Buying used
Inspecting a used container, in person or by photograph
Two honest ways to do this properly: stand in front of the unit and work through it, or get the right photographs of the specific container. Below is the order to check things in, and what each fault means once the unit is standing on your ground.
- On the ground
- Ten to fifteen minutes
- Not local
- Photos of your unit on request
- Walk-in yard
- Cornubia, QLD
Work through it in this order
The order matters, because it puts the expensive faults first. A person who starts at the paint runs out of interest before they get to the floor, which is exactly the wrong way round.
Stand back at a corner before you touch anything
Get to a corner and sight along the top rail, then along the bottom rail, then across the roof. You are checking one thing: whether the container is sitting true. A bow in a rail, a roof that reads as a shallow dish, or a unit that rocks on flat hardstand all say the same thing about how it has been handled. Everything else here is a repair with a price on it. This one is a reason to look at the next container instead.
The door end, because that is the part you use daily
Swing both doors right back until they clip, then bring them in again. The locking bars should take a solid pull rather than flopping over, the cams should drop into the keepers without being lifted by hand, and the hinge pins should turn rather than grind. Bent gear and worn cams get straightened easily enough, but you will notice them every single time until somebody does.
Run a thumb along both gaskets
Corner to corner, all the way round, on both doors. You are feeling for rubber that has gone hard, sections crushed permanently flat, splits at the corners where the seal turns, and lengths that have pulled out of the channel. This is where water gets in at the end where the flooring is already most vulnerable, which is why it is worth doing slowly.
Get inside and pull the doors to
Give your eyes half a minute. Any daylight is a hole, and its position tells you what kind: along the roof line usually means a seam or a puncture, around the door frame means the frame has moved, and down a wall means something has been through the panel. Look up at the underside of the roof for a sag or a stain, which means water has been ponding above your head for a long while.
Walk the floor, heel down, both directions
Twenty-eight millimetres of marine ply on steel cross members, and the single dearest thing on a container to put right properly. Feel for give underfoot, especially in the first two metres inside the doors. Look for staining that runs across the boards rather than along them, screw heads standing proud, and sheets that have been let in as a repair. Soft ply is not a spot fault — it has been wet for a season and it spreads.
Look underneath and along the bottom rail
Crouch at one end and look through. You want to see cross members with their shape, not lace. Pitting and holes along the bottom rail mean the container has spent years sitting flat on wet dirt with nothing under the castings to lift it clear, which is worth knowing regardless of the grade on the invoice.
Finish at the plate, the number and the paint
Find the plate on the door, note the four letters and seven digits, and photograph both. Then look at the paint properly: fresh single-colour paint on a used unit is not a red flag by itself, but it does mean you cannot read the history off the panels, so ask what is under it.
Do not pay to avoid cosmetics. Faded shipping line livery, mismatched paint, three previous owners' stencils, scrapes and dents. None of it affects what the container does, all of it affects what people will pay, and the gap between those two is where a good buy lives.
If you cannot get there
The photographs to ask for, and what each one is for
Ask for these of the specific container being quoted, not a stock image of the grade. Any supplier can send them; it is worth noticing which ones will.
Both doors open, square on, from about ten metres
Shows the door end sitting true, both leaves hanging level and a clear view straight down the inside. If a container is racked, this is usually the frame in which you can see it.
From inside the closed end, looking back out the open doors
The most useful single photograph of a used container. It gives you the whole floor down its length, the wall seams either side and the roof line all at once, and a bright day will show up any daylight without anybody having to close the doors on the photographer.
The floor at the door end, taken close and from low down
Staining, patched sheets and lifted screws show up at that angle and disappear from head height. Ask for it after the container has been shut for a night if there has been rain about.
Both seals, close enough to see the rubber
Not the doors. The rubber. You are looking for the same three things you would feel for by hand: hardening, crushing and splits at the turns.
The roof, from above
From a ladder, a tray or the next unit in the row. Ponding marks, dents holding water and patch repairs all live up there and none of them are visible from the ground.
The plate, with the container number readable
This is the one that keeps everybody honest. With the number recorded, every other photograph is verifiably of the same container, and the unit that comes off the truck is the one that was agreed.
Ask for them as it stands. Photographs taken before a tidy-up are worth more than photographs taken after one. We send these on request, before delivery, and on as-is stock we photograph the faults rather than shooting around them.
