Need to have shipping containers moved? You’re in the right place. But before you start contacting companies to help with your container move, there are several things you need to know.
If you haven’t already, please read our Shipping Container Delivery Costs and Options article. This detailed write-up goes over all the important facts related to moving a container: how to prepare, ballpark costs, types of equipment used, and how distance, site conditions, and other factors affect which companies you should decide to partner with.
To quickly summarize a few of the key points about container moving:
- Know that the container movement ecosystem is vast, complex, and fragmented, and your complete move may involve more than one service provider. Thankfully, many companies can help coordinate end-to-end service.
- Understand that the big players in this ecosystem think on a justifiably big scale: often hundreds of containers and millions of dollars of goods at a time. If you’re only moving a few containers, it’s hard to get their attention. Be patient as you look for the right companies to work with that have right capacity and availability to meet your needs.
- Get specific about your shipment size, location, site conditions, and constraints. Different shipping container sizes, different off-loading requirements, etc. all require specific types of equipment. Planning for these things in advance prevents you from being stuck with unforeseen fees, etc.
- Ensure that all contents of the container are appropriately secured and that you have good records documenting the condition of the container itself and anything inside it.
Furthermore, it’s important to understand the following factors which will all dramatically impact the cost of moving a container:
- Travel Distance: Road mileage between pickup and delivery locations.
- Total Load Weight: Empty container ‘tare’ weight plus any contents plus the weight of the empty trailer (different trailer types weigh different amounts).
- Container Dimensions and Quantity: Length, width, and height of containers in the load, and how many of each size.
- Equipment Reposition Distance: In the event that a crane or other lifting equipment is required, the distance between the equipment and the container pickup and/or delivery sites.
- Truck Placement: In the most economical situation, a truck finishes another delivery, and your pickup and delivery are on their way back to their base location (a back haul). Otherwise, you’re sending a truck out and after the completion of your delivery, they are far from their home base with no load to haul that brings them closer to home (a head haul).
- Deadhead: Distance the nearest available truck needs to drive to get to the pickup location.
Clearly, with this many complicating factors, there’s no way to give an accurate, one-size-fits-all estimated cost. Nevertheless, for most medium to long-distance moves, you can likely expect a cost of $4-6/mile, plus additional equipment costs like crane rental that might be required.
We recommend Google searching “container mover [your city]” or “freight broker [your city]” to find local companies that can provide you quotes. Best of luck!
