Western Railroad Discussion > 500,000 empty shipping containers

I have seen some of these stacks in LA off of the 710 freeway, but I always thought that they were outdated boxes or something.....can't they be recycled?


Big Empty Cargo Containers
Stack Up to Be a Problem
By DANIEL MACHALABA
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

SOUTH KEARNY, N.J. -- Amadeu Pereira sits behind his desk with a computer, a map of the U.S. and photos of his family. Down the hall is a kitchen. Conference rooms take up the second floor.

"It's a very comfortable office," says Mr. Pereira, shop manager of Sea Box Inc. "You'd never know it was made out of cargo containers."

Mr. Pereira built Sea Box's two-story office here from four of the company's steel containers, two on the bottom and two on top. He put in windows and doors, installed wallboard and covered the structure with gray aluminum siding. He has turned other containers into garages, storage sheds, chicken coops, barns and even gun cabinets, selling them for as much as $40,000.

Blame the Trade Deficit

There's no shortage of raw material for Mr. Pereira's handiwork. So many empty containers are piling up near ports and transport hubs around the country that the stacks often resemble large buildings. Shipping officials estimate that as many as 500,000 empty containers, each the size of a truck trailer, are sitting in the U.S. That's about double the number of two years ago.

Forklift hoists a cargo container.
Blame the widening trade deficit, which has caused much more freight to enter the U.S. than to be shipped out. Owners of ocean vessels have found it easier to acquire containers in the Far East and let the empty ones accumulate here. That's especially true in the case of leased containers, because most leases don't obligate shipowners to send empty containers all the way back to Asia, which can cost as much as $1,000. Rather, shipowners can simply deposit them at a convenient U.S. port.

Around ports such as Charleston, S.C., residents say container stacks have become an eyesore. They "look like a city without occupants, windows and doors, but probably lots of vermin," says Florence Frail, vice president of the Old Village Neighborhood Council in North Charleston, a local residents' group.

Unsightly Graffiti

In Chicago, city officials are so angry about unsightly, graffiti-covered container yards that they have proposed an ordinance to set height restrictions, licensing fees and setback requirements for the big steel boxes.

Chicago estimates it has about 20 container storage yards. "Those are the ones we know about," says Bill Trumbull, a deputy commissioner of the city's Department of Planning and Development. "Our concern is that there will be more and more of them."

In Newark, N.J., a high-rise blocks the view of Robert Schroeder and his wife Monica -- and it isn't a new condo or office tower. Across the street from the Schroeders' two-story home, Palmer Industries Inc. is storing thousands of empty containers in massive multicolored stacks that rise as high as six-story buildings.

"Everywhere you look they're stacked up," says Mr. Schroeder, a 59-year-old retired truck driver. "It's ridiculous. They ought to call this container world."

The container glut is no less a challenge for Palmer, a company that repairs and stores the big boxes. On a recent afternoon, Christopher Danback, Palmer's operations director, watched as a special forklift truck grabbed an empty red container from the top of one of Palmer's stacks, then rocked side to side while it backed up and lowered the container onto a flatbed truck. The empty box was headed for one of Palmer's nearby satellite yards to make room for more containers here.

"This is the worst I've seen it," Mr. Danback says. "It's hard to find space."

One solution is to pile them even higher. The container-storage company Interport Maintenance Co., which is located near Newark Airport, bought special equipment to stack containers eight high -- one level higher than Palmer does. Interport's stacks are also spreading out horizontally. They now stretch about five hundred feet wide by one mile long, with breaks to allow the New Jersey Turnpike and other highways to pass through.

Storing huge numbers of containers can be a tricky business. At the Newark container-storage company Ironbound Intermodal, a recent storm caused seven containers to topple off their stacks. No one got hurt, but the containers were damaged. At Palmer's storage yard, empty containers attracted homeless people, who outfitted them with furniture, mattresses and music systems, until they were evicted by police.

