COMMON CONTAINER REPAIRS

You may already know this, but our yards in Toronto and Montreal are equipped with fully functional modification centers. This includes state of the art painting facilities, multiple container handlers and forklifts and various tools that we use in our everyday work. The tools we use grind, weld, drill and help paint all of the custom shipping containers that we build. They also help us repair some of the most common damages to containers.

The repairs we performed on used containers are minor and help us to make sure all units are wind and water sealed and all of their components function as they should. Here are ATS, we never acquire any kinds of containers that have structural damage. We do not carry these types of units in our fleet. The most common repairs performed on containers include the following:

  • Door repairs: the most common problems with container doors are that they become stiff after years of use. This makes it harder to open the standard container doors and to operate the locking bar handles. To make their operation smoother, we use a mix of gases to burn the old materials off the hinges and apply new grease. In the case of broken locking bar handles, our most common practice is to replace them with new ones.
  • Wall and roof repairs: a lot of people like to hang signage on their shipping containers and they often do this by drilling screws into the wall of the container. Sometimes, people build makeshift shelving inside the container, again, by drilling holes into the wall of the container. This compromises the wind and water resistance of the CORTEN steel panels and it increases the risk of damage to the contents inside the container. To repair steel panels, we weld the holes back together or if the damage is over a large enough area, we will make cutouts of the affected area and replace the entire panel.
  • Ventilation systems: sometimes, used containers come to us without the proper vents. Shipping container vents are built to allow air to travel in and out of the container but their design is specific so rain cannot get inside. When containers come to us with their vents missing, we simply install new vents.
  • Although not a repair, but certainly one of the most common jobs we do, is to install lockboxes. Most of our customers, when they purchase a used container, choose to have various security features installed to protect their belongings. This includes secure lockboxes and puck lockboxes, our most common form of container protection.

These are the simple repairs that we do every day. We rely on our tools to work with precision and better efficiency in our day to day jobs. In the end, it’s all wort it because we build some very cool projects.