Bringing shipping containers to your farmland!

Transporting a shipping container to a place of your choice comes with some planning. In fact, this may be the foremost consideration before embarking on your project. In this post I will try to detail the steps I took to ensure smooth arrival and placement of the containers.

Transport

I found a container dealer in Chennai and started speaking to him over call on the various details regarding cost, fabrication and transport, many months before actually finalising the purchase. The container dealer generally has trucking vendor contacts who are used for such transport so he himself can advise you. I had 2 containers which had to be brought and the total amount for the transport component was Rs 65k. So about Rs 32.5k per truck.

Things to consider

• If you stay in a hill-station with hair pin bend roads, then transporting a 40ft container is not feasible. The 20ft (length) container is your only option and you have to discuss with the dealer to ensure feasibility.
• Low hanging electricity cables which are strung between the electricity poles, may prove to be dangerous. The total height of the truck with the container comes up to 5ft+8.6ft=14ft. Check for at least 16ft of clearance from the lowest point of the cable and account for road slopes. Luckily, I did not have problems with these high power cables else I would have had to get in touch with the electricity JE to turn them off momentarily.
• Electricity service cables (the wires which come to the house from the pole) on the other hand, tend to be much lower and can be a hindrance. Since these are insulated however, they can be carefully lifted over the containers while passing through. The truck guys luckily seemed accustomed to such conditions in my case.
• At the proposed placement point of the containers, make sure that there are no cables which can obstruct the crane operations. The height consideration for smooth crane operation is about 10-15ft above the container and truck height. So minimum clearance of about 30ft is imperative.
• At your destination (proposed placement point of containers), you should arrange for a crane to be available at the time of arrival of the trucks. Inform the crane operator that the requirement is for a shipping container. Ideally they should have the clamps/hooks to secure the container at all 4 corners. However practically, in hill stations they might not have these available. In that case, you might have to rely even more on the experience of the operators to skilfully make adjustments and maintain balance while moving the containers.
• Try to choose a day with minimum traffic like a festival holiday or Sunday. Day time operations are advisable. Try to plan out parking of the trucks on the roadside so that the crane can smoothly pick it up from the truck bed and place it on the pillars as fast and efficiently as possible.
• If you have sourced the containers from Chennai, expect all transport related conversations to be in Tamil. So if you do not know Tamil, try to have someone handy who can speak with them.
• Arrange for some labour to be handy during the unloading of the container at your spot. In my case, the contractor who built the foundation pillars proved to be a great help.
• Crane costs can get expensive with a range of about Rs 6k-8k, so you have to make sure that the containers are properly placed in 1 shot. Minor changes may be possibles with the help of a hydraulic jack.

Dealer responsibilities

• The dealer who is supplying the containers co-ordinates with the truck vendor known to him and is responsible for ensuring that the correct container is loaded. Ask him to plan and communicate estimated time and day of arrival.
• Any issues with the checkpost is ideally handled by the truck vendor. In odd circumstances you may have to be prepared to speak to them. The checkpost is mainly for checking tax payments and goods movement.
• Once the containers have been unloaded from the truck and placed at the desired spot, the truck driver will handover a form for you to sign which they have to use at the checkpost.

Placement

The cranes are able to place the containers with a surprising level of precision. But it is also nice to have some luck on your side because the reality of the operation seems nerve wracking. The crane guys did not have the 4 clamps to stably secure the container but still managed to pull off the operation with some improvisation and co-ordination with 2 other people who were guiding and spotting the container on the ground.

The operation mainly involves the following steps:

• Lifting the container from the truck. Ensure that the container is balanced well especially if it is not secured at all 4 corners (like in my case).
• For roadside entry, or any situation involving fitting in tight spaces, the container may have to be placed on the ground and the crane position adjusted.
• 2 people on the ground can help turn and guide the suspended container to the correct angle of entry.
• If the balance is off, the container has to be lowered to the ground and the crane hook repositioned.
• Someone should ideally be spotting any obstacles in the path and accordingly inform the crane operator.
• Align one side, either length or breadth first, and then proceed with the other side.

Pending Work

The fabrication team from Chennai sent two people about 2 weeks after the containers arrived to complete the remaining work like:

• Welding the gap between the 2 containers.
• Supporting chains for the windows.
• Vinyl flooring sheet over the existing marine plywood floorboard of the container.
• Electrically connecting the 2 containers so that the electricity mains enter only from one point.
• Paint touch up for the newly welded points and the new seem between the containers.

Since the container dealers were in the business of fabrication as well, I decided to get most of the work done before arrival. Their past experience I hoped, would enable them to do it in the most effective way at a proposed rate.

I gave the team a drawing of where I wanted the doors, windows and other cut-outs, and another one detailing where I wanted the lights and plugs. Structural reinforcements were done as per their practical know-how.

Fabrication work completed before departing the container yard at Chennai:

• 3 Windows and 1 door. These are cut out and a frame is made with steel angle lengths. There are different kinds of window setups.
• Cut-outs. Like for entering the other container, a huge piece of the container side wall had to removed. So this cut out was structurally reinforced with a square steel pipe.
• Ventilator fans at the corner of each container.
• 2 lights and 1 fan point in the ceiling of each container.
• Painting the inside and outside of each container.

Pre-arrival preparations

I waited till the last minute before finalising the order for the containers. This is because once the order is placed, with an advance payment of about 50%, the fabrication work commences. After fabrication, the dealers want to send the containers as soon as possible so that their fabrication work space can accommodate new container orders. I discussed with the dealers to be prepared to hold the ready containers for 2 weeks to a month in case of any contingency. Total turn around time from order to delivery can be anywhere between 3 to 6 weeks.

At my location, I had some preparation work which I wanted to get done before finalising the order. I was sure about finding dealers who supplied the shipping containers but I settled on one person and spoke to him quite a bit before placing the order. It was quite a journey with many tense discussions but eventually, we made the transaction happen. Described below are some steps I had to undertake:

• Had a basic plan of the layout of the containers, entry from roadside, visibility etc. Marked the coffee plants which had to be removed.
• Hired a JCB (bulldozer who generally charge 800-1000 per hour), to clear out the coffee trees. This was less than an hour’s work and I had to pay a little more than the standard hourly rate.
• Shifted an electricity cable which was running over the entrance of the spot so that a crane could be used to lift and lower the containers from the roadside. This was the main show stopper preventing me from ordering the containers sooner. Turn around time for completion of this half an hour job was close to 3 months. In your own projects prepare to be more persuasive if you want to get things done faster.
• Tree cutting and pruning higher branches of trees which posed a risk of falling and damaging the containers.
• Constructed a roadside entrance concrete slab across the stormwater drain trench. Was important to accommodate the crane.
• Constructed the pillar foundations on which to place the container.

Check out the video below for a detail on how the containers were moved from the truck to the platform using the crane: