Frequently Asked Questions

Containers arrive on a tilt-bed truck, which slides the container off the back. That means the truck needs a straight, level run at the drop point:

• 20ft container: about 70 feet of straight clearance from the drop point
• 40ft container: about 100 feet of straight clearance from the drop point

It also needs roughly 10 to 12 ft of width and clear air above. Low utility lines, tree limbs and roof overhangs stop a delivery more often than anything on the ground does. If you are unsure, describe the approach when you ask for a quote and we will tell you before anything is scheduled.

Watch a delivery: container delivery video.

Price moves with three things: the size, the grade, and how far your address sits from the depot holding the unit. That last one is why we do not publish a single statewide number. The starting prices on this site name the grade and the city they were captured in, so you can see the floor rather than a marketing figure. For your address, the quote form or a phone call gets you a real number, delivery included.

Warranty runs by grade: one-trip units carry a 10 year structural and no-leak warranty, cargo worthy and wind and water tight units carry 5 years, and economy units carry a 1 year no-roof-leak warranty. The warranty travels with the grade you buy, so if warranty length matters to you it is worth comparing grades before you compare prices.

Yes. We sell containers outright, and we work with financing partners who offer rent-to-own, which spreads the payments and leaves you owning the container at the end. We do not do short-term rentals. If you want the full comparison, our rent vs buy guide walks through when each path makes sense.

Pennsylvania pricing starts at $2,157 for a 20ft Wind and Water Tight container delivered in Philadelphia, captured from Container One on 6 August 2026. The same 20ft Wind and Water Tight unit is $2,279 delivered in Allentown and $2,591 delivered in Pittsburgh. Price moves with size, grade, what is in stock and how far the truck runs, so the number that matters is the one quoted to your ZIP code. Delivery is included in every figure above.

Because the two cities are supplied from opposite ends of the state and from two different yards. There is no Container One depot inside Pennsylvania. Philadelphia and Allentown are served from Newark, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh is served from Cleveland, Ohio, about 132 road miles out, which is the longest of the three hauls. Philadelphia comes off the Newark lane best and carries the lowest delivered price in the state on almost every size and grade. Two honest caveats go with that. Distance alone does not explain it, because Allentown is about four miles closer to the same depot and still prices higher on the two 20ft lines. And Pittsburgh is not dearer on everything: on a 20ft one-trip it is $3,333 delivered against $3,366 in the east, which makes it the best 20ft one-trip price in the state right now.

Pennsylvania splits this into two questions answered by two different levels of government, and the people who run into trouble almost always answered one and never thought to ask the other. The construction code question is settled statewide. The Pennsylvania Construction Code Act, Act 45 of 1999, created the Uniform Construction Code, and 34 Pa. Code Section 403.1(b)(3) excludes sheds, detached private garages, carports and greenhouses under 1,000 square feet accessory to a detached one-family dwelling, except where a municipality requires more. A 20ft container is 160 square feet and a 40ft is 320, so both sit far under that line. The zoning question is not answered at the state level at all. Your borough, township or city decides, and with roughly 2,560 municipalities writing their own ordinances the answers genuinely differ across a township line. One call to whoever has your address, with your parcel in front of you, settles nearly all of it.

This is the most useful question on any Pennsylvania container page, because a great many mailing addresses in this state are not inside the city they name. Allentown mail reaches well into Whitehall, South Whitehall, Upper Macungie, Lower Macungie and Salisbury townships, each with its own zoning ordinance and none of them obliged to match the city. Allegheny County holds 130 separate municipalities, more than any county in Pennsylvania, and the county does not zone on their behalf, so Mt. Lebanon, Ross Township, Penn Hills and Monroeville each answer for themselves. Philadelphia is the one clean case, because the city and the county have been one government since 1854. Your property tax bill names the jurisdiction that actually has your parcel, and that is the office to call first. Getting it right before you dial saves you a confident answer from an office with no say over your property.

Firm, level bearing at the four corner castings, because that is where the entire weight goes. A container is not a shed on a slab, it is four point loads, and Pennsylvania gives you several genuinely different grounds to put them on. Limestone ground through Lancaster and the Cumberland Valley drains well and carries weight. Piedmont red shale and clay hold water and soften. The northern counties are glacial till with boulders and perched water. Pittsburgh hillsides are slope first and everything else second, and slag and red dog drives out there carry weight better than they look. Over all of it runs freeze and thaw, which lifts a gravel lane every March. Pressure treated timbers, concrete blocks or a compacted gravel pad under each corner solves every one of those cases, and grading so water runs away from the corners rather than under them does the rest. In karst country, keep roof runoff away from a corner as well.

