Can I store a tractor in a container?

Steel box versus more building

The tractor is sitting out because the barn is full, and what sits in front of you is more building or a steel box set where you need it and done by next week.

Framed that way, the container has three things going for it. It arrives finished, so there is no crew, no lumber order and no waiting on weather. It locks, and a welded lockbox comes on every one we sell and rent, which matters more than people admit once a tractor is worth what tractors are worth now. And it can leave. If the operation changes in six years, a shed is a demolition project and a container is a phone call.

What the shed has going for it is the doorway. A pole barn opening can be made any size you like. A container opening is fixed at the factory, and that single fact answers this question for most people before anything else does.

The roll bar decides it, not the length

Length is never the constraint. A 20 ft runs about 160 square feet and a 40 ft about 320, and no compact tractor is 40 feet long. What stops a tractor at the doorway is the top of it.

A standard container stands 8 feet 6 inches outside and 8 feet wide, and the clear opening you actually drive through is a few inches under both of those. On ISO boxes it works out somewhere near 7 feet 8 inches across and roughly 7 feet 5 to 6 inches tall. A high-cube runs a foot taller overall and gives you most of that foot back at the door. Treat those as approximate on used equipment, because the exact figures for the unit you buy are stencilled on the door itself, next to the CSC plate.

Now measure your tractor at its tallest point with the roll bar folded down and pinned. That number, not the brochure number, is the one that matters.

• Folding roll bar down and pinned: most compact and small utility tractors land in the six foot range and clear a standard box comfortably.
• Loader on: the loader arms and bucket carry high when curled. Roll in with the bucket flat on the deck and the arms low, or pull the loader off.
• Cab tractor: a cab does not fold. Almost none of them clear a standard opening, and a high-cube only buys back a foot. Measure honestly before you get hopeful.
• Exhaust stack: a vertical stack is often the tallest thing on the machine and is usually the easiest to pull off and lay inside.

Two of those four are solved with a wrench and fifteen minutes, which is why the answer for most farms turns out to be yes.

Getting it over the sill and back out

The container floor sits on blocks, so the deck is several inches above your grade and there is a steel sill to climb. A tractor is heavy and short-wheelbased and does not appreciate a sharp lip, particularly on the way out in reverse.

The fix is a short earth or gravel ramp built up to the sill when the box is set, or a pair of heavy planks kept handy. Build the approach flat for at least a tractor length in front of the doors, and think about which way you want those doors facing before delivery day. Doors pointed at a slope means you back uphill blind every single time.

Give some thought to what else lives in there too. A tractor parked nose-in with the doors shut behind it makes the back wall unreachable for the rest of the winter. Most people who store a machine and its gear in one box put the tractor in last.

What a tractor does to the inside of a box

Steel keeps weather off and thieves out. What it does not do on its own is manage humid air, and a machine that comes in warm and wet after mowing wet grass in October brings that air in with it.

Vents solve most of it, and we cut them into the steel here before the box ships. Put one down low at one end and one up high at the far end and the box breathes on its own, so wet air leaves instead of beading up overhead and dripping back onto the hood. Park the machine dry when you can, and leave the doors open for an hour on a decent day now and then.

The floor is marine grade plywood over a welded steel frame, and it carries the weight of a compact tractor without complaint. Diesel and hydraulic fluid are unkind to any wood floor over the years, so a drip pan under the machine is worth the trouble on a tractor that leaks a little. Everything does eventually.

Which size, and whether to rent or own it

A 20 ft holds the tractor and very little else once you account for the room to open a door and walk past it. That is fine if the tractor is the whole job. Once the mower deck, the box blade, the fuel jug, the chains and the tool bench are also homeless, a 40 ft is the size to buy. It is one long floor rather than two short ones, and the price per square foot is better.

Rentals run $165 a month for a 20 ft and $235 for a 40 ft, month to month, and rent can often be credited toward buying the box later. Terms are set per agreement, so call and ask. If the tractor needs cover for good rather than for a season, buying wins somewhere around the eighteen to twenty month mark, and after that you own it.

Before we schedule, plan on roughly 65 feet of straight pull-in for a 20 ft and about 95 for a 40 ft, on ground firm enough to carry a loaded truck. Send a photo of the lane and the spot and we will confirm the fit. Free delivery and leveling reach 75 road miles out from Woodlawn.