Reading a fault
What it means and how much it should bother you
| What you find | What it usually is | How much it should bother you |
|---|---|---|
| Surface rust across the panels | Corten steel weathering the way it is designed to. It forms an oxide skin and then largely stops. | Barely at all. It is paint-deep and it is the cheapest thing on a container to live with. |
| Dents and scrapes in the side walls | A forklift, a stack or a wharf, some years ago. | Not much. Panel steel is corrugated for stiffness and a pushed-in section carries load the same as a flat one. |
| Daylight at a roof seam or a corner | A pinhole, a lifted weld or a puncture from something dropped on it. | Raise it. Patching is quick work, but nobody should be paying a sealed-unit price for a unit that is letting light through. |
| Ply gone spongy at the door end | Water tracking past a tired seal and sitting on the boards where nobody looks. | A great deal. Flooring is the dearest repair on a container and a soft patch spreads along the cross members. |
| Gasket flattened, split or hard as a hose | Age, sun and a container that has been left with the doors strapped shut. | Middling. Replaceable, but it is the only thing holding weather out at the end you open every day. |
| Bottom rail eaten through underneath | Years standing flat on dirt with nothing under the corners to lift it clear. | A great deal. That is structure, and it also tells you how the unit was looked after. |
| Doors that will not shut on level ground | A frame that has been racked out of square, usually by lifting or standing badly. | Enough to take a different unit. Everything else on this list can be repaired; a twisted frame follows the container around forever. |
| A repair plate welded over a hole | An honest repair, done at a depot, and disclosed. | Very little if it is welded right and painted over the top rather than painted to disguise it. Ask when and where it was done. |
Grade sets what you should expect to find before you start. Cargo-worthy and new single-trip units are checked wind and watertight before release; as-is units are sold on their faults and are not sold watertight. The grades page spells out the difference.
The yard at Cornubia
Or drive over and open the doors yourself
Stock sits on hardstand at 51–55 Bromley Street, Cornubia QLD 4130, half an hour south-east of the Brisbane CBD off the M1. Ring ahead, tell us the size and grade, and the units will be standing clear rather than three deep in a row when you get there.
Open hours are Mon-Fri 7:30am-5pm, Sat 8am-12pm. Bring a torch, take as long as you want, and walk away from anything you do not like the look of — nobody at this end minds, and it is a far better outcome than a container you resent every time you open it.
Common questions
Checking a used unit
I am hundreds of kilometres from your yard — how do I know what I am buying?
By asking for photographs of the individual unit, on request, before delivery, and by knowing which shots to ask for. Most of our customers never stand in the yard, so this is the normal way we sell rather than a favour: doors open square on, the length of the floor from inside, the roof from above, both seals close up, the plate and the container number. On as-is stock the faults get photographed as well as described, because a fault you find out about on delivery day is a fault we own.
Which photographs actually tell you something?
The ones taken from inside. A three-quarter shot of a container in a yard flatters everything and shows nothing. Standing at the closed end looking back at the open doors shows you the floor down its whole length and any daylight along the roof line in one frame, which is two of the three things worth knowing. The third is the seals, and that needs a close shot of the rubber rather than a shot of the doors.
Is the unit checked before it goes on the truck?
Cargo-worthy and new single-trip units are checked wind and watertight before release — doors seating, no daylight, floor sound. As-is is a different arrangement entirely: it is priced on its faults, it is not sold watertight, and what you get instead of a check is a plain description of what is wrong with that particular container plus photographs on request before delivery.
Should rust make me walk away?
Almost never on its own, and that single misunderstanding costs container buyers more money than any other. Rust across the panels is weathering steel doing its job. Rust that has gone right through, rust ponding in a dished roof panel, and rust chewing up the bottom rail where the box has sat on wet ground are three different problems and all three are worth arguing about. Look at where the rust is, not how much of it there is.
What is the CSC plate and does it matter to me?
It is the small metal plate on the door that carries the container's number, its build date and its maximum gross weight, and it exists for sea carriage rather than for anything you are likely to do with the unit. Its practical use to a buyer is identification: quote us the number and we both know exactly which container is being discussed, which matters far more than you would think when a yard holds rows of units that all look alike.
Can I inspect at a depot instead of Cornubia?
Cornubia is the walk-in yard — 51–55 Bromley Street, Cornubia QLD 4130, Mon-Fri 7:30am-5pm, Sat 8am-12pm. Everywhere else it is by arrangement, because those sites are working depots with plant moving and they are not set up for people wandering between rows. Ring first either way and we will have the units you want to look at pulled out and standing where you can open the doors.
Is there one fault that should end the conversation?
A frame out of square. Every other item on this page has a price attached to fixing it, but a racked container will never sit right, the doors will fight you every time you use them, and the fix involves a workshop rather than a welder in a yard. Sight down the top rail from a corner and check the container is sitting true before you look at anything else.
Get a price
Ask about the actual unit
Give us the size and grade you are chasing and the town it is going to. We will tell you which yard has one standing and send photographs of that container on request. 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