Cargo containers first became popular about 40 years ago, when shipowners found it was more efficient to load and unload standard-sized boxes. With reinforced corner posts, containers can be stacked on ships or at terminals. Most containers are 40 feet long by about 8 1/2-feet high; some are only half as long. By conservative estimates, there are about 10 million containers in the world.

Packed into containers, imports of electronics, clothing and toys from Asia pour into the U.S. ports everywhere. But at some ports, such as New York, there's little to send back other than wastepaper and scrap metal. "Americans buy too much and don't make enough themselves," says Robert Ward, president of London-based GE SeaCo, a container-leasing company owned by General Electric Co. and Sea Containers Ltd.

The U.S. has had a trade deficit with Asia for decades, but it has widened in recent years due to the 1998 Asian financial crisis, the strong U.S. dollar and increasing Chinese exports of low-cost goods. Just Tuesday, the Commerce Department said the U.S. trade deficit expanded in January due partly to anemic exports to Europe and Asia (see article).

Frederic Bauthier, a vice president of Container Applications International Inc., a container-leasing company based in San Francisco, says he doesn't like to fly into Newark Airport anymore because of all the empty containers stored nearby. "I get a headache every time I think of all those assets sitting idle," he says.

Real-estate agents also take a dim view of container stacks. Louis Nogueira, a Newark real-estate broker, complains that "people think twice" about the two-family houses under construction next to Palmer's container yard. No wonder. The bright blue and red containers, stacked six high across the street, tower over the homes. The houses are selling for about $325,000 but could be worth $40,000 more, if Palmer's container stacks didn't obstruct views of the Passaic River, Mr. Nogueira says.

Some container-storage depots are trying to upgrade. Randy Wheeler, who runs a container storage yard in Chicago, says he spent $50,000 to pave the entrance, install wrought iron fences and spread wood chips.

Meanwhile, the search for solutions continues. Container leasing companies lately have been raising drop-off fees for empty containers and chartering vessels to take empties to Asia. David Wible, a steamship agent in Norfolk, Va., suggests making containers collapsible to reduce handling costs for empties.

Mr. Pereira, the Sea Box shop manager, suggests turning empty containers into housing. They are "cheap, strong and easy to assemble," he says. Containers already are used for housing in developing countries but rarely in the U.S.

And not everyone minds the containers. "I wouldn't say I like them, but we live with them," says Susan Thomas, a manager at an Avis rental car facility near Newark Airport. The container stacks behind her office are so high and so thick that they block cold winds and muffle the roar of jet planes landing at the airport.

Simply chop them up into scrap steel, and ship them back to Taiwan. In containers.

I read that article this morning. Pretty amazing that it is cheaper to leave them here than to send them back empty.

To follow onto Mike's idea, once they get back to Taiwan in pieces, they can be melted and made back into more containers!

I know we're a bit off topic here, but I'd buy one of them if I could get a good deal. They still seem to be getting top dollar!

railjim wrote:
>
> I know we're a bit off topic here, but I'd buy one of them if I
> could get a good deal. They still seem to be getting top dollar!

They should put'em on eBay.

A friend has looked into purchasing a small one for storage and a full sized one for use as a layout building; the city where he lives said okay on one the smaller one but shot down the larger one. The reason? They were afraid he might convert it into an illegal rental unit after awhile. Bureaucratic ignorance at work once again.

The most creative use that I have heard of for containers was when at least one and posibly more of the larger size were buried in the Ontario, CA area several years ago and converted for use growing marijuana. This is not quite what they were meant to be used for but is not much different from the druggies out in the San Bernardino County Boonies, such as out past Barstow,who have been busted for running Meth labs out of former ATSF boxcars.

One use for 20 foot containers is storage yards. Typically, a storage place rents out enclosed units for $200 a month (10x20).
But a parking space for an RV rents for $40. Just buy a container, put it on a 20 foot trailer (an auto hauler is fine) and you have a cheap storage unit.

you see these things painted up and alongside schools in Southern California, and they hold enough drinking water and medical supplies in case of earthquakes....