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.
Townsville, QLD
Shipping containers Townsville
Townsville is a garrison town, a port and a dry-tropics city that gets most of its rain in a handful of weeks, and every one of those facts changes what a container is for and how it should be set up. People arrive on posting and leave again, which puts a floor under storage demand year-round. The port and the corridor west to Mount Isa run on staged gear. And February 2019 taught the whole city something about where water goes that no amount of website copy could.
- Delivered from
- stock we hold at a depot in Townsville, with the Cornubia yard covering anything not standing locally
- Typical lead time
- Usually 2–4 business days on local stock; longer where a specific grade or size has to come north
- Usual truck
- Tilt-tray for 10ft and 20ft; crane truck for 40ft and for base or port work where placement has to be precise
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.
What we tell people who ring from here.
Where they end up in this district
Around Townsville we deliver containers for household storage for defence families mid-posting who need a whole house held somewhere secure between quarters, tool and spares storage for the trades and contractors working out of the Bohle and Stuart industrial estates, staged gear for the businesses supplying the mining corridor west along the Flinders, boat, tinnie and reef gear where the garage never stood a chance, feed and fencing on the grazing country out toward Woodstock and Charters Towers, site stores on the builds through Deeragun, Burdell and Idalia, and dry storage for clubs and community groups.
What has to be right before the truck books
Townsville ground is not one thing. Large parts of the suburbs sit on reactive clay that swells and shrinks with the season, and out through Kirwan, Condon, Rasmussen and the Deeragun side that movement is enough to take a container out of square inside a couple of years if there is nothing under the corners. Closer to the water — The Strand, Pallarenda, North Ward, Railway Estate — it goes coastal, sandier and lower, with a shallow water table in places and salt in the air. Then there is Castle Hill and the streets wrapped around it, where the blocks are cut into rock at an angle and the driveways are short, steep and often turn while they climb. That combination is the one that beats a tilt-tray, because the bed grounds on the transition or the truck runs out of driveway before it can straighten. Crane work is common on those blocks and generally the quicker answer. The industrial and defence side is administratively particular rather than technically hard. Base and port work means gate access, identification, escorts, nominated windows and sometimes a specific route on site, all of which are easy to arrange in advance and impossible to arrange at the boom. Stuart, Bohle and the Cleveland Bay industrial area are otherwise straightforward, wide-gated hardstand work. Weather here is its own scheduling factor. The dry tropics are dry for most of the year, which makes ground conditions predictable and delivery easy, and then a monsoon trough parks itself over the city and the rules change completely. In 2019 the water that caused most of the damage came across the ground, not up a river, and blocks through Idalia, Hermit Park, Rosslea and Oonoonba that had never had a problem found out otherwise. That is worth knowing before you choose which corner of the yard the container lives in.
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 Townsville
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.
Townsville
Local stock, postings and the run west
We hold containers at a depot in Townsville. In a city this far from the eastern seaboard depots, that is the difference between a container being an ordinary purchase and a freight exercise, and it is the reason we can quote Townsville sensibly at all. It also serves a big catchment: the coastal strip north and south, the grazing country inland, and the corridor west along the Flinders where a lot of what goes to Mount Isa and the mines out that way gets staged in a Townsville yard first. It also means a Townsville order behaves like a purchase with a date on it rather than a freight enquiry with a shrug attached, and if something changes — a booking pulled because of weather, a unit that has to come back and be swapped — that is a local trip rather than a fortnight lost.
You can inspect before ordering, arranged in advance rather than dropped in on, because the depot has no public counter and an unannounced visit means a locked gate. Ring, say what you are after, and we will set a time with the unit accessible and someone there while you go over the floor, the seals and the door gear yourself. If getting to the yard does not suit, photos of the specific unit are available on request and we send them before delivery. What is standing locally varies week to week, so if the requirement is specific — high cube, double doors, a particular grade — ask early and you will be told plainly whether it is here or coming north.
On the ground
Wind, anchoring and what a container is not
Townsville is cyclone country and the building rules here reflect that, so it is a fair question and it deserves a straight answer. A shipping container is a strong, well-built steel box, but its behaviour in a serious wind event has far more to do with how it is anchored and how heavily it is loaded than with the box itself. Empty and standing in an exposed position, it presents a very large side area against not much weight. Loaded, and held down properly, it is a different object entirely. If a unit is going somewhere open and will sit empty for stretches, it needs to be restrained: bolted to a slab, held with cyclone-rated ground anchors and turnbuckles at the corner castings, or set on poured footings.
