Hiring vs buying a shipping container — how to work out which suits

The break-even, in general terms

We will not put figures in a guide, because container prices and hire rates move with grade, size and availability, and the only numbers that matter are the ones on your quote. But the method does not change, and you can run it in two minutes with your own numbers.

Take the purchase price of the container at the grade you would buy. Take the monthly hire rate for the same size. Divide the first by the second. That gives you a break-even in months — the point at which accumulated hire payments equal the purchase price.

Then adjust for the three things that number leaves out:

• Delivery both ways. A hire container is delivered and later collected. A purchased container is delivered once. Both are quoted with the job, both vary with distance and access, and the collection leg is a real cost that people forget to put in the sum.
• Residual value. If you buy, you still own a container at the end. Containers hold their value reasonably well, so the true cost of ownership is the purchase price minus what you could sell it for, not the purchase price.
• The cost of money. Capital tied up in a container is capital not doing something else. For a business that is a real consideration; for a household it usually is not.

Once residual value goes into the sum, the break-even usually lands sooner than the raw division suggests — often well inside a couple of years. As a rough rule: short and defined, hire. Long or open-ended, buy.

What hire genuinely suits

• A defined period with an end date. A build, an extension, a renovation, a fit-out, a harvest, an event, a shutdown. You know when it goes and you want no residual problem.
• A site you do not own. A leased yard, a job site, a rental property. Owning a container you cannot leave anywhere is an awkward position.
• Uncertainty about how long. Hire converts a lump of capital into a monthly line you can stop. That flexibility has real value even if it costs more per month.
• Peak or seasonal demand. Extra capacity for three months a year is a poor reason to own something for twelve.
• Operating expenditure rather than capital. Some businesses would rather have the monthly cost than the asset. That is a conversation with your accountant, not with us.
• You want the condition guaranteed. Hire fleets sit at cargo-worthy or better, so you are not making a grade decision at all.

What buying suits

• Permanent storage. If the container is still going to be there in five years, buying stopped being a question a long time ago.
• Anything you want to modify. You cannot cut doors, windows, vents or power into a hire unit. Any fit-out means ownership.
• Anywhere you want it painted, signed or built around. Same reason.
• Rural and acreage use. Long-term, remote, and the delivery legs on a hire unit are a bigger proportion of the cost the further out you are.
• When you want an asset rather than an expense. A container that holds its value is a very different thing on the books to a monthly hire line.
• When you want a specific unit. Buying means you can inspect and choose the actual container. Ask for photographs on request and before delivery, or come and walk the yard.

Hire is not always more expensive than it looks

The comparison people run in their head is hire rate versus purchase price, and that comparison flatters buying. Two things sit on the other side of the ledger.

First, a hire unit is somebody else's maintenance problem. If a door seal fails or a roof develops a pinhole on a hire container, that is our issue. On a container you own, it is yours.

Second, a hire unit leaves. At the end of a project, a bought container that no longer has a job becomes a thing you have to sell, move, or find room for. If you have no use for it and nowhere to put it, its residual value is theoretical until you have gone through the effort of realising it.

What to check in a hire agreement

Hire terms are not complicated, but they are worth reading rather than skimming. The items that actually matter:

1. Minimum hire period. Most agreements have one. If your job might finish early, know what the minimum is before you sign, not after.
2. How the rate is charged. Weekly, monthly, or a period rate. Whether a part month is charged as a full one.
3. Delivery and collection. Confirm both legs are quoted up front. A hire quote that only mentions delivery is half a quote.
4. Notice period for collection. How much warning we need to come and get it, and whether hire keeps accruing until it is physically gone.
5. Condition on return and fair wear. What counts as normal use and what counts as damage. Holes cut in the walls are not fair wear. Scratches are.
6. Whether you can move it. Generally not without telling us — we need to know where our container is and that it was lifted properly.
7. Whether you can modify it. Generally not at all. Even a shelf bolted to the wall is a hole in the steel.
8. Insurance and who carries the risk. Who is responsible if it is broken into, damaged or destroyed while it is on your site.
9. Access on the day of collection. The site conditions have to still work for a truck at the end, not just at the start.

Our terms are set out plainly on the container hire page, and if anything is unclear, ring and ask before you sign.

The collection problem nobody plans for

This is the most common hire surprise and it is entirely avoidable. A container delivered empty and collected loaded is not the same job.

An empty 20ft is a bit over two tonne. Full of household goods it might be five or six. Full of anything dense — tiles, pavers, machinery, steel, stock — it can be a great deal more. The truck that delivered it empty may not be able to lift it loaded, particularly a crane truck, whose lifting capacity drops sharply with reach.

Ground bearing changes too. A pad that carried the container through a dry spell can rut and pump under a loaded unit after a wet fortnight, and the truck has to drive on it. Plan the collection at the start: tell us what is going in, and empty it before the collection date unless we have agreed otherwise. The delivery page covers what each truck needs.

The cost of moving a container you own

People buy a container thinking of it as portable. It is transportable, which is a different thing. Moving a container you own is a truck job every time, quoted on distance and access at both ends, and there are two ends now rather than one.

Before it can move, it has to be empty or close to it, it has to be liftable — which means sound corner castings and rails — and both sites need the access for a truck. A container that has been sitting in a backyard for eight years while a pergola, a garden bed and a mature tree grew up around it is a crane job at best.

None of that is a reason not to buy. It is a reason to think carefully about where it goes on day one, because that decision is much more permanent than it feels while the truck is idling in the street. Getting the pads and the position right before the truck arrives is worth the hour it takes.

A middle path: hire first, then decide

If you genuinely do not know how long you need it, hiring for a few months and then buying is not a wasted decision. You will learn whether the size is right, whether the position works, whether the access is as easy as it looked, and whether you actually use it. Those are expensive things to guess wrong on a purchase.

Some hire arrangements can be converted to a purchase. Ask at the start rather than the end — it is a much easier conversation before the paperwork is written.

Working it out with us

Tell us how long you think you need it, what is going in it and where it is going. We will give you both numbers — the hire rate and the purchase price for the same size and grade — and you can do the division yourself. If hire is the better answer we will say so, and if you are three months off the break-even we will tell you that too.

Ring 0477 410 500, or send the details through the contact page. Sizes and current options are on the container range and the container sales page.