Townsville runs hot, then the wet arrives all at once

Local stock, and a freight number you can see

Townsville orders are filled from stock held for the city. A walk-up address is not printed here. It is inspected before it is loaded, and you see the cartage inside the price rather than as a line that appears later. If a particular length is not in that local holding, we will tell you the timing instead of quietly substituting a tired unit.

Garbutt (4814), Mount Louisa (4814) and the streets around the airport and Lavarack are full of households on a posting cycle. Kirwan (4817), Condon (4815) and Annandale (4814) are where the furniture often has to live for a few months between houses. A container on the driveway beats a storage room across town when you are still unpacking one kitchen and packing another. Check with defence housing or the property manager before it lands on a rental.

Bohle, the port, and the jobs that leave town

Bohle (4818), the Garbutt industrial strip and the sheds toward the port are mining services, engineering and transport. Containers there are parts stores, tool cribs and sometimes a second box used as a crib room. Stacking two high comes up because the lease line does not move. It only works on hardstand, with castings on castings and locks between them. Side by side is usually the better layout, and we will say that even when a stack would have been a bigger sale.

Contractors also buy a box to travel with the job: loaded in town, sent inland with the plant. Fuel and oils for that trip belong in a dangerous-goods unit, not in a general box with a drum and a prayer. Deeragun (4818) and Bushland Beach are more often household overflow on newer estates, with wider roads and smaller yards than the industrial work a suburb away.

The stacking piece Stacking Containers: What the Castings Take, and What the Ground Has To is the one to read before anyone welds up a bright idea in a Bohle yard.

Dry heat, then monsoonal rain

For most of the year the problem is heat. A dark container in full sun at Railway Estate or Belgian Gardens (4810) will cook whatever is inside it. Lighter colours, shade on the western wall, and nothing heat-sensitive against the roof. If someone will work inside, extra headroom helps, which is why high cubes come up in workshop conversations more than in pure storage ones.

When the wet arrives, low ground is the mistake. Alligator Creek (4816), Alice River and Rangewood (4817) sit on soils that go from concrete-hard to soft in a day. Put the box on the highest firm pad, on blocks, clear of the line where water sits. An intense downpour and the occasional cyclone-season wind are the reasons to think about tie-downs on an empty unit. Council rules for structures in this region are theirs to explain; we will not pretend a delivery docket is an approval.

Suburban tilt-tray work through Kirwan is usually ordinary. A 40ft into an industrial yard wants room beside the truck for a sidelifter. Tell us which one you are booking, and send the gate width if the yard was designed around utes rather than around a container trailer.

Stacks, only if the ground agrees

That casting-and-ground article is written for people who have run out of yard, not for people who like the look of a stack. Read it before the second box is ordered.