Typically 1 to 2 weeks for Philadelphia and the collar counties, the Lehigh Valley and the Poconos, northeastern Pennsylvania and the Coal Region, Dutch Country and the Susquehanna Valley, and Pittsburgh, western Pennsylvania and the Erie shore. Central Pennsylvania, the Alleghenies and the Northern Tier are 2 to 3 weeks, and that is honest geometry rather than a hedge. Our depots sit at Newark on one side of the state and Cleveland on the other, so State College, Altoona, Williamsport and Coudersport are a long way from both. Two other Pennsylvania facts move a date. Township roads across the northern and western halves of the state get posted with seasonal weight restrictions from late winter into spring, and a camp road signed as not maintained for winter travel means exactly what it says.

Four grades, four warranties, and the grade decides both what the box looks like and what it is warranted for. One-trip containers are near new, having made a single loaded voyage, and carry a 10 year structural and no-leak warranty. Cargo worthy containers are certified fit for ocean shipping and carry a 5 year warranty. Wind and water tight containers are retired from shipping but still dry inside, and carry a 5 year warranty. Economy containers are the working grade with cosmetic age on them, and carry a 1 year warranty covering roof leaks only. For dry storage on a Pennsylvania site, wind and water tight is the grade most people buy, and it is the grade our published prices anchor on. One-trip is what you choose when the box will be visible, painted or converted.

Corten steel forms a stable surface layer that slows corrosion, and these boxes spend their working lives crossing oceans in salt spray on an open deck. Rust on the outside is not the Pennsylvania problem. Condensation on the inside is, and here it works in both directions across the year. In summer, warm wet outdoor air meets steel that has cooled overnight. In winter, whatever moisture a heater or a person puts into the air meets steel sitting near the outdoor temperature, and Pittsburgh's published winter design temperature is 5 degrees Fahrenheit. Ventilation, a level set on blocks and separation from the ground handle most of it for a storage box. If you are going to insulate, the rule that matters more than R-value is leaving no air gap behind the insulation where warm moist air can reach cold steel.

Yes, and rural Pennsylvania is often the easy part of the map once the truck is there. Fields, produce auction lots, equipment yards, mill fence lines and gas pad access roads have room to work, and a well pad road built wide and firm for gas traffic is one of the best surfaces we get anywhere. The questions we ask are about the last half mile. Is it tar and chip, dirt and gravel, or a seasonal road not maintained for winter travel. Is there a weight posted township bridge or a covered bridge on the way in, because Pennsylvania has more covered bridges than any other state and nearly all of them are posted. In the ridge counties the question changes to grade and width, because a tilt bed truck cannot back a 40ft container up a switchback it cannot see over. Two 20ft containers often solve a site outright that will never take a 40ft.

Yes. There are three ways to hold a container and they suit different lengths of need. Renting is the right answer for a short, defined project, because you hand it back when you are done. Buying is the right answer when the need runs long, because a container is a durable steel asset rather than a consumable and you can sell it later. Rent-to-own sits between the two: the monthly payment builds toward ownership instead of ending when the box goes back. Ask for all three numbers on the same call, divide the delivered purchase price by the monthly rental figure, and the month count that falls out is your crossover point.

• One-trip: made one loaded ocean crossing. Clean floors, intact paint, close to new.
• Cargo worthy: certified fit to carry cargo at sea. Structurally sound, cosmetically used.
• Wind and water tight (WWT): inspected to confirm the doors seal, there are no holes, and the interior stays dry. Surface rust, paint wear and minor dents are normal.
• Economy: the lowest grade we sell. Weathered, and priced accordingly.

For a grade-by-grade walkthrough with photographs, see the container condition guide.

It depends on what the container is for. If it is going to be seen, lived in, or converted, the clean interior and intact paint save real work later and the 10 year structural and no-leak warranty is the longest we carry. If it is going behind a shed to hold equipment, a wind and water tight unit does the same job for less.

We offer 20ft standard, 40ft standard and 40ft high cube containers, plus modified containers and refrigerated units in 20ft and 40ft.

Personnel doors, roll-up doors, windows, vents, skylights, electrical wiring and a panel, LED lighting, insulation, spray foam, HVAC, shelving, workbenches and exterior paint. Which of those matter depends on the climate the box will sit in: Pennsylvania is a heating state with a humid summer, and on 1 January 2026 the county map underneath the energy code changed. The Commonwealth adopted the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code into the Uniform Construction Code by final-omitted rulemaking published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin on 8 November 2025, and the 2021 edition reassigned counties nationwide. Pennsylvania moved twice in the same rulemaking. Fourteen counties across the southeast and the south-central belt are now climate zone 4A, everything else is 5A, and the eight counties that used to be 6A no longer exist as a separate zone. What that means in practice is narrower than it sounds. The prescriptive wall and ceiling numbers are identical in both Pennsylvania zones, so the wall assembly does not change as you drive west. What changes is underfoot, at the floor, the crawl space and the basement wall, which is the honest signal that the Pennsylvania problem is cold coming up and moisture going out rather than heat coming in. One scope note worth saying plainly: the energy code applies to space you heat or cool. A container used for dry storage is not a conditioned building, so those numbers are a useful benchmark rather than a requirement. The moment a heater, a mini-split and a desk go in and it becomes an office, the code is in play and your code official will say so..

