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: 110 feet of straight clearance from the drop point
• 40ft container: 130 feet of straight clearance from the drop point

The truck needs at least 15 ft of height to drive, at least 22 ft of height along the entire unloading path, and at least 10 ft of width. Low utility lines, tree limbs and roof overhangs can stop a delivery. If you are unsure, describe the approach when you ask for a quote so it can be reviewed before anything is scheduled.

Watch a delivery: container delivery video.

Price depends on the size, grade and condition you choose, on what is in stock, and on the distance and access to your address, so there is no single statewide number. The starting prices on this site name the grade and the city they apply to. For your address, the quote form or a phone call gets you a written quote with delivery details.

Warranty runs by grade: one-trip units carry a 10 year structural and 10 year no-leak warranty, cargo worthy and wind and water tight units carry a 5 year structural and 5 year no-leak warranty, and economy units carry a 1 year 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.

We sell containers. We do not rent them. Rent-to-own runs through a third-party partner, My Container Rental, and spreads the payments until you own the container. Our rent vs buy guide walks through when each path makes sense.

New York pricing starts at $2,886 for a 20ft Wind and Water Tight container delivered in Buffalo. The same 20ft Wind and Water Tight unit is $3,120 delivered in Syracuse and $3,196 delivered in Rochester. Those three numbers differ with the distance from the depot that serves each city. Buffalo and Rochester are served from Cleveland, Ohio at 194 and 259 road miles, and Syracuse is served from Newark, New Jersey at 238, which is why Syracuse prices below Rochester even though it sits further east. Price also moves with size, grade and what is in stock, so the number that matters is the one quoted to your ZIP code.

New York splits this into two questions, and they can be answered by two different offices. The building code question has one statewide framework: the State Fire Prevention and Building Code Council adopts the Uniform Code, which applies in every part of the state except the City of New York, which kept its own code. The zoning question, meaning whether a container is an allowed thing on your particular lot, is answered entirely by your city, town or village, and upstate that answer changes at the municipal line. New York's model building permit exemption for small detached structures stops at 144 square feet. A 20ft container is 160 square feet and a 40ft is 320, so a container falls outside the model exemption and the question becomes which permits apply. There is also a step specific to New York: a town or village may adopt a local law declining to enforce the Uniform Code, in which case the job passes to the county and then to the Department of State, so ask who enforces the code at your address before you assume it is town hall.

Level and firm, with water running away from it rather than under it. A container carries its entire weight through four corner castings, so it needs solid bearing at those four points rather than along a wall. New York's ground is glacial, which means it was sorted and dumped by ice and can change over short distances, and heavy lake clay and drumlin slope are two conditions to plan for. The lake plain clay through Erie, Monroe, Wayne and Onondaga counties is excellent to set on once it is dry and goes greasy for the better part of a week after real rain, so timing beats traction. Drumlin country north and east of Rochester and Syracuse photographs flat and is not, so pick the landing spot on foot. Blocks, timbers or a compacted gravel pad under each corner keeps the box level and the doors square, and it matters more here than in a mild climate because the frost heaves the ground on the way out in spring.

Delivery timing depends on location, payment, weather, container availability and site access. Container One's Delivery/Dispatch department schedules the date after payment is received and the site is reviewed.

There are five grades and the warranty runs by grade. One-trip containers have made a single loaded voyage, look close to new, and carry a 10 year structural and no-leak warranty. Cargo worthy units are certified fit for ocean shipping and carry 5 years. Wind and water tight units are dry and serviceable and carry 5 years, they suit storage, and they are the grade our New York starting price names. Economy is the budget grade and carries a 1 year roof leak warranty. Multi-trip units are also sold, so ask the Container One sales representative preparing your quote about them. Refrigerated units are inspected and tested before delivery. Ask about their warranty terms before you buy. In New York the roof carries snow for months, which makes roof condition a good reason to consider a higher grade.

