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.
Melbourne, VIC
Shipping containers Melbourne
Melbourne is an easy city to supply and a genuinely awkward one to deliver into, and the awkwardness is at least predictable. Boxes come off the wharves and sit in the depot belt through Altona, Laverton and Truganina, so getting hold of the right size is straightforward. Getting it behind a single-fronted terrace in Fitzroy with a bluestone lane and overhead wiring, or onto a Tarneit block sitting on clay that swells all winter and shrinks all summer, is where the actual work is. That is the part worth talking through before you order.
- Delivered from
- the Port of Melbourne and the container depot belt through Altona, Laverton and Truganina, with stock also held out through Dandenong South
- Typical lead time
- Usually 3–5 business days; wet-winter drops onto soft ground get scheduled with a little slack
- Usual truck
- Tilt-tray where the street and the run in allow it; crane truck for terraces, laneway sites and anything under a canopy or near overhead wiring
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.
Before the detail, the shape of it.
What locals buy them for
Around Melbourne we deliver containers for gear and stock storage for trades working out of Dandenong South, Campbellfield, Braeside and Truganina, site stores on the knockdown-rebuild run through Bentleigh, Balwyn, Essendon and Ivanhoe, somewhere to put an entire period home while it is restumped and reworked over six months, workshop and studio conversions on hills blocks at Olinda, Kallista and Belgrave, vineyard, orchard and equipment storage through the Yarra Valley and around Coldstream, market and event stock that only surfaces at weekends, and hay, tack and machinery storage on the small holdings around Macedon, Whittlesea and Bacchus Marsh.
Access notes for this district
Three things shape a Melbourne delivery more than anything else. The first is the inner-suburban street pattern. Fitzroy, Collingwood, Richmond, Carlton, Brunswick, Port Melbourne and South Melbourne are single-fronted terraces with no side access and a bluestone rear lane behind them. Those lanes are narrow, often one-way, frequently obstructed by wheelie bins and parked cars, and the surface is dished to a centre drain that a long rigid truck will bottom out on. Sometimes the lane is the answer and sometimes the answer is a lift from the street over the roofline. The second is overhead wiring, and it is the constraint people forget. Melbourne's tram network carries live overhead traction wire down the middle of a great many inner arterials — Sydney Road, Nicholson Street, Glenferrie Road, Chapel Street, High Street — and no crane goes anywhere near it. On a tram street the lift has to happen well clear of the wires or the job moves to a side street and a longer reach, and that gets worked out on a map before a truck is booked, not on arrival. The third is ground, and Melbourne has two very different sorts. West and north across the basalt plain — Werribee, Point Cook, Tarneit, Truganina, Craigieburn, Sunbury — the soil is highly reactive clay. It takes up water through a long wet winter and swells, then gives it back through summer and shrinks away, and the seasonal movement is significant enough that houses out there are engineered for it. A container placed straight onto that ground will follow it, one corner at a time. Down through the south-eastern sand belt — Moorabbin, Cheltenham, Braeside, Mordialloc, Frankston — you get the opposite: free-draining sand that carries very little and will let a corner casting straight through thin turf. Then there are the ranges. Olinda, Sassafras, Kallista, Belgrave, Monbulk and the Kinglake side are narrow, steeply cambered and hairpinned, running under mature mountain ash with low limbs and long stretches with a bank on one side and nothing on the other. A 20ft on a tilt-tray manages those climbs. A 40ft is a conversation before it is a booking.
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 Melbourne
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.
Melbourne
Laneways, terraces and live overhead wire
The inner suburbs are the most common source of Melbourne enquiries and the least suited to a truck. A single-fronted terrace in Fitzroy or Richmond has a two-metre frontage, no side passage and a back yard the size of a car space, reached by a bluestone lane that was built for a nightcart. Where the lane is genuinely usable, a small tilt-tray or a hiab can often work down it, though the dished centre and the camber against the fences limit what will physically fit. Where it is not, the container goes over the top from the street with a crane truck, and the questions are the same as anywhere: reach, height to clear, what is overhead and whether the road gives room for the outriggers.
Overhead traction wiring is the one Melbourne-specific answer we will not bend on. If the property fronts a tram route, the lift does not happen under the wires. Sometimes that means setting up on the cross street and reaching further, sometimes it means using the rear lane after all, and occasionally it means a smaller container is the only workable option. It is far better to establish that at the quote than to have a crane truck sitting on Sydney Road with nowhere legal to boom. Send a photo from the middle of the road looking at the house, one along the rear lane if there is one, and one looking up, and we can usually settle it in one phone call.
