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.
Karratha, WA
Shipping containers Karratha
Nothing in Karratha is made in Karratha. The town runs on iron ore, salt and gas, and virtually every piece of steel in it arrived on the back of a truck that came fifteen hundred kilometres up the North West Coastal Highway. Containers are no different. What that buys you is a freight network well practised at moving big awkward things a long way. What it costs you is time and a bit of flexibility, because the trip only makes financial sense on a truck already heading north with room on the deck, and that is not every day of the week.
- Delivered from
- our Fremantle depot, about fifteen hundred kilometres south, often on the same northbound run as Hedland freight
- Typical lead time
- Usually 2-4 weeks from order to on the ground; allow longer between December and March
- Usual truck
- Side loader or crane truck for 40ft and for anything going inside a fence line; tilt-tray for 10ft and 20ft into town and Gap Ridge
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.
Worth knowing before you order.
What people order them for locally
Around Karratha we deliver containers for spares and tooling stores staged ahead of a shutdown or turnaround on the Burrup, lay-down storage across the Gap Ridge and Karratha industrial estates, crib rooms, store rooms and site offices on construction packages, contractor gear storage for the port and salt operations at Dampier, boat, pot and camping gear for people at Bulgarra, Nickol and Baynton who have run out of garage, station and community storage out through Roebourne, Wickham and Point Samson, and household storage on a Pilbara posting in or out.
Getting it onto the block
By Pilbara standards Karratha is a comfortable town to deliver into. It was planned rather than grown, the roads are wide, the roundabouts are truck-sized, and the industrial estates at Gap Ridge and out along the Dampier Road were built for exactly this sort of work. Hardstand is common, most commercial sites have a telehandler or a franna available, and 40ft units are ordinary here in a way they are not in a town of this size on the east coast. Residential Karratha is straightforward too, with most of Bulgarra, Nickol, Pegs Creek and Baynton offering a driveway a rigid can get square to. The complications are elsewhere. The Burrup and the Dampier road corridor mean site access controls, gate passes and heritage-restricted areas, and none of that is negotiable on the day, so it has to be sorted before a truck leaves. Ground is generally very good: compacted red laterite gravel is one of the better surfaces in the country for standing a container on. The exceptions are the tidal flats between town and Dampier, which are soft and salty and will swallow a rear axle, and any pad built inside the last few months that has not had a wet season to settle. Rock is the other side of that coin, because on the ridge blocks you can hit stone a few hundred millimetres down, which is excellent bearing but makes it hard to get four points at the same level without a bit of work. Then there is the wet. From December to March the ground softens, the creeks come up, and cyclone warnings stop craning altogether. Send photos of the site, the approach and the gate, plus the site contact and induction requirements, and we will tell you what is realistic before anything gets booked.
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 Karratha
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.
Karratha
Everything here arrives on a truck
The single biggest lever on what a Karratha container costs you is not the container. It is whether it travels on a truck that was going north anyway. A unit that can wait a week or two for a scheduled run is a completely different exercise to one that has to leave on Tuesday because somebody forgot to order it. That is worth saying plainly, because it is the one thing a customer can control and most people do not realise they can. Give us a window rather than a date, and give us as much notice as the job allows, and we will get your unit onto the right run.
The second lever is batching. Two, three or six containers going to the same site travel far better together than they do one at a time across three months, and if you know a project will need more than one, order them as a group even if the second one sits in a lay-down yard for a few weeks. The third is specification. Getting the size, door configuration, ventilation, personnel door and paint right before the container leaves the depot avoids the one genuinely expensive mistake available to you out here, which is sending a container back down the highway. Ring 1300 467 776 with the job and the site and we will quote the unit and the cartage as one figure.
On the ground
Pads, footings and cyclone restraint on the Burrup coast
Karratha is in a severe wind region and the way a container is set up here reflects that. Two separate things matter. The first is the pad. A level, compacted gravel pad with concrete pads or heavy hardwood under the four corner castings keeps the frame square, keeps the underside out of the wet, and gives a set of doors that still line up in three years. Get it built before the delivery, because moving a container after the truck has gone is a second delivery, not an adjustment. Where the block has rock close to the surface, plan on a bit of work to get four points at the same height rather than shimming it later with whatever is lying around.
The second is restraint. A container is heavy, but an empty one presents a great deal of side area to a cyclonic wind and it is not immovable. Where the unit is staying through the season, and certainly on any workplace, it should be tied down to cast-in anchors, screw piles or a designed footing, and the detail for that should come from an engineer working to the local wind region. We are not engineers and will not sign off on a tie-down. What we will do is deliver it onto a pad you have prepared and place it where the restraint can be fitted. One thing to be plain about: a container keeps rain off from above and does nothing against floodwater. Water at door sill height gets past the seals and an empty box will float. Site it high and treat it as storage, not shelter from water.
Worth knowing
Ordering around a shutdown, and hire versus buying
Pilbara work runs on planned dates, and containers should be ordered against those dates rather than against a feeling. If a turnaround starts in six weeks and the spares need to be locked up on site a fortnight before it, the order wants to be placed now, not in a month. That is the difference between a container arriving on a scheduled northbound run and a scramble that costs a great deal more. The same is true in reverse at the end of a project, because the truck that takes a container away has to be going somewhere as well.
Whether to hire or buy usually decides itself on the length of the job. Hire suits a defined program with an end date on it, where you would rather not own an asset in the Pilbara once the crew has gone home and you are not the one arranging the removal. Buying makes more sense the moment the timeframe goes vague or the container is going onto a site that will still be running in five years, because the cartage north is a cost you only want to pay once. That is genuinely the deciding factor out here: freight is the expensive part, so a container that has already made the trip is worth more standing in Karratha than an identical one standing in Fremantle. Tell us the length of the job and we will tell you which way it falls.
What delivery to Karratha costs
Cartage is worked out per address rather than off a table. Distance is only part of it — access is usually what moves the figure.
We will ask about the ground, the gate and the overheads before we ask about your budget. That order saves people money.
Other towns on the same run
We also deliver to Dampier, Wickham, Roebourne, Point Samson, Onslow and the surrounding district. If your town is not on the list, ring — it almost certainly still works.
Common questions
Buying a container in Karratha
How long does delivery to Karratha take?
Two to four weeks from order to on the ground is the usual window in the dry, and December through March can push it out. The date depends less on the distance than on when a truck runs north with room on it, so a customer who can give us a window rather than a fixed day almost always gets a better outcome. Cyclone warnings and wet ground stop craning entirely for a few days at a time. If you are working to a shutdown date, order well ahead of it and say so at the enquiry.
Can you deliver to Dampier, Wickham, Roebourne or Point Samson?
Yes. Those runs work off the same northbound freight as Karratha and are usually the same timing, with the last leg added on. What changes is access. Dampier and the Burrup mean gate passes, site inductions and heritage-restricted areas that have to be organised before the truck leaves, not on arrival. Roebourne and Wickham are straightforward town deliveries. Onslow is further off the highway and worth a separate conversation. Give us the site contact and the induction requirements with the enquiry and we will handle the rest.
Do I need a pad built before the container arrives?
You need four firm, level points, and on most Karratha ground that is easy because compacted red laterite carries a container very well. Concrete pads or heavy hardwood under the corner castings, level across both diagonals, is the standard. Build it before the delivery. Shifting a container after the truck has left is a second delivery, and doing it on the day with whatever timber is on site is how a set of doors ends up out of square. If the block is rocky, allow a bit of time to get four points at the same height.
Should I hire or buy for a Pilbara project?
Length of job decides it. Hire suits a defined program with a finish date, where you would rather not own a container in the Pilbara once the crew has gone and you are not arranging the truck out. Buying gets better as soon as the timeframe goes vague or the site is long-term, because the freight north is the expensive part and you only want to pay it once. That also means a container already standing in Karratha is worth more than the same unit in Fremantle. Tell us the program and we will give you a straight answer.
Get a price
Get an honest answer on timing
We deliver to Karratha 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