Where the restraint has to be certified — anything on a commercial site, anything forming part of a build, anything an insurer will want documented — that specification comes from an engineer and not from a delivery driver or a website. We will set a container up properly, we will tell you what we have seen work in this district, and we will tell you where the line is. What you will not get from us is a claim that the container is rated on its own, because that is not how it works and it is exactly the sort of assurance that costs somebody a shed roof in February. It is worth a walk around the unit before the season too. Loose sheeting leaned against the side, a tarp tied to a corner casting, stacked pallets and anything bolted on as an awning are the parts that let go first, and they are all easier to deal with in October than in the middle of a warning.
Worth knowing
The dry, the wet and where the water goes
For most of the year Townsville is about as predictable as delivery gets. The ground is dry, the surfaces are firm, and a truck can go where it needs to go. Then the trough arrives and the district takes a season of rain in a week. The lesson of 2019 was that the damage largely came from water moving across the ground rather than from a river rising in the usual way, which means the useful question about your block is not just how high it is but which way water crosses it when it has nowhere else to go. Most people know the answer without being asked. You have watched it happen off the neighbour's driveway or down the side of the house in a big storm, and that observation is worth more than any map for deciding which corner of the yard the container lives in.
For a container, the guidance is simple and worth being blunt about. It is not a flood barrier and it should never be sold as one. Water reaching the door sill gets past the seals and into the box, and an empty container floats, which is precisely the scenario in which it does damage to someone else's fence rather than staying where you left it. So put it on the highest usable ground, keep it out of the flow path, and if there is no high ground, raise the floor on blocks or a built pad so the sill sits well clear. Anchoring matters here for two reasons at once — wind and buoyancy — which is a good argument for doing it properly the first time.
What delivery to Townsville costs
The cartage component depends on which depot the unit comes out of and what the site needs. We work it out with the quote.
Tell us the date you actually need it, not the date that sounds polite. It changes which depot the unit comes out of.
Around the same run
We also deliver to Thuringowa, Ayr, Ingham, Charters Towers, Magnetic Island and the surrounding district. If your town is not on the list, ring — it almost certainly still works.
Common questions
Buying a container in Townsville
Do you have containers in Townsville, or does everything come from down south?
We hold stock at a depot in Townsville, which is why local orders usually run to a two to four day window rather than a freight timeline. Not every size and grade is standing here in a given week, and anything we do not have comes north from the Cornubia yard and takes noticeably longer — you will be told which applies at the quote. If you want to see one first, ring and we will arrange it; the depot is not a retail yard and there is nobody there to open up on spec.
Can you get a container across to Magnetic Island?
Yes, though the final leg travels on a barge, and what that barge will take — length, weight, loading, running times — is the operator's call rather than something we can promise on a web page. Those terms move, so we sort them out with the operator while your job is being priced and give you one answer that covers the container and getting it over the water. A 20ft is considerably easier to shift across and place on an island block than a 40ft. Tell us the street and describe the block.
Does a container need tying down for cyclone season in Townsville?
If it is exposed and will sit empty or lightly loaded, yes. An empty container has a large side area against relatively little mass. Options are bolting to a slab, cyclone-rated ground anchors with turnbuckles to the corner castings, or poured footings, and which one suits depends on what it is standing on. Anything that has to be certified — a commercial site, part of a build, or something an insurer will ask about — needs an engineer to specify it. We will not claim the container is rated on its own, because performance comes from the anchoring and the load.
My driveway off Castle Hill is short and steep. Can you still deliver?
Often, but usually not with a tilt-tray. A drive that climbs and turns at the same time, or that changes grade sharply at the kerb, will ground the rear of the bed before the container has slid clear, and there is no technique that gets around it. On those blocks a crane truck standing in the street and lifting over the fence or the carport is the practical method and it goes in first time. Send one photo from the road looking up the drive and another from the spot looking back down it, and we will name the truck before anything is booked.
Get a price
Get the container and the cartage in one number
We deliver to Townsville 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