight heading out by barge from the port at Entrance Point, station stores out along the Great Northern Highway toward Derby and Fitzroy Crossing, site stores on the builds going in around Roebuck Estate and Djugun, secure storage for art centres and community organisations, and household storage for people who leave town for the season.
What the site has to allow for
Broome divides neatly into ground that is easy and ground that is not, and the wet season moves the line between them. The light industrial area off Broome Road, around Clementson and Blackman Streets, is the straightforward end: hardstand, room to work, gear on site, and no drama with a 40ft. New Broome and the Roebuck Estate side have modern streets a rigid can use. Old Broome and Chinatown are the tight end, with narrow lots, boabs and mango trees over the road, verandahs close to the boundary and services strung across frontages, so a crane lift over the fence is frequently the answer rather than a tilt-tray up the side. Cable Beach and the streets behind the dunes are sand, and sand carries almost nothing, so a loaded truck will sit down on a nature strip that looked perfectly firm. Everywhere else it is pindan, that fine red Kimberley soil that compacts hard in the dry and behaves completely differently once the rain starts. In October a pindan track is as good as a road. In February the same track is greasy on top and soft underneath, and the wheel ruts stay in it for a year. Tides matter too, in a way they do not in most towns. Roebuck Bay runs one of the biggest tidal ranges in the country, and anything moving through the port at Entrance Point, particularly barge freight heading to the Dampier Peninsula and the coastal communities, works to a tide window rather than a clock. If your container is going onward by barge, that window drives the date more than the truck does. Send photos of the street, the approach and the exact spot, tell us whether the last leg is sealed or pindan, and we will tell you honestly what can be done and when.
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 Broome
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.
Broome
The wet season is the schedule
From roughly November to April, the Kimberley decides when things arrive. It is not usually the rain falling on Broome that stops a delivery, it is water a long way inland filling the rivers. The Fitzroy crossing and the Willare floodway are the pinch points on the Great Northern Highway, and when they go under the road is closed until it is safe and the road authority reopens it. Trucks stop where they are. Nothing about that is negotiable and no amount of ringing anybody changes it. Cyclones add a second layer, because when one is genuinely coming, everything stops moving and stays stopped until it has passed and the roads have been checked.
So the plan for the Kimberley is always the same: order in the dry. If you need a container on site in February, buy it in September and let it stand in Broome waiting for you. If you need three over the course of a year, order them together and let them travel on one run. If your job is genuinely wet season work, we will still take it on, but the date will be a range and we will keep you posted about where the truck actually is rather than reciting an estimate we stopped believing a week ago. Ring 1300 467 776 with the job and the timing and we will be straight about what is achievable.
On the ground
Pindan, termites and what a steel box is good at
There is a reason so much Kimberley storage ends up in containers rather than sheds. A steel box on a decent pad is not interesting to termites, which in this part of the country is a genuine advantage rather than a marketing line, and it does not care much about the build-up humidity that turns a timber structure mouldy. It stands up to the wind better than a light frame shed and it can be picked up and moved to another site when the job changes, which happens a lot up here.
Setting it up on pindan is worth doing properly. Four concrete pads or hardwood sleepers under the corner castings, on ground that has been levelled and compacted, and the floor sitting a hundred millimetres or more clear so air moves underneath and the underside dries out after the wet. Do not sit it flat on the dirt. Ventilation is the other one: through the build-up, humid air gets in and condenses on the underside of a cool roof overnight, and what you notice weeks later is mould on whatever was stored against the ceiling. Vents, whirlybirds and keeping gear up on pallets off the floor deal with almost all of it. And to be plain, a container keeps rain off from above and does nothing against floodwater. Water reaching the door sill gets past the seals, and an empty box will float. Site it on the high part of the block.
Worth knowing
Going beyond Broome
Plenty of the containers we send to the Kimberley do not stop at Broome. They keep going to Derby, out along the highway to Fitzroy Crossing, down to Bidyadanga, up the Cape Leveque road, or onto a barge at Entrance Point bound for a coastal community. Every one of those legs has its own constraints and we would rather map them out at the quote stage than discover them on the day. For a road leg the questions are the surface, the floodways, the width of any gate and whether there is anything on site to help offload. For a barge leg it is the sailing schedule and the tide, and those two decide the date.
Community and station deliveries usually need access arranged in advance, and that is normally organised through the community or the land council rather than by us. It is not a hurdle, it is just something that takes a bit of lead time and cannot be done on the morning of the delivery. The other thing worth planning is what happens when the truck arrives. A remote site with no loader means we need to bring the capability with us, which changes the truck and the timing. Tell us at the start what is available at the far end and everything downstream of that gets easier.
What delivery to Broome costs
We do not publish a delivery rate for this area, because a straightforward industrial drop and a tight residential one on the same street are not the same job. Ring and you will get an exact number.
Give us the address and a rough idea of the entry and we will do the working out at our end.
Other places on this run
We also deliver to Derby, Cable Beach, Fitzroy Crossing, Bidyadanga, Willare and the surrounding district. If your town is not on the list, ring — it almost certainly still works.
Common questions
Buying a container in Broome
How long does a container take to get to Broome?
Three to five weeks from order to on the ground is a realistic window in the dry, and the wet can push it out further. Distance is only part of the story. The date is set by when a truck runs the Kimberley with room on the deck, whether that is up the coast or across from the Territory. From November to April, road closures at Willare and the Fitzroy crossing are the real variable and they are outside anybody's control. If you know you will need a container next wet season, buy it during the dry and let it wait for you here.
Can you deliver during the wet season?
Trucks run all year, but we will not give you a hard date between November and April that we cannot stand behind. What stops a load is water inland filling the rivers and closing the highway at the Fitzroy crossing or Willare, and a cyclone warning, which stops everything until it has passed and the roads have been checked. What we will do is give you a realistic range, tell you where your container actually is, and let you know as things change. Ordering in the dry for wet season use is always the better plan.
Can you get a container out to a station or a community past Broome?
Yes, to Derby, Fitzroy Crossing, Bidyadanga, up the Cape Leveque road, and by barge from the port to the coastal communities. Each leg has its own constraints. For a road leg we need to know the surface, the floodways, the gate width and what is on site to help offload. For a barge leg the sailing schedule and the tide set the date rather than the truck. Access to community land generally has to be arranged in advance through the community or land council, which is straightforward but takes lead time, so raise it early.
Will things go mouldy in a container through the Broome build-up?
They can, if the container is sealed up tight and the gear is sitting on the floor. Humid air gets in, the roof cools overnight, and moisture condenses on the underside of it and drips. The fix is airflow and elevation: vents or whirlybirds so the air changes over, the container up on pads so the underside dries rather than sitting on damp pindan, and everything stored on pallets rather than directly on the floor. Do that and a container is one of the better places to keep gear in the Kimberley, which is why so many people up here use them instead of a shed.
Get a price
Send us the address and the access
We deliver to Broome 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