Containers are built from Corten steel, which forms a stable surface layer that slows corrosion, and they spend their working lives crossing oceans in salt spray. What causes trouble here is condensation on the inside, and in a cold climate it runs the opposite way from the advice written for the South. Through a long heating season the air inside is warmer and wetter than the air outside, so moisture pushes outward toward the coldest surface in the assembly, which is the inside face of your steel. That is why any air gap behind insulation is a condensing surface, and why the water shows up in January rather than August. For an uninsulated storage box, cross ventilation high and low at opposite ends, setting it up off the ground, and keeping it level so the roof sheds water go a long way. If you are insulating, the plan has to touch the steel everywhere and be airtight, which is why closed cell foam applied directly to the corrugation is one way to meet that in this state.

Yes, where the truck has the access and clearance it needs. What decides it is the last quarter mile and the drop spot, because a tilt bed truck needs a firm, reasonably level path and a long straight run to slide the box off, 130 feet for a 40ft and 110 feet for a 20ft. The New York specifics worth raising when you book are the ones a map will not show: a town road marked seasonal use that the town stops maintaining for the winter, spring weight limits on posted roads, a one lane bridge with its own limit, a soft shoulder that will not hold an outrigger, orchard rows and vineyard wire at truck height, and sugarbush tubing strung between the trees that a truck must not touch. Send photos of the approach and the drop spot when you book.

Yes, rent-to-own is available in New York, and it is worth understanding how it differs from renting. With rent-to-own the monthly payment builds toward ownership, so at the end of the term the container is yours. With a straight rental the payments end and so does your claim on the box. Which one costs less depends entirely on how many months you actually need it. A rental also carries delivery and pickup charges, so ask the rental company for those figures too. Compare the delivered purchase price, a monthly rental quote from a rental company and the rent-to-own terms against the number of months you need.

For ordinary storage, yes, and the thing to plan for is the roof rather than the walls. A container is strong in compression at the corner posts, which is why they stack loaded on a ship. The roof panel is a different animal: thin corrugated steel spanning between the side rails, with a slight camber and no real pitch, engineered to keep weather out rather than to carry a season of accumulation. Snow that lands stays until it melts or somebody clears it, and there is an interaction worth knowing before you insulate, because a poorly insulated box quietly melts the base of its own snowpack and a well insulated one does not. If you are building with it rather than storing in it, snow is the governing structural load in New York and it is engineering work rather than a rule of thumb. The 2025 Building Code of New York State now takes ground snow loads from ASCE 7, and the residential code sends anything above a 70 pound per square foot allowable stress design load to accepted engineering practice. Ask your code office for their filled in Table R301.2 and design to their numbers.

Two questions matter first, and neither is about how much you own. The first is what the truck can do at your site: a 40ft needs a longer straight run to set down than a 20ft, so a narrow city lot or a switchbacked lakeside drive can take two 20ft boxes where one 40ft will not place. The second is the shape of your load: a 40ft is one long room, while two 20ft units give you two doors, two locations, and the option to move one later without moving both. There is a third question in New York specifically, and it is worth asking early. Towns that have written container ordinances of their own can cap a container by height or by floor area, and a cap written around one standard box can limit a second container, so if the plan involves more than one container, ask your town for its numbers before you order. Tell us where the box has to land and a Container One sales representative will review which size the access can take.

• 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, 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 10 year no-leak warranty is the longest available. 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. Insulation and HVAC choices depend on the climate the box will sit in: New York's main energy load is heating everywhere, and the 2025 energy code made that unusually simple to plan for. The Energy Conservation Construction Code of New York State assigns every county to climate zone 4, 5 or 6 in Table R301.1(1), with the downstate counties in zone 4, Erie, Monroe and Onondaga among the zone 5 counties, and the Adirondack, North Country, Tug Hill and Catskill counties in zone 6. The surprise is that Table R402.1.3 then gives the same insulation minimums in all three zones, including R-49 in the ceiling, so your county changes the glazing and air leakage targets far more than it changes how much insulation the code asks for. What does not change anywhere in New York is the direction of the moisture. Through a long heating season indoor air is warmer and wetter than outdoor air, so it pushes outward toward the coldest surface in the assembly, which is the inside face of your steel. Any air gap behind the insulation is a condensing surface, so the insulation plan is an air sealing plan first.

