As more and more people become concerned with emergency preparedness, shipping containers present an interesting use case as “bug out shelters.” The idea of a bug out shelter stems from the concept of nuclear “fallout shelters.” At its core, it’s essentially a backup location, where someone can temporarily retreat to for protection from natural or…
Shipping containers have an almost endless array of uses after they have travelled the world delivering goods. One of the most recent uses has been as schools and classrooms – whether as an IT suite at an orphanage in Africa, a classroom space in a UK state school or a whole private school in fashionable Orange…
Shipping containers have come to dominate land and sea transport with their fixed size and durability. For various reasons they haven’t been used for air freight except where absolutely necessary. One issue is the cost – air freight can cost six times as much to deliver goods over the same distance over land or by…
If you’ve been watching the news recently you will have seen the huge refugee crisis that has hit Europe as millions of people have escaped war torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa for safety. This has led to boom time for one industry – the shipping container conversion industry – which has…
Shipping containers have a number of features that make them extremely good shelters and laboratories for scientists working in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. They can be converted to their end use in a factory environment. This means a whole research station can be built in a factory in somewhere like Australia or South Africa,…
With the development of hydroponics and vertical indoor farming, it has become possible to use shipping containers to grow food. One 40ft shipping container can produce a similar amount of food to a five acre farm! New developments in the system mean that you could even produce fish, giving you protein to eat as well. The…
According to the laws of physics, anything that is less dense than fluid will float on top of it. This is why oil floats on water, but is also the reason that 500,000 tonne oil tankers don’t sink! You can have any number of shipping containers attached together to create a home or office complex…
Shipping container solar power stations are being created for diverse uses. In this post we take a look at how a shipping container solar power station can be used in three ways, as a military solution, getting power where it is badly needed to support communities and for mobile courier delivery in big cities. 1. Military solutions The US Military has recently announced that it…
If well looked after there is every reason that a shipping container building can outlive the people who built it in the first place – a hundred years or more might be possible. When made for their original job, 10 years travelling the world carrying goods from A to B, there are strict specifications that dictate…
Shipping containers are only used for their main job – transporting goods around the world – for between 7 to 10 years. They can last far longer than that, with some experts estimating that they can live for 30 years or more. At Gateway Container Sales we think 30 years may be a little conservative…