The container is almost never the problem. Getting a loaded truck to the spot you have picked out is, and that is a conversation worth having before anything is booked.
Nine deliveries out of ten are uneventful. The ones that are not tend to come unstuck for the same short list of reasons, and almost every one of them could have been settled over the phone a week earlier. Here is what we ask before a truck gets booked, and why each one matters here.
A tilt-tray carries a 10ft or a 20ft and winches it rearwards onto the ground. It wants a straight lane behind the resting spot — twenty metres of it, around three and a half wide, over something the tyres will not sink into.
A sidelifter brings the 40-footers and lands them alongside the trailer using two hydraulic cranes. That is how a container gets placed over a fence line or hard against a boundary, and it is the more demanding machine: the better part of thirty metres to work in, plus solid standing on the lifting side, because the stabiliser feet push a great deal of weight through a small patch of ground.
A crane truck is what we reach for when neither of those will do — a steep block above Airlie Beach, a narrow lot in town, a lift over a shed. It costs more and it turns a fair number of impossible sites into possible ones. The deliveries page goes through all three.
Ask any of our drivers what he actually worries about and it will not be the container. It is what is underneath him.
From about December the whole equation shifts. Cane soil between Sarina and Proserpine will carry a ute all year round and still go to porridge under a loaded trailer after one solid fall. Headlands and farm tracks that were rock hard in October are a different proposition in February. A freshly graded pad in Paget looks ideal and has had no time to compact, and the same goes for the cut-and-fill house sites around Walkerston and Marian.
None of that means we will not come. It means we would far rather know before dispatch, so we send the right machine or wait two days for the surface to firm up, rather than arrange a recovery for a trailer sitting on its axles.
Measure the tightest point rather than the average one. Gate posts, the cattle grid and what it is rated to carry, the swing available at the top of the drive, limbs over a track, and the state of the final few hundred metres.
Two things trip people up around here. Cane rail crossings and harvest traffic through the Valley and out past Farleigh make timing a real consideration between June and November. And a lot of acreage driveways were laid out for a car and a box trailer — the bend you take in a ute without thinking is often the exact reason a sidelifter cannot reach the back paddock.
Power lines first, every time. Then patio edges, shade sails, mango and poinciana limbs, and the shed corner you stopped noticing years ago. A sidelifter runs its cranes well above roof height, so clear air over the truck is not clear air over the spot.
West into the Bowen Basin the access conversation turns formal: inductions, permitted delivery windows, whether the driver is escorted once inside the lease, who is authorised to sign, and how much notice the gate expects. All of that gets settled before the truck leaves rather than at the boundary. We have written it up separately in what Bowen Basin sites actually need.
Check the spot with a level, or at least a straight edge and a critical eye. Steel takes on the shape of whatever you rest it on: a container sitting slightly twisted will not close sweetly, the locking bars go stiff, and in time the seals stop sealing. Four points of concrete block, hardwood sleeper or heavy paver under the corner castings prevents that, and lifting the underside clear of sheet water lets the cross-members dry between falls. Have the packing on site and roughly in position beforehand — produced afterwards, it means lifting a loaded container a second time to slide it underneath.
Slash or mow the run in so the driver can read the ground he is committing to. Clear the parking: on most properties something — a boat, a float, the second ute — has quietly taken up residence in the only space the truck can use. Peg or tape the spot so there is no guessing. Be on site if you can, and if you cannot, make sure the number on the docket gets picked up, because a driver alone in a paddock will make the decision himself and it may not be the one you wanted.
Photographs from the gate, from the drop spot and back down the driveway will answer in a moment what five minutes of description will not. Send them before we schedule and you will get an honest answer about which truck suits, or about whether the container ought to live somewhere other than where you first pictured it. Ring (07) 4944 2211 and we will work it through with you.
Wind ratings, council approval, site accommodation and what a container build actually involves between Mackay, the Bowen Basin and Airlie Beach — including where the idea works and where it doesn't.
Why a steel box bakes in a Mackay summer and on a Bowen Basin site, the insulation options ranked by what they cost you in space and money, and the ventilation that does half the work for almost nothing.
Cyclone tie-downs, condensation, siting above flood height and the mistakes that cost people their gear between December and March.
One call, one delivered number, freight included.