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.

Much of New York sits on glacial ground that changes over short distances, and some areas sit on lacustrine (old lake-bed) clay. New York's soils were sorted, dumped and re-sorted by ice and meltwater, so a state scale soil map cannot tell you what is under one parcel. The New York State Department of Transportation's own geology chapter describes the Erie and Ontario lowlands, the belt that carries Buffalo, Rochester and the north side of Syracuse, as glacial till plains and proglacial lake plains with drumlins through the middle of the Ontario plain, and it notes that the till runs from loose to exceptionally dense and that New York's lake and marine clays have a history of settlement and slope movement. That matters more for a container than for a house, because a container puts essentially its whole weight through four corner castings rather than spreading it along a continuous footing. Four point loads on lake clay that has softened after a wet week, or on a fill pocket nobody knew was there, can leave a box out of level with doors that no longer close.

For temporary placement: Set the container on solid bearing at the four corner castings rather than straight onto turf. Pressure treated timbers, solid concrete blocks or a compacted gravel pad under each corner keeps the box level, keeps the doors square and keeps the wood floor out of standing water. Grade so that surface water and snowmelt run away from the corners rather than under them, and pick the spot on foot rather than from a photograph, because drumlin country reads flat in a picture and is not.

For permanent placement or a conversion: Piers or footings under each corner casting, bearing on undisturbed soil, sized to the ground you actually have rather than to a regional average. Section R403.1.4 of the 2025 Residential Code of New York State requires exterior footings not less than 12 inches below undisturbed ground surface. Section R403.1.4.1 then carries an exception worth knowing before you price anything: frost protection is not required for a free standing accessory structure of other than light frame construction with an area of 400 square feet or less and an eave height of 10 feet or less, and a 20ft container at 160 square feet and a 40ft at 320 both sit inside it. Read what that exception does not cover. It is for free standing accessory structures, so the moment the container becomes a dwelling, an accessory dwelling unit, or two boxes joined into one 640 square foot building, you are below the frost line and the budget is a different budget. On lake clay a soil test is cheap next to fixing a settled corner, and any structural build wants the foundation and the connection designed by a New York licensed engineer.

Frost depth: New York publishes no single statewide frost depth, and that is by design. The Department of State requires each authority having jurisdiction to fill in Table R301.2 with its own minimum footing depth below finish grade, worked out from the air freezing index, the soil, the water table and local field experience. The published municipal sheets list their own figures: the City of Glens Falls in Warren County lists 48 inches and the Town of Ephratah in Fulton County lists 50, both against the 2020 edition of the residential code. Yours comes from your own code office as it stands today, and Section R403.1.4 keeps a floor under all of it by requiring exterior footings at least 12 inches below undisturbed ground.

A permanent structure in New York needs a foundation that reaches below the frost depth set by the local code, and frost depth varies by location. For a container used as storage the question is simpler: a level, well drained spot with solid bearing at the four corners, chosen deliberately before the truck is booked.

At a minimum, make the placement area level and firm, and clear debris, rocks and brush out of the way. Confirm the straight run the truck needs, and look up for lines and limbs. Soft ground can delay a delivery: a loaded truck can sink, so the driver may wait for the ground to dry. Describe the site in your quote request so it can be reviewed before delivery is scheduled.

The box itself is corrugated Corten steel. The lock is the weak point, so use a hidden shackle lock, sometimes called a puck lock, inside a lockbox welded over the handle. Ask whether the selected unit has 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 verifiable business identity or contact route, and pressure to decide today. A real dealer will give you a phone number, answer questions before payment, and put the quote in writing.