A reefer has a refrigeration unit built into one end. It runs on a 460V 3-phase supply, or a compatible generator where 3-phase power is not available, and holds anywhere from -25 degrees F to +70 degrees F. The walls are insulated as part of the original build, not retrofitted.

Start with the ground you actually have. In Pennsylvania, Four corner castings carrying the entire load onto ground that changes five times across the state, and two of those grounds are problems most states do not have at all. Start with why it matters more for a container than for a house: a house spreads its weight along a continuous footing, a container puts all of it through four points. Karst is the first Pennsylvania problem. Large parts of the southeast and the south-central valleys sit on carbonate bedrock, and the Bureau of Geological Survey describes a sinkhole as a subsidence feature caused by surficial material moving down into a pre-existing void. The Lehigh Valley, Lancaster County and the Cumberland and Lebanon valleys are the classic karst country, and concentrating four point loads and then routing roof runoff to one spot is exactly the combination karst does not forgive. Mine subsidence is the second. The Department of Environmental Protection states that millions of Pennsylvania structures sit over old abandoned underground coal and clay mines, and it runs a state mine subsidence insurance program because standard homeowner policies usually do not cover that damage. The rest of the state reads more normally: glacial till, boulders and perched water in the north, steep slopes and shallow rock through the ridges, red shale and clay soils in the Piedmont that hold water and soften, and Pittsburgh hillsides where the city maintains landslide-prone and steep-slope overlays. Over all of it runs freeze and thaw, which lifts a gravel lane every March and sets it back down somewhere slightly different.

For temporary placement: Set the container on solid bearing at the four corner castings rather than straight onto turf. Pressure treated timbers, concrete blocks or a compacted gravel pad under each corner keeps the box level, keeps the door frame square so the doors still swing true in year five, and keeps the wood floor out of standing water. Grade so surface water runs away from the corners rather than under them, and keep roof runoff from discharging beside a corner. In Pennsylvania that last point does double duty, because the same step that stops a corner settling through a freeze and thaw winter is the step that keeps concentrated water off carbonate ground.

For permanent placement or a conversion: Poured piers or footings under each corner casting, bearing on undisturbed soil and sized for the load rather than dropped on as a block. Section R403.1.4 of the Residential Code requires exterior footings at least 12 inches below the undisturbed ground surface and below the frost line where one applies, and in Pennsylvania a frost line always applies. Two site checks are worth doing before the design rather than after the settlement. In karst country, a geotechnical investigation stops being optional. Anywhere over the coalfields, the Department of Environmental Protection publishes an interactive mapping application that shows mining conditions under a given site, searchable by address, coordinates or municipality, plus a site-specific request form for a written answer. Checking it costs nothing and takes minutes. Any structural build, meaning anything a plan reviewer will look at, needs the foundation, the anchoring and the connection between container and foundation designed by a Pennsylvania licensed engineer.

Frost depth: There is no single Pennsylvania figure to look up, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight. Section R403.1.4 sets a 12 inch minimum below undisturbed grade and requires footings below the frost line where one applies, and Table R301.2 is left for each jurisdiction to fill in. Two published examples show the spread: Philadelphia's code states the frost line for the city is 30 inches, and Pittsburgh's code adoption chapter sets its frost line depth at 36 inches. Ask your code official for their number rather than working from a state average, and confirm the currently enforced value rather than an older published one. Anything meant to be permanent needs its bearing points below that line, or the whole assembly moves with the first hard freeze.

Full basements and frost-depth footings are the Pennsylvania norm, and that is the single biggest difference between building here and building in the South. Nothing structural sits on shallow ground in this state, because the frost line governs. For a container that is mostly good news: a box on blocks is not a foundation, it spreads its load through four castings and it can be moved, so it is a very different proposition from pouring footings. What it does mean is that the ground under those four corners moves seasonally, and blocking is what keeps the box indifferent to it.

At a minimum, make the placement area level and firm, and clear debris, rocks and brush out of the way. Confirm the straight run above, and look up for lines and limbs. Soft ground is the single most common cause of a delayed delivery: a loaded flatbed will sink, so a driver will wait for the ground to dry rather than tear up your property. Send photos of the site with your quote request and we will tell you if anything needs doing first.

The box itself is 14-gauge Corten steel and is very hard to cut. The lock is the weak point, so use a hidden shackle lock, sometimes called a puck lock, inside a lockbox welded over the handle. Many of our units already have a lockbox fitted.

The recurring signs are a price far under the market, a seller who will not let the container be seen or photographed, payment demanded by wire transfer or crypto, no physical business address, and pressure to decide today. A real dealer will give you a phone number, answer questions before payment, and put the quote in writing.