The economy has been hard to predict over the last couple years. You could almost do a random search on the Internet and have a better idea of which businesses will thrive and which won’t.
One area where we’ve seen some real topsy-turvy supply and demand: construction. In particular, the price of lumber nearly quadrupled in a single year.
Supposedly this has to do with an increase in home renovations. Everyone’s cooped up indoors, they need a summer project, so hey, maybe it’s time to finally remodel the kitchen. The result: higher demand, lower supply, and two hundred dollars’ worth of lumber now costs twelve hundred bucks.
In other words: this is a bad time to start a construction project.
In other words: you might want to consider a shipping container as an alternative.
To most of us, shipping containers are those big boxes we see when a train passes by, or we drive past the docks. But it’s becoming more commonplace to use these containers as secure storage, mobile offices, restaurants, bars, and even roller rinks.
Here’s what you’re getting out of a shipping container that you can’t get out of conventional construction:
- Shipping Containers are Ready to Go. Even a prefabricated home requires some level of construction. They typically ship the home in pieces, and you must put it together, install this, and that. It’s just not ready to go on day one like a shipping container is.
- You don’t have to worry about the weather. If you’re building a structure for your business, you must know what type of wood matches the climate, what style of roof suits the weather, and so on. With a shipping container, the same box you’d use for a ski lodge, you can use for a downtown restaurant. With proper insulation, a shipping container can survive extreme heat and extreme cold.
- Shipping Containers are mobile. A shipping container can be as permanent a building as you want it to be, or it can be a mobile workspace. This has come in handy in the medical industry, where mobile medical centers need to be set up and removed in a matter of days so that you can go on to meet the next at-need community.
- Shipping Containers Are Cost Effective. This is true even when lumber prices are reasonable. But when lumber prices double, triple, and quadruple, using shipping containers for storage, office space, a restaurant, a guard shack, or even a kiosk makes even more sense.
Ultimately the appeal of a shipping container comes down to flexibility. The list of things you can’t do with one is shorter than the list of things you can do with it, because it’s just a box.
And since it’s just a box, it can be made into just about anything. You can have windows and electricity added. Have it insulated and refrigerated for storing food, or add roll-up doors to create a garage. Just about anything you can do with a conventional building, you can do with a shipping container, and without having to pay skyrocketing lumber prices.
What’s more, you don’t have to do all the customization yourself. If you’re looking for shipping containers for sale, you can simply get in touch for a quote, and we’ll see if we can create exactly what you’re after.
The economic landscape is changing. It’s just as important as ever to focus on customer satisfaction and delivering the best products and services you can, but more and more, the marketplace rewards flexibility. Whatever your field, you’ll only thrive if you’re able to make changes on the fly.
Shipping containers are one way of doing that. If you see a gap in the market, a shipping container allows you to set up shop right away and capitalize while your competitors are still waiting for the price of lumber to start falling. As more and more business owners realize this, we’ll probably be seeing more and more uses for the humble, simple, rugged, durable, and easy-to-transport shipping container.
