Containers: No Longer Just for Transportation

Shipping containers form a makeshift wall around
People's Park in Berkeley (Mercury photo)

My former employer leased large transportation equipment (airplanes, locomotives, barges) to industrial customers. Shipping containers were an adjunct to the main business.

Basic used containers then cost in the $5,000 range, and that market was highly competitive. To be successful, lessors had to be good at moving thousands of units. Specialized containers--for example those that are refrigerated and insulated--could be expensive, but the bulk of the business was commodity-like, not high-tech, and not subject to obsolescence.

Durable, heavy, relatively cheap and portable containers have been produced for decades, and estimates are that there are hundreds of millions of them in existence. It's not surprising that they are being put to uses that were not originally envisioned. In an ongoing, publicized example shipping containers are being used to keep out activists from People's Park in Berkeley:

After the overnight raid of the park to remove protesters of the development, as well as longtime unhoused residents, the block of open space was largely closed off by the 160 big metal boxes. Most were dirty yellow with a few orange and blue scattered in, with all wording and numbers haphazardly covered by blue or white paint.

The hulking boxes each weighed at least 5,000 pounds...

“We learned in August of 2022 that even a really sturdy fence, and an expensive one at that, that we put up, was not sufficient to withstand attacks on it by people who were ready and willing to engage in vandalism, and who would resort to just about anything to tear the fence down,” said Dan Mogulof, university spokesperson, adding that alternatives would probably be expensive and unsuccessful as well. The shipping containers “seemed to offer the best solution given that our primary objective was to close what is a construction site.”

An example of "cargotecture"

As for the other uses,

Shipping containers have had something of a rebirth in recent years, their typical job of transporting goods shifting to a variety of uses, including border security.

Arizona officials double-stacked 1,700 containers along its southern border with a plan for such a barrier to block 10 miles, but caved to protesters and threats of federal litigation, trucking the big metal boxes away for auction early last year. They are now being made into tiny homes.

But shipping containers have also been chic darlings of industrial design, becoming homes, restaurants, bunkers, pop-up shops and playgrounds, among a wide range of uses.

The famed Starburst House in Joshua Tree, which looks like a bunch of rectangular boxes sticking out at odd angles, is 2,000 square feet of living space made entirely of shipping containers.

Los Angeles has an apartment complex made from containers, designed for homeless people.

And then there was the 2022 FIFA World Cup stadium in Qatar built from 974 shipping containers.

The concept has become so trendy in recent years that it has its own moniker: cargotecture.

Accountants may have to adjust upward the 25-40 years they've been using for the useful life of containers.