On the ground
Reactive clay on the basalt plain
If your address is in the western or northern growth corridor, the ground is the thing to get right and everything else is detail. The clay out through Wyndham, Melton and the Hume corridor is among the more reactive soil in the country. It swells with winter rain and shrinks back through a dry February, it does not do either evenly across a block, and a new estate lot has usually been cut and filled on top of that and has not finished consolidating. Drop a container straight onto turf out there and it will rack. A racked container is one whose doors need a shoulder and then a crowbar, and since the doors are the only part of it you ever interact with, that is the difference between a good store and a standing annoyance.
The fix is unglamorous and permanent. Four concrete pads or hardwood sleepers set into the ground under the castings, bedded down and checked corner to corner so all four sit at one height. Door end on the high side of any fall. Underside kept clear so air moves and water gets away instead of pooling against the floor bearers. Tell us the ground type at the quote — slab, turf over clay, fresh fill, sand — and the timber comes on the truck and the levelling happens as part of the delivery. If your block has a designed overland flow path across it, which most estate lots do, mention that as well, because a six-metre steel box parked in the middle of it will send water somewhere the builder did not intend.
Worth knowing
Winter, and why July is not October
Melbourne differs from the northern capitals in a way that genuinely changes delivery planning. Up north a wet block dries out in two days of sun. Here, a paddock or an unsealed driveway that goes soft in late May can stay soft until September, because the rain arrives in modest amounts over a long time and the evaporation is not there to take it away. That matters on acreage through the Macedon Ranges, Yarra Valley, Whittlesea and Bacchus Marsh, on any long gravel driveway, and on new estate blocks where the turf is thin and the fill is young. The same goes for a shaded south-facing yard in the inner suburbs, which can hold water for weeks after the rain has stopped.
So we plan winter rural work with a bit of slack in it and we will ring and move a booking rather than commit a loaded truck to a driveway it cannot back out of. Nobody wins from a bogged truck — not you, watching it cut a trench across the paddock, and not us, with a driver and a machine tied up for the day. Where a block is marginal, the usual answer is to leave the container on solid ground near the road for you to drag in with a tractor when it suits, or to send a crane truck that can sit on the sealed part of the drive and reach further in than a tilt-tray ever could. If you have a spot that stays solid no matter the season, tell us where it is at the booking. Local knowledge from the person who lives there beats anything we can read off a map.
What delivery to Melbourne 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.
A two-minute conversation about the site usually saves a second delivery fee later.
Other areas we deliver to
We also deliver to Geelong, Werribee, Dandenong, Frankston, Lilydale and the surrounding district. If your town is not on the list, ring — it almost certainly still works.
Common questions
Buying a container in Melbourne
Can you deliver a container down a bluestone rear lane in Fitzroy or Richmond?
Sometimes, and it depends on the lane rather than the container. The inner-suburban lanes are narrow, often one-way, usually part-blocked by bins and parked cars, and dished to a centre drain that a long rigid truck will ground on. Where a lane is genuinely usable we will use it, generally with a smaller unit. Where it is not, the container is lifted from the street over the house instead. Send a photo down the lane from both ends and one from the street looking at the property and we will tell you which of the two it is.
Will tram wires stop a crane delivery in inner Melbourne?
They will stop it happening directly under them, yes. Overhead traction wire is live and no crane works near it, so if your property fronts a tram route the lift has to be set up clear of the wires — often from a cross street with a longer reach, sometimes from a rear lane instead. Occasionally it means a smaller container is the only option that works. This is the sort of thing that has to be planned at the quote rather than discovered by a driver on Sydney Road, so tell us the street and we will look at it before anything is booked.
Can you get a 40ft container up to Olinda, Sassafras or Belgrave?
Sometimes, but the roads decide it, not us. The climbs into the Dandenongs are narrow and steeply cambered with tight hairpins, mature mountain ash hanging low over the carriageway and long sections with a bank on one side and a drop on the other. A 20ft on a tilt-tray goes up there routinely. A 40ft means checking the approach and the gate first, and on a few of those roads the real answer is a pair of 20ft units end to end, which normally buys you more usable space and a far simpler delivery anyway.
Can I see the container before it is delivered in Melbourne?
Not in person — the depots holding Melbourne stock are third-party facilities running heavy machinery, and they are not set up for the public to wander through. What we do instead is send photos of the actual unit on request before delivery, covering the corners, the door end, the roof and the internal floor, so you are looking at the container you are getting rather than a photo of one like it. If a cargo-worthy unit is what you need, it is checked wind and watertight before it leaves the yard; the grades page sets out what each grade is checked for.
Get a price
Get a delivered price sorted
We deliver to Melbourne 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