Yes for bagged dry fertilizer, with ventilation and pallets under it. Fertilizer salts pull moisture and are hard on steel and on a plywood floor, so it needs air and it needs to sit off the deck. Ammonium nitrate and anything in bulk are a separate question with rules that vary locally, so check before you store it.
The word covers a lot of ground. A few pallets of bagged 10-10-10 for the hay ground is one situation. A tote of liquid nitrogen is another. Straight ammonium nitrate is a third and it lives under its own set of rules. Anhydrous ammonia is not a storage question for a container at all.
Three things vary underneath that, and they are what actually decide your answer rather than any general rule about steel boxes.
Sort those three and the answer stops being vague.
Fertilizer salts pull water out of the air. That is why a bag left open goes from free-flowing to a solid brick by the next season. Inside a sealed container the humidity has nowhere to go, so the product cakes faster than it would in an open shed and the moisture it releases works on everything around it.
Steel does not enjoy that company. Weathering steel is tough and a container is built to last around thirty years outdoors, but a damp salt atmosphere is a harder environment than weather is. It goes after the hardware first: door hinges, locking bars, the latch gear, fasteners on anything we have welded in.
So the setup is not complicated, and it is not optional either.
Virginia's Uniform Statewide Building Code names storage containers in its exemptions at 13VAC5-63-20, Section 102.3, item 11, so the box itself, used as storage, is not the thing standing between you and a delivery. That is a clean statewide answer about the container.
It says nothing about what you put inside it. Ammonium nitrate in particular is handled separately from ordinary agricultural supplies, quantity thresholds and reporting requirements exist, and how they land on you depends on how much you hold and where you are. That is a question for your supplier and your locality, and we are not going to make up a number for you.
Zoning is local everywhere too. Setbacks, accessory structures and how a container is treated on your parcel are decided by your county or town. Our permit guide walks the statewide picture and the questions worth asking, and then you make one phone call to your own jurisdiction. It is a short call and it settles the whole thing.
Fertilizer dust travels. In a closed box it settles on everything, and a bag of calf feed with fertilizer dust on it is not a bag of calf feed anymore. The same goes for seed you plan to plant and for anything with a wooden handle you would rather not corrode.
The clean setup is separation. If you are running one container, a solid partition and separate ends is the minimum, and it is work we can do in the shop before delivery. If you have the volume, two 20 ft boxes in two spots beats one 40 ft holding both, even though the one 40 ft costs less than the pair. This is the one case where the cheaper math is the worse answer.
Fuel and chemicals are their own conversation and they do not belong stacked in with fertilizer. If both are on your list, say so up front so we can lay the space out sensibly instead of after the fact.
Four steps and you will know exactly where you stand, none of which involve guessing.
You are also welcome to come look at the steel before any of that. The yard is at 5567 Elk Horn Rd in Woodlawn and the sales lot is at 2220 E Lee Highway in Wytheville, both open Monday through Friday, 8 to 5. Look at the floor, look at the hardware, and decide with your own eyes whether that box is the one you want holding your fertilizer for the next twenty years.
We will lay out vents, partitions and the right size, and we will tell you where you need to call your county first.
Same-day reply. We'll send a real number, a real delivery window, and any photos we need to confirm fit.
You'll hear back from us today (or first thing tomorrow if it's late). For anything urgent, call (